Quotes from
Odd Interlude, a Special Odd Thomas Adventure by Dean Koontz
We don't need a bunch of
badly behaved retirees any more than we need young hoodlums.
I'm Odd, but I'm not nuts.
If I am the equivalent of
Tom Cruise, I will surely exit unscathed.
A drop in the bucket a very small proportion of the whole.
Origin From the Bible, Isaiah 40:15 (King James
Version): "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing." 'A drop in the bucket' is the predecessor of 'a drop in the ocean', which means the same thing, and is first found in a piece from The Edinburgh Weekly Journal, July 1802: "The votes for the appointment of Bonaparte to be Chief Consul for life are like a drop in the ocean compared with the aggregate of the population of France." http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/124000.html
The history
of matches
In 1669, phosphorous was discovered -
phosphorous was soon used in match heads.In 1680, an Irish physicist named Robert Boyle (Boyle's Law) coated a small piece of paper with phosphorous and coated a small piece of wood with sulfur. He then rubbed the wood across the paper and created a fire. However, there was no useable match created by Robert Boyle.
In 1827, John Walker, English chemist and apothecary, discovered that if he coated the end of a stick with certain chemicals and let them dry, he could start a fire by striking the stick anywhere. These were the first friction matches. The chemicals he used were antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch. Walker did not patent his "Congreves" as he called the matches (alluding to the Congreve's rocket invented in 1808). http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmatch.htm
The infamous 'dog in a manger', who occupied the manger not because he wanted to eat
the hay there but to prevent the other animals from doing so, is generally said
to have been the invention of the Greek storyteller Aesop (circa
620-564 BC). Many of the fables that
have been credited to Aesop do in fact date from well before the 5th century BC
and modern scholarship doesn't give much credence to the idea that Aesop's
Fables, as we now know them, were written by him at all. Accounts of Aesop's life are vague and date
from long after his death. If he existed
at all, it was as an editor of earlier Greek and Sumerian stories rather than
as the writer of them. Nothing written by Aesop now exists in any
form. Nevertheless, you can go into any
bookshop and buy a copy of 'Aesop's Fables' and, for this book more
than others, that is largely thanks to the invention of the movable type
printing press. Following the production
of the Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s, European printers began to look
around for other suitable works to print. What better way to educate the common herd
than to provide them with the uplifting moral tales of Aesop? The German printer
Heinrich Steinhowel set to the task and printed the first German version in
1480. The first English version followed
soon after when Caxton adapted the German version into English in 1484. It seems that Steinhowel had decided that
Aesop's fables weren't quite uplifting enough and he added the 'Dog in the
Manger' in his 1480 version. There's no
mention of the story in the Greek descriptions of the fables, some of which
date from the 4th century BC. While not
being included by Aesop, the story itself is ancient, having been cited in
several early Greek texts and in English in John Gower's Confessio Amantis,
circa 1390: Though it be not the hound's
habit To eat chaff, yet will he warn off
An ox that commeth to the barn Thereof to take up any food. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dog-in-the-manger.html
Tiramisu (pronounced
"tih-ruh-mee-SOO") was invented in the 1960's at the El Touga
restaurant in Treviso, Italy. Literally
translated, Tiramisu means "pick me up" or "carry me up",
which probably refers to the jolt you get after eating espresso and alcohol
laced ladyfingers. Recipe and video at:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/Tiramisu.html
Dulce
de leche or milk
candy is a sweet which tastes like toffee. This is
a typical Argentinean spreadable sweet. In some countries “dulce de leche” ice cream is available. Recipe at:
http://cookandtranslate.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/milkcaramel-dulcedeleche/
Mar. 7, 2013 In late January, Amazon received a patent to set up an exchange for all
sorts of digital material. The retailer
would presumably earn a commission on each transaction, and consumers would
surely see lower prices. But a shudder
went through publishers and media companies.
Those who produce content might see their work devalued, just as they
did when Amazon began selling secondhand books 13 years ago. The price on the Internet for many used books
these days is a penny. On Mar. 6, the
United States Patent and Trademark Office published Apple’s application for its own patent for a digital marketplace. Apple’s application outlines a system for
allowing users to sell or give e-books, music, movies and software to each
other by transferring files rather than reproducing them. Such a system would permit only one user to
have a copy at any one time. Meanwhile,
a New York court is poised to rule on whether a start-up that created a way for
people to buy and sell iTunes songs is breaking copyright law. A victory for the company would mean that
consumers would not need either Apple’s or Amazon’s exchange to resell their
digital items. Electronic bazaars would
spring up instantly. “The technology to
allow the resale of digital goods is now in place, and it will cause a dramatic
upheaval,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps, a technology
consulting firm. “In the short term,
it’s great for consumers. Over the long
term, however, it could seriously reduce creators’ incentive to create.” Scott Turow, the best-selling novelist and
president of the Authors Guild, sees immediate peril in the prospect of a
secondhand digital thrift shop. “The
resale of e-books would send the price of new books crashing,” he said. “Who would want to be the sucker who buys the
book at full price when a week later everyone else can buy it for a penny?” He acknowledged it would be good for consumers
— “until there were no more authors anymore.” Libraries, though, welcome the possibility of
loosened restrictions on digital material. “The vast majority of e-books are not
available in your public library,” said Brandon Butler, director of public
policy initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries. “That’s pathetic.” He said that 60 percent of what the
association’s 125 members buy was electronic, which meant sharp restrictions on
use. Libraries cannot buy from Apple’s
iTunes, he said. And so, for example,
Pixar’s Oscar-winning soundtrack for the movie “Up” is not available in any
public collection. An Apple spokesman
confirmed this. Sales of digital
material are considered licenses, which give consumers little or no ability to
lend the item. The worry is that without
such constraints digital goods could be infinitely reproduced while still in
the possession of the original owner.
Both the Amazon and Apple systems aim to solve this problem. Amazon’s patent envisions a book or movie or
song being kept in a customer’s personalized “data store.” When an item is no longer wanted, the user
could sell or trade it to another user, an action that would automatically
delete the item from the first user’s store.
The patent describes what is essentially a gigantic swap meet. Amazon’s 152 million active customers would
maintain a list of desired secondhand digital objects (“Django Unchained” or
Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild”), as well as a list of used digital objects that are
“available for movement” (“Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance” or Lance
Armstrong’s autobiography). An Amazon
spokesman declined to comment on the patent, including how soon or even whether
the digital marketplace would be set up. The patent does not make clear if such a
bazaar would need the publishers’ permission.
David Streitfeld http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/technology/revolution-in-the-resale-of-digital-books-and-music.html?hpw&_r=0
