What I Learned Today at Work
by
Collins Library,
One of the reasons I love working in a library is that I learn
something every day.
Aug. 1, 2008
Foxes were introduced to the
July 31, 2008
Muskrats were introduced into
July 25, 2008
The Tables of Toledo (Toledan Tables) were the most accurate
compilation of astronomical/astrological data ever seen in
July 18, 2008
Only an estimated 4 percent of the population is born with red hair
(only 2% in the
July 17, 2008
1.
“Jeanne d’Arc” is a tactical role-playing game developed by
Level-5 and published by Sony for the PlayStation Portable. The narrative makes use of various fantasy elements, and
is loosely based on the story of Joan of Arc and her struggles against the
English occupation of France during the Hundred Years’ War in the early 15th
century.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_d'Arc_(video_game)>.
2. Stratovolcanoes are tall with a steep profile; shield
volcanoes have a wider base and a more gently sloping profile.
3. In the
4. Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no
one apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message. By contrast,
cryptography obscures the meaning of a message, but it does not conceal the
fact that there is a message.
Generally, a steganographic message will appear to be something else: a
picture, an article, a shopping list, or some other message.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography>.
5. A grimoire is a textbook of magic. The word grimoire is from the Old French grammaire, and is from the Greek root “grammatikos”, “relating
to letters”, from which grammar,
a system for language, and glamour,
influential appeal, are derived. In the mid-late Middle Ages, Latin “grammars” (books on
Latin syntax
and diction)
were foundational to school and university education, as controlled by the Church—while
to the illiterate majority, non-ecclesiastical
books were suspect as magic, or believed to be endowed with supernatural
influence.
The word “grimoire” came over time to apply specifically to those books which
did indeed deal with magic and the supernatural.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire>.
July 14, 2008
The Voynich
manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book written in an indecipherable
text. It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520.
The author, script and language of the manuscript remain unknown. The
manuscript has been the object of intense study by cryptographers, all of whom
failed to decrypt a single word. This has turned the manuscript into a famous
subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory
that the book is simply an elaborate hoax—a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript>
July 7, 2008
Roadrunners are a
typo of cuckoo.—Leigh Marian Larson, Osteology
of the California Road-runner, Recent and Pleistocene (Berkeley, Calif.,
University of California Press, 1930).
July 2, 2008
Some examples of birds
using tools: 1) the male satin bowerbird colorfully paints the walls of his
bower after he finds some kind of fibrous material that can be used as a brush
and some kind of color-producing substance (such as cherries or charcoal) that
can be used as paint; 2) in Scandinavia, hooded crows at times catch fish by
pulling up the lines that fishermen leave suspended through holes in the ice of
frozen lakes; and 3) black kites of India are called “fire hawks” because they
have been see picking up smoldering sticks from fires, dropping them on dry
grass, and waiting to catch the small animals that run out of the grass to
avoid the fire.—Theodore Xenophon Barber, The
Human Nature of Birds (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
June 20, 2008
1. Analemma: a figure 8-shaped diagram that shows the declination of the sun for each
day in the year. If you took a snapshot of the sun at the same time each day
and from the same location, it would form this shape.—Go Astronomy glossary page <http://www.go-astronomy.com/glossary/astronomy-glossary-a.htm>
2. Comping (short for accompanying) is a term used in jazz music to describe the
chords, rhythms, and countermelodies that keyboard or guitar players use to
support a jazz musician’s improvised solo or melody lines.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comping> and Daniel Davis, Creative Comping (San Diego, CA: Neil
A. Kjos Music Co., 1995.).
June 16, 2008
Ornithologists
doing taxidermy on birds for specimen cases have a convention of arranging the
right leg crossed over the left for male birds, and left over the right for
females.—Oliver Davie, Nests and Eggs of
North American Birds (Columbus, Ohio: Landon Press, 1898).
Friday, June 13,
2008
The name “Oxfam”
is derived from the name “Oxford Committee for Famine Relief”.—Library of Congress authority record.
June 10, 2008
In 1984, the
Ecclesiastical History Society held a meeting to discuss hermits.—Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition,
edited by W.J. Sheils. (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1985).
June 6, 2008
Some of the
specialized terms used in British coal mining: adit, afterdamp, banksman,
blackdamp, chock, dirt (meaning stone and shale), downcast, upcast, drawing
off, drift, dykes and sills, firedamp, hole out, inbye, outbye, longwall face,
nogs, onsetter, sough (pronounced suff), sprag, stinkdamp, sylvester,
whitedamp, and winder.—Geoffrey Hayes, Coal
Mining (Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 2000).
June 4, 2008
The first Hamlet
on film was Sarah Bernhardt. Probably
the first Hamlet on radio was Eve Donne.
Ever since the late eighteenth century, leading actresses have demanded
the right to play the role.—Tony Howard, Women
as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (
May 30, 2008
The word
“chronos” is about time in a quantitative sense; “kairos” is about time in a
qualitative sense; the quality of a special moment, for example, the occasion for
decision or action, often, divinely ordained; usually translated in English as
“timing”.—random webpages.
May 29, 2008
A “semi-postal”
stamp in one issued to raise money for a charitable cause; they are sold at a
higher sum than their postal value, with the extra sum going to designated
charity.—some random webpage.
May 23, 2008
Minoru Yamasaki,
architect for the World Trade Towers, suffered vertigo, and that was the
motivation for the design of the façade with vertical support beams surrounding
very large, open floors, thus acting as a filter to prevent the sensation of
being right in the sky.—Christian de Portzamparc and Philippe Sollers, Writing and Seeing Architecture
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
May 22, 2008
1. In 1976,
Ceren, a pre-Columbian Mayan settlement, was discovered in
2.
May 21, 2008
Pearl
Sydenstricker Buck had a sister named Grace Sydenstricker Yaukey, who was born
in
May 19, 2008
1. The Galapagos
blue-footed booby is about the size of a goose.
They weigh between 3 and 4 pounds, with the female being larger than the male.
They can live to be more than 17 years old.—some random webpage.
2. “Treenware” is
an old term for small, handcrafted wooden objects (some say it applies only to
kitchen tools).—Library of Congress authority record and
some random webpages.
3. “George Orwell” was a pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950).—some random webpage.
4. The movie “The
Great St. Louis Bank Robbery,” released in 1959, was based on a true incident.
Many of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers and bank employees play
themselves doing what they actually did during the robbery in 1954. —OCLC
cataloging record.
5. Man Ray’s real
name was Emmanuel Radenski.—Library of Congress
authority record.
May 13, 2008
The roots of
Japanese manga can be traced to satirical graphic stories created by a monk in
the 12th century. The genre gained
popularity following World War II.
Because of the paper shortage, the government opened manga rental shops,
where the public could pay to borrow manga for one day. Manga is extremely widespread in
May 10, 2008
In 1944, Julia
Martinez, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, married a Navajo man. The couple and their children lived on the
May 8, 2008
1. The White
Cliffs of
2. Lists of
winning athletes from the ancient Olympiads were compiled in Olympic victor
lists. The first known list was from Hippias of Elis around 400 BCE. By the
Roman period, Olympic victor lists covered more than 200 Olympiads and listed
over 2,000 athletes. The lists are helpful for outlining Greek history, because
they often included references to political or other events. The current
assumption that the first Olympic games were held in 776 BCE may be wrong;
there appear to have been games held before that.—Paul Christensen, Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek
History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
May 7, 2008
The Viceroy
butterfly mimics the coloring of the Monarch butterfly, and this helps it
survive because, though the Viceroy is not poisonous to predators, the Monarch
is.—Alicia Arrizón, Queering Mestizaje:
Transculturation and Performance (
May 5, 2008
1. When the Khmer
Rouge came to power in
2. Almost two million Cambodians were killed or died of
famine under the Khmer Rouge.—S21, the Khmer
Rouge Killing Machine (2002)
3. Khmer is the official language of
May 2, 2008
Though there is
an anticipated need for 2 million new teachers in the next few years (due to
retirements and career changes of current teachers), the attrition rate of new
teachers is very high. Within the first
five years, about 1/2 of the new teachers leave the profession, with 17%
leaving after one year, rising to a total of 30% of them after 2 years, and 40%
after three years.—Donna Niday and Jean Boreen, Mentoring: Guiding, Coaching, and Sustaining Beginning Teachers
(Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers, 2003).
Apr. 28, 2008
1. In the fishing
business, in some cases, the “bykill”—animals killed while trying to catch
others—greatly exceeds the target catch. Four pounds of bykill is discarded for
every pound of shrimp caught by
2. Spring tides
occur at the new moon and full moon, when the gravity of the sun and moon align
to pull the Earth’s oceans into two bulges; neap tides occur at the 1st and 3rd
quarter moon, when the moon and sun are pulling at 90 degree angles, causing
four bulges. The lunar bulge is larger than the solar bulge. Alan P. Trujillo
and Harold V. Thurman, Essentials of
Oceanography (
Apr. 23, 2008
Recent excavations
at Lejre, on the Danish
Apr. 22, 2008
German brothers
Adi and Rudi Dassler launched a successful shoe business in their mother’s
laundry room, but were pulled apart by a feud and split the company into the rivals
Adidas and Puma.—Barbara Smit, Sneaker
Wars (New York: Ecco, 2008).
Apr. 21, 2008
The
Apr. 17, 2008
1. In the 1950s,
when Japanese primatologists offered sweet potatoes to macaque monkeys, to lure
them from the forest to the seashore, where they were easier to observe, one
female, called Imo, started washing the potatoes in a stream, to remove the
soil from them. The new habit spread to the other monkeys. They later started
washing them in the ocean, apparently to add a salty flavor. Imo later solved
another problem: when the primatologists offered the monkeys wheat, it got
mixed with the sand. Imo threw the mixed sand and wheat into the water, where
the heavier sand sunk and the wheat floated, making it easier to eat. The new
habit spread from the children to their mothers. Adult males, who interact much
less with the young, were the last to learn, and some did not learn at all.—Eva
Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in
Four Dimensions (
2. suasion (noun) is the act of persuasion—various webpages.
Apr. 16, 2008
W is the chemical
symbol for tungsten, based on its other name, wolfram.—some random webpage.
Apr. 15, 2008
1. Arboreal frogs
of the family Centrolenidae lay their eggs on the undersides of green leave
above running water. The tadpoles fall into the water after hatching.—Coleman
J. Goin and Olive B. Goin, Introduction to Herpetology (San Francisco: W.H.
Freeman, 1971).
Some of the frogs
of the family Centrolenidae have translucent skin, so their common name is
glass frogs.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrolenidae>.
2. Each week, the
oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan
3. Pancho Villa’s
real name was Doroteo Arango.—Jaime Suchlicki, Mexico: From Montezuma to the Rise of the PAN
(
Apr. 11, 2008
The poisonous and
harmless varieties of coral snakes both have bands of red, black, and yellow,
but they are in a different order. The
harmless coral king snake has bands of red-black-yellow-black-red, while the
poisonous coral snake has bands of red-yellow-black-yellow-red.—Raymond L.
Ditmars, Field Book of North American
Snakes (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, c1939). According to the notes left in the margin by
one reader, “Red touch black is good for Jack; red touch yellow can kill a
fellow.”
Apr. 10, 2008
Grist is grain or
malt that has been, or is to be, ground; the phrase “to bring grist to one’s mill”
means to bring business to one’s hands; to be a source of profit or
advantage.—Oxford English Dictionary.
Apr. 9, 2008
The plural of
shaman is shamans, not shamen, because it is not based on the English word
“man,” but a Russian word derived from a Mongolian term.—Oxford English Dictionary.
Apr. 8, 2008
A modern
restoration team has taken over 30 years—and
expects to work another 10—to reconstruct the
Parthenon—the temple the ancient Greeks built
in less than nine years.—Nova, “Secrets of the
Parthenon” (
Apr. 7, 2008
In the 1960s, the
alternative press reported that one could get high by smoking bananas; they
printed recipes for how to scrape, boil, and bake it. The United Fruit Company responded with
reports from the government and universities that bananas had no dangerous
neuro-chemical qualities.—Peter Chapman, Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped
the World (
Apr. 4, 2008
1) There are only
about 9 miles between Europe and
Apr. 2, 2008
1. Thomas Edison
invented a motion picture camera in 1895, so the Spanish American War of 1898
was the first war the public could see footage of, in motion picture theaters.
Support for the war was created by Edison newsreels, some of which the viewing
audience thought were films of real events, but were reenactments made at a
studio in the
2. Peanut butter
will set off the alarms of the devices that screen bags at airports.—American Libraries
Direct (4/2/2008).
Mar. 28, 2008
Dympna was the
Christian daughter of a pagan Irish king, and had to flee to
Mar. 27, 2008
The name
“Cossack” is a westernized version of the Russian “kazak,” which is derived
from the Turkic “qazaq.” The Cossacks can be divided into several subgroups,
based on their location in
Mar. 26, 2008
“Often, when
human visitors walk up to the chimpanzees at the Yerkes Field Station, an adult
female named
Mar. 19, 2008
Lady Bird
Johnson’s real name was Claudia.—Library of Congress
authority records.
Mar. 7, 2008
The reason
objects we see through electron microscopes look grey is that they are shorter
than the wavelengths of the visible spectrum—they
are too small to reflect color.—Kees Boeke, Cosmic
View: The Universe in 40 Jumps (
Mar. 6, 2008
“Medical
tourism”: Westerners who cannot get affordable health care in their own
countries, going to the developing world for treatment.—Milica Z. Bookman and
Karla R. Bookman, Medical Tourism in
Developing Countries (
Mar. 5, 2008
1. Soren
Kierkegaard published works under several pseudonyms. He wrote that he created
the authors, but those authors created the works, so he hoped that anyone
quoting from those books would attribute the words to those authors, rather
than to him.—Jacob Howland, Kierkegaard
and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith (
2. Both Fort Knox
and
Mar. 4, 2008
The Trial of the
Pyx is conducted annually in the
Feb. 29, 2008
In June 1942, the
Japanese captured Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, the first invasion of
Feb. 26, 2008
There are people with
the family name “Batman.”—Library of Congress
authority records.
Feb. 22, 2008
The
Feb. 19, 2008
1. Uranium is one
of the heaviest elements on Earth, almost twice as heavy as lead, and two
pounds of it amount to about three tablespoonfuls. The bomb that was dropped
over Hiroshima carried 133 pounds of uranium, but only one millisecond of
fission reactions, exploiting only two pounds of that uranium, was sufficient
to release energy equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT, temperatures higher than
the sun’s, and light-speed pulses of lethal radiation.—William
Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar (
2. A cane spider
is a light brown spider native to
3. The Japanese
school year run from April to March, with only a short spring break between
years. Translator’s note for Woman on the
Other Shore, by Mitsuyo Kakuta (
Feb. 18, 2008
1. During his
life, Copernicus was known as a professional administrator, an economist, a
paragon of humanist leaning, and above, all a skilled doctor. Most of those
acquainted with him had only sketchy notions of his deep commitment to the
science of the heavens and an even dimmer grasp, if any, of his radiant
cosmological idea. Copernicus was an amateur astronomer. He was never paid for
his science nor granted any patronage to help him pursue it. Not once since his
student days, did he deliver any lecture on celestial mechanics or mathematics
in any academy or university.—Dennis Danielson, The First Copernican (
2. The Japanese
city of
3. French
Canadian flight attendant Gaetan Dugas was dubbed “Patient Zero,” and blamed
for the start of the AIDS epidemic, but the long latency of the HIV makes it
impossible to determine whether he was the index case who brought the virus to
the U.S.—Priscilla Wald, Contagious:
Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2008)
Feb. 13, 2008
In fencing, forte is the thick, strong base of the
blade; foible is the top of the
blade, the thinnest part.—Fencing 101 website <www.whatisfencing.com/>
Feb. 12, 2008
1. Flowers sold
in
2. “Fiasco” is the
Italian name for the straw basket around a Chianti bottle.—Il Fiasco restaurant
website <http://www.ilfiasco.com/>.
Feb. 11, 2008
There is a
history of astronomical phenomenon being discovered by military or intelligence
systems. Classified military capabilities detected evidence of radio waves from
space at about the same time as Jansky made the first map of the radio sky. A British radar used to detect incoming V-2 missiles during
World War II picked up radio noises from celestial sources, but this
information was kept confidential until after the war. X-ray-emitting objects
were found first by military systems; the information was kept secret until it
could be released without endangering security. Gamma-ray bursters, among the
most energetic of phenomena in the universe, were discovered first by military
satellites designed for a completely different purpose.—Michael A.G. Michaud, Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and
Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials (
Feb. 6, 2008
1. Stem cells
have the capacity to self-renew as well as the ability to generate
differentiated cells; hence the name: many cells can stem from them. “Embryonic
stem cells” come from embryos developed from eggs that have been fertilized in
vitro. “Embryonic germ stem cells” are collected from the fetus later in
development. “Somatic stem cells” are from adults; they help maintain and
repair the tissues in a mature organ. For example, blood cells have only a
120-day lifespan; stem cells create new cells to replace them.—Evelyn B. Kelly,
Stem Cells (
2. Male rats will
travel several kilometers to find female rats and mate.—Randy J. Nelson, An
Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology (
Feb. 5, 2008
The social rules
that govern the appearance of widows vary within the different regional,
ethnic, and religious communities of
Feb. 4, 2008
The “Sputnik” name
was used on a series of rockets. The first was launched Oct. 1957, and the
fourth (the last one), Apr. 1958.
Sputnik 3 carried the dog Laika.—Sputnik
Declassified (broadcast on Nova, 2008; DVD from WGBH Boston Video, 2008).
A
piece of Sputnik 4 crashed into a street in
Feb. 1, 2008
1) The
Jan. 30, 2008
1) Domestic horse
foals and semi-feral donkeys have been observed to play “king of the mountain,”
usually at the end of a play bout: one or more playmates will attain and hold
position at the peak of a small mound. 2) When horses stand and press their
faces against a vertical surface (such as the wall of a stall), it indicates a
central nervous system disease.—Sue McDonnell,
The Equid Ethogram: A Practical Field Guide to
Horse Behavior (
Jan. 29, 2008
Oology
is the branch of zoology that deal with the study of eggs, especially birds’
eggs.—Wikipedia <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oologist>
Jan. 29, 2008
There
are two English ballads known
as The
Ballad of Chevy Chase, but the nature of ballads means that there may
well have been many more versions of this once popular song. The ballads tell
the story of a large hunting party ("chase") in the
Jan. 28, 2008
Animal
signals are more or less reliable messages.
Some apparent exceptions to honest signaling among animals have involved
false badges of status (typically, small splotches of coloration on birds),
bluffing during encounters over resource ownership and social rank, individuals
misrepresenting the benefits they can offer to potential mates, withholding
information, and providing false information.—Michael D.
Jan. 25, 2008
During
the German occupation of France in World War II, a French laborer who did not
speak German said he needed only four words to communicate with them:
Kartoffel, Arbeit, Geld, and verboten (potato, work, money, and
forbidden).—Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (
Jan. 23, 2008
1. In
1996, the original name Mumbai was restored as the name for
2.
The question is not “is there life on other planets?”—there probably is—but is
there life which has sense organs similar to ours (that would therefore
communicate in a similar way), and an intelligence comparable to ours, with a
civilization that lasts long enough to develop electronic communication?
Consider that life originated on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, the hominid
lineage developed about 300 million years after that, and high intelligence
developed less than 300,000 years ago. Out of all the millions of branches of
evolutionary lineage, only one developed our intelligence. Of the twenty great
civilizations that rose and fell, few have lasted as long as 1,000 years—and if aliens
were like us, why would their civilization be more stable? Only since 1900 have we have the equipment to
detect electronic signals. The chance that an alien civilization broadcast
greetings at a time when we can understand their message is improbable to an
astronomical degree.—Ernst Mayr, What Make
Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (
3. Catholic
priest and author Henri J.M. Nouwen was inspired by the trapeze artists the
Flying Rodleighs, and the metaphor one of them gave
him, in describing the special relationship between the daredevil flyer, who
lets go of the trapeze, and the catcher who plucks him from the air: “The flyer
must never catch the catcher. He must wait in absolute trust.”— Henri J.M.
Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year (New York:
Crossroads Publishing, 1998).
Jan. 22, 2008
1) Peoples who
were born deaf develop better peripheral vision that people who can hear. 2)
Most people have to start learning a second language by the age 4 to develop a
native accent, and by the age 6 to have a native’s grasp of grammar.—Human
Brain Development: Nature and Nuture (
Jan.
14, 2008
1.
The Jewish Kingdom of Khazaria was located in an
ancient region of southeastern
2.
The first vertebrate mating in space were Medaka fish
on the space shuttle
3. Desert iguanas
change color to regulate their temperature. When they emerge in the morning,
they are dark, by the time they have reached activity temperature, they turned
light.—f. Harvey Pough,
et al., Vertebrate Life, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1996).
Jan.
8, 2008
In
World War I, to encourage public support for war, the English published accounts
of German atrocities such as killing Belgian babies, raping nuns, and running a
factory that converted human bodies to useful products. After the war, it was
shown that these stories were false. During World War II, when the news came
that Nazis were perpetrating atrocities against the Jews, it was dismissed as
more propaganda.—“Propaganda,”
Culture Fix (BBC, 2000).
Jan.
7, 2008
1.
Captain James Cook’s first round-the-world voyage (from Plymouth, England,
around Cape Horn, South America, across the south Pacific, around the tip of
South Africa, and back to England) lasted from Aug. 1768 to July 1771.—John Gascoigne,
Captain Cook: Voyager between Worlds (London: Hambledon
Continuum, 2007).
2. Balzebub (Baal-zebub, or other
variants) was the name of a Philistine god worshipped at Ekron.
The name has been translated “Lord of the Flies”—Bibletext website
<http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/beelzebu.htm>.
3. Indian rupees
in amounts over 100,000 are counted in lakh, lacs, and crore. 1 lakh = 100,000 rupees. 10 lakh =
1 lacs = 1,000,000. 100 lakh
= 10 lacs = 1 crore =
10,000,000.—eBearing website <http://www.ebearing.com/rupees-explained.htm>.
Jan.
3, 2008
1. A)
Like a heart, the Sun pulsates. There is a gradual buildup in strength and then
weakening of the giant magnetic bubble that emanates from within the Sun and
surrounds all of the planets. Each of these magnetic heartbeats takes about
eleven years to complete. B)
When a large solar flare is observed, planes are rerouted or ordered to fly at
lower elevations to minimize their passengers’ exposure to radiation. Light
from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth, but particles from a solar
flare might take eighteen to forty-eight hours to arrive.—Stuart Clark, The
Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How
Modern Astronomy Began (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
2.
“To scotch the snake” is an expression meaning to render powerless, disarm, disable,
or incapacitate.—Webster’s
Online Dictionary.
Jan.
2, 2008
1. QALY: A
quality-adjusted life year; a unit used, esp. in cost-benefit analysis, in the
prediction of both quality and duration of life after medical or surgical
treatment.—
2. The Prosopography of the
Dec.
21, 2007
Journalist
David Brooks says people who are in business are 2-1 Republicans; accountants,
2-1 Republicans; academics, 11-1 Democrats; actors, 18-1 Democrats;
journalists, 93-1 Democrats; librarians 223-1 Democrats.—Arches
[University of Puget Sound alumni magazine] (Winter 2008).
Dec.
18, 2007
1.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was able to skip 9th and 12th grades and entered
college at age 15. He was ordained a minister at age 18, and received his Ph.D.
at age 26.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical
Perspective, documentary film written and directed by Thomas Friedman (
2. A
“global economics paper” published by Goldman Sachs in 2003, commonly called
“the BRIC report,” predicted, based on demographic changes, that Brazil,
Russia, India and China (BRIC) will become leading forces in the world economy
in the early 21st century.—Get 1.1 Billion’s Attention (Films for the
Humanities & Sciences, 2007)
3. In
2004, workers in the U.S. sent $17 billion to their families in Mexico, an
amount more than Mexico makes in tourism, an amount second only to oil as a
source of income for that country.—Letters from the Other Side, written and
directed by Heather Courtney (Front Porch Films, 2006).
Dec.
17, 2007
1. In
1700, an earthquake in the Pacific Northwest triggered a tsunami that hit
2. In a cloze
test, certain words are removed from a text, and the participant is asked to
supply the missing words. The test assesses the participant
‘s understanding of context and knowledge of vocabulary. The word cloze
is derived from closure in Gestalt theory. The test was first described by W.L.
Taylor in 1953.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test>.
Dec.
13, 2007
Following
the September 11, 2001, attack, the
Dec.
10, 2007
1. The
Greeks had no single term to express what we mean by the word “life.” They used
two terms that are semantically and morphological distinct: zoe,
which expressed the simple fact of living common to all being (animals, men,
and gods) and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an
individual or group.—Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign
Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).
2.
The Inquisition had its origins in
Nov.
30, 2007
1.
Charles Berlitz, of language school fame, wrote
several books on odd phenomenon and pop culture “mysteries” such as the Bermuda
Triangle and the Roswell incident.—Library of Congress authority records.
2.
Fred Gwynne, the actor, also wrote children’s books (A Chocolate Moose for
Dinner). He died in 1993.—Library of Congress authority record.
Nov.
26, 2007
The
two-color Technicolor movie camera used to film Redskins in 1929 captured red
and green color records on separate frames, thus each shot required twice the
length of negative as a black-and-white film.—Treasures III: Social Issues
in American Film: Program Notes (San Francisco, Calif.: National Film
Preservation Foundation, 2007).
Nov.
21, 2007
1.
The bombing of the Basque town of Gernika in 1937, by
the German Luftwaffe, was the first time in modern warfare that a target was
destroyed solely for symbolic reasons and a civilian population attacked from
the air.—Russell Martin, Picasso’s War: The Destruction of
Guernica, and the Masterpiece that Changed the World (New York: Plume,
2002).
2. Henry Morton
Stanley was born in poverty in North Wales, raised in a workhouse, emigrated to
3. Einstein wrote
in 1955, “For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past,
present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious this illusion may
be.”—Jürgen Neffe, Einstein:
A Biography (
Nov.
20, 2007
1.
The current theory is that most Ice Age “cave art” was produced in the open,
but simply hasn’t survived weathering, and thus the sheltered art inside caves
is what we know today, but hundreds of figures from that same era, pecked into
rocks, have been found at a dozen sites in Spain, Portugal and France.—Colin Renfrew
and Paul Bahn, Archaeology Essentials (New
York: Thames & Hudson, 2007).
2. A)
Most visitors to the
Nov.
19, 2007
1. A
legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority (and the corresponding
duty) to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called
a ward. A guardian appointed to represent the interests of a person with
respect to a single action in litigation is a guardian ad litem.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_guardian>
2.
Hippotherapy (riding on horses, under the supervision of therapists) can be
helpful to people with a range of diagnoses, including cerebral palsy,
traumatic brain injury, and autism. The rider’s response to the rhythmic gait
of the horse can help improve balance, posture, mobility, and function, and the
natural setting can be a very enjoyable learning experience.—American
Hippotherapy Association website
<http://www.americanequestrian.com/hippotherapy.htm>.
Nov.
15, 2007
1. In
our attempt to understand nature, we see a very complicated system. Francis
Crick faced a complicated system when viewing the constituents of living cells.
He suggests in his book What Mad Pursuit that one should first characterize all
the parts of the system and then understand their geometric relationships. He
then suggests one must study the system as a whole to understand how it behaves
when various parts are perturbed.—David D. Pollard and Raymond C. Fletcher, Fundamentals
of Structural Geology (
2.
From the author’s preface: “After preparing the volume of Geological Rese
Nov.
14, 2007