Quote of the day

Quote for November 30, 2006

A man has made at least a start
on discovering the meaning of human life
when he plants trees
under which he knows full well
he will never sit.
~ D. Elton Trueblood

Word of the day- galvanic

Word of the Day for Thursday, November 30, 2006

 galvanic \gal-VAN-ik\, adjective: 

1. Of, pertaining to, or producing a direct current of electricity, especially when produced chemically.

2. Affecting or affected as if by an electric shock; startling; shocking.

3. Stimulating; energizing.  

Reading the epic known to us as the Iliad is vastly different from the preliterate experience of hearing and seeing it performed. In place of the bard’s galvanic flow of sound and image, the reader beholds a mute tome, the size of longish novel.– Michael E. Hobart and Zachary S. Schiffman, Information AgesHemingway’s letters, which often seem to have been dashed off at the end of the day, display little of the galvanic style that animated his early (and finest) fiction.– Michiko Kakutani, “Tone It Down, He Urged Hemingway”, New York Times, November 19, 1996What was special — and at the time, galvanic — about his early writing was its precision and concision.– Michiko Kakutani, “The Hunter Returns, Weary but Still Macho”, New York Times, June 22, 1999Galvanic is derived from Luigi Galvani, a professor of physiology at Bologna, whose experiments established the presence of bioelectric forces in animal tissue. 

The reaction of Brazilians to our movie called “Turistas, Go Home”

A movie called Turistas, Go Home will be in theaters on Friday. It is about some tourists who go to Brazil to have a good time at the beach, etc. They are assaulted, kidnapped, etc, etc.

Just because this movie happens to take place in Brazil, some Brazilians are outraged. They think that this movie puts their country in a bad light. I saw this in a blog post in Portuguese. It basically says that Americans think that Brazil is nothing more than Carnival, soccer, the Amazon, beaches, and crime such as kidnapping.

The Brazilians are worried that this puts their precious country in a bad light. There was another controversy of this sort several years ago. There was a Simpsons episode where the Simpsons went to Brazil and it showed the general sterotypes of Brazil, but as a parody. The Brazilians were worried that this would hurt tourism. They forgot that the Simpsons make fun of everything, especially cities and famous people in the USA. If they had an episode making fun of say, Charleston, SC, I would not be complaining. I would be laughing.

 My thoughts are, Brazil, please! Chill out guys. These are works of fiction and not documentaries. I don’t plan on seeing this movie, but I can assure you that there have been movies about similar stories and situations, right here in the United States. If this movie took place in Virginia Beach, would the people from Virginia Beach be complaining? No, they would be happy that their city was in a movie, and it would probably boost tourism. The only thing this movie can do is boost tourism in Brazil after people see the wonderful, beautiful places in Brazil.

New Update

I want everyone to know that I have no interest in seeing this movie, and I wanted to share this NY Times article.

Today’s picks from Wikipedia

Jaws is a 1975 horror–thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg,
   based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel of the same name.  The
   novel was inspired by the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916.  In the
   film, the police chief of Amity Island, a summer resort town, tries to
   protect beachgoers from the predations of a huge great white shark by
   closing the beach, only to be overruled by the money-grubbing town
   council.  After several attacks, the police chief proceeds to enlist
   the help of a marine biologist and later a professional shark hunter
   to kill the shark.  The film stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin
   Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw
   as the shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody’s wife Ellen, and
   Murray Hamilton as the greedy Mayor Vaughn.  Jaws is regarded as a
   watershed film in motion picture history, as it is the father of the
   summer blockbuster movie.

Read the rest of this article:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaws_%28film%29

_______________________________
Today’s selected anniversaries:

1777:
   San José de Guadalupe, the first town in the Spanish colony of
   California, was founded.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%2C_California)

1854:
   The Eureka Flag was flown for the first time during the Eureka
   Stockade rebellion in Australia.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Flag)

1877:
   Thomas Edison demonstrated the phonograph, his invention for recording
   and replaying sound, for the first time.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph)

1890:
   The Diet of Japan, modelled after the German Reichstag, first met,
   when the Meiji Constitution went into effect in Japan.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of_Japan)

1947:
   The United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Partition
   Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the
   British Mandate of Palestine.
   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan)

_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:

   The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your
   own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all
   costs.  There’s not one of them which won’t make us into devils if we
   set it up as an absolute guide.  You might think love of humanity in
   general was safe, but it isn’t.  If you leave out justice you’ll find
   yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials “for the
   sake of humanity” and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.
   — C.S. Lewis
   (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C.S._Lewis)

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws

Murphy’s Lesser-Known Laws:

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

3. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

4. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

5. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

6. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

7. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.

8. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

9. The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.

10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

11. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

12. The shinbone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

13. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

14. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Things everyone should know

1. Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.

2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana)
paper.

3. The dot over the letter I is called a “tittle.”

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounceup and
down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.

6. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

7. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

8. The ’spot’ on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was
albino.

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily.

10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.

11. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces
will kill a small sized dog.

12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into theshark’s
stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).

14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear
pants.

15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

16. Upper and lower case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’because
in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters,
the upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top of the case that
stored the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters.

17. Leonardo DaVinci could write with one hand and draw with the other
at the same time. (Hence, multitasking was invented)

18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II
were made of wood.

19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never
a recorded Wendy before!

21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange,
Purple, and silver!

22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to
paint Mona Lisa’s lips.

23 A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad
and sting itself to death.

24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween”was a
Captain Kirk’s mask painted white.

25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have
$1.19 , you also have the largest amount of money in coins without
being able to make change for a dollar (good toknow).

26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink
in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless).

27. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law,
which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than
your thumb.

28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player
for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was
the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece
of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with
apples!

30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!

31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being theBook most
often stolen from Public Libraries.

33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space
because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

34. George Carlin said it best about Martha Stewart .. “Boy, I feel a
Lot safer now that she’s behind bars. O. J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are
still walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, butthey take the ONE woman
in America willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and they haul
her off to jail.”
How about that?!!!!!!

Word of the day- redact

Word of the Day for Tuesday, November 28, 2006  

redact \rih-DAKT\, transitive verb: 

1. To draw up or frame (a statement, proclamation, etc.); to put in writing.

2. To make ready and put in shape for publication; to edit.  The authors have obtained a copy of this memo, albeit redacted.– John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne, Tainting EvidenceWhite sat down to write or re-write or redact whatever one does to a twenty-year accumulation of episodes.– Gerald Weales, “The Designs of E. B. White”, New York Times, May 24, 1970

Redact derives from Latin redactus, past participle of redigere, to drive back, from re-, red-, “again, back” + agere, “to put in motion, to drive.”

 (in the legal field, to redact also means to occlude a portion of text. If you have some text that is privileged between the attorney and the client, it can be redacted before the document is made public)  

Word of the day-equivocate

Word of the Day for Monday, November 27, 2006 equivocate \ih-KWIV-uh-kayt\, intransitive verb:To be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or to avoid committing oneself to anything definite. The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to misunderstand the questions.– Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of EnglandBy equivocating, hesitating, and giving ambiguous answers, she effected her purpose.– Harriet Martineau, Letters from IrelandDr. Lindzen does not equivocate. “We don’t have any evidence that this is a serious problem,” he says flatly.– William K. Stevens, “Skeptic Asks, Is It Really Warmer?”, New York Times, June 17, 1996  

 

 

To equivocate is literally to call equally one thing or the other: It comes from Medieval Latin aequivocare, from the Latin aequus, equal + vocare, to call (from Latin vox, voice). 

Quote of the day

Quote for Tuesday, November 21, 2006

What is a minority?
The chosen heroes of this earth
have been in a minority.
There is not a social, political,
or religious privilege
that you enjoy today
that was not bought for you
by the blood and tears and patient suffering
of the minority.
It is the minority
that have stood in the van of every moral conflict,
and achieved all that is noble
in the history of the world.
~ John Bartholomew Gough

Word of the day- subaltern

Word of the Day for Tuesday, November 21, 2006

subaltern \suhb-OL-tuhrn; SUHB-uhl-tuhrn\, adjective: 1. Ranked or ranged below; subordinate; inferior. 2. (Chiefly British) Ranking as a junior officer; being below the rank of captain. 3. (Logic) Asserting only a part of what is asserted in a related proposition. 4. A person holding a subordinate position. 5. (Chiefly British) A commissioned military officer below the rank of captain. 6. (Logic) A subaltern proposition.

Both the old and new elites, not the subaltern underclass of workers and peasants, superimposed the fever chart of the Russian Revolution on what they assumed to have been the fever chart of the French Revolution with a view to determining the degree to which the temperature curves of the two revolutions diverged from each other. – Arno J. Mayer, The Furies The letters are never those of a groveling subaltern to his superior; they are rather like advisories from one soldier to another. – Christina Vella, Intimate Enemies One of their officers, a subaltern, observed to me that his soldiers were infants that required constant attendance. – Paul Leicester Ford, “Dr. Rush and General Washington”, The Atlantic, May 1895

Subaltern derives from Late Latin subalternus, “subordinate,” from Latin sub-, “under” + Latin alternus, “alternate,” from alter, “other.”Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for subaltern