the daily dose

archived doses

 

Who's Your Dada, last time I'm asking

The French painter Marcel Duchamp exhibited as works of art ordinary commercial products-such as a store-bought bottle rack (image besides), which he called ready-mades. Although the Dadaists employed revolutionary techniques, their revolt against standards was based on a profound belief, stemming from the romantic tradition, in the essential goodness of humanity when uncorrupted by society.

Dada as a movement declined in the 1920s, and some of its practitioners became prominent in other modern-art movements, notably surrealism.

from the fine site

Who's Your Dada, pt.3

In their efforts to express the negation of all current aesthetic and social values, the Dadaists frequently used artistic and literary methods that were deliberately incomprehensible. Their theatrical performances and manifestos were often designed to shock or bewilder, with the aim of startling the public into a reconsideration of accepted aesthetic values.

To this end, the Dadaists used novel materials, including discarded objects found in the streets, and new methods, such as allowing chance to determine the elements of their works. The German painter and writer Kurt Schwitters was noted for his collages composed of waste paper and similar materials.

from the fine site

Who's Your Dada, pt.2

"Dada" is an artistic and literary movement reflecting a widespread nihilistic protest against all aspects of Western culture, especially against militarism during and after World War I (1914-1918). Dada was originated in 1916 by Romanian-born poet, essayist, and editor Tristan Tzara, the German writer Hugo Ball, the Alsatian-born artist Jean Arp, and other intellectuals living in Zurich, Switzerland.

A similar revolt against conventional art occurred simultaneously in New York City led by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Picabia, and in Paris, where it became the inspiration for the Surrealist movement. After World War I the movement spread to Germany, and many of the Zurich group joined French Dadaists in Paris.

from the fine site

First Flight

The flight lasted only 12 seconds, but it went down in history. In 1903, Orville Wright flew a distance of 120 feet while 10 feet in the air.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle mechanics who went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to test Flyer I-the first airplane.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

Beginning of Dadism

Dadaism began in 1916 in Zurich and was a direct result of revulsion and rebellion against the horrors of World War I.

The Rumanian Tristan Tzara and other young intellectuals organized and wrote a manifest in which Tzara claimed he was against manifestos.

A similar revolt against conventional art occurred simultaneously in New York City led by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Francis Picabia, and in Paris, where it became the inspiration for the Surrealist movement.

In their efforts to express the negation of all current aesthetic and social values, the Dadaists frequently used artistic and literary methods that were deliberately incomprehensible. Dada art ranged from nonsense poetry to physical attacks on traditional art.

from the fine site

Meiji Restoration

Meiji became emperor of Japan in 1867 at the age of 15. He took power from the Tokugawa shogunate, a dictatorship that had controlled Japan for 700 years. In 1868, a revolution occurred, called the Meiji Restoration. A new constitution was adopted and Japan emerged as a modern industrial state.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

Who's your Dada?

There are two theories about the origin of the word "Dada."

First: It's derived from conversations with the Rumanian artists Tzara and Janco, who often used the words "da, da" (yes, yes).

Second: It came into being, when the artists Hugo Ball and Richard Huelsenbeck seeked [sic] a name for their movement, during a meeting held in 1916 at Hugo Ball's Cabaret (Cafe) Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland. They arbitrarily pointed with a knife at the term Dada in a German-French Dictionary. Dada is the French word for hobby-horse.

from the fine site

Paris by Daguerre

The first photograph of Paris was taken by Frenchman Louis Daguerre, who developed the photographic process.

In 1839, the French government announces a new invention calle the daguerreotype—an image produced through a lens onto a silver-coated copper plate.

Daguerre, a scene painter and physicist, was also the inventor of the diorama—a pictorial view seen with changing light.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

impasto

impasto \Im*pas"to\, n. -It. [See Impaste.] [Paint.]

1. The application of thick layers of pigment to a canvas or other surface in painting.

2. The paint so applied.

3. The thickness of the layer or body of pigment applied by the painter to his canvas with especial reference to the juxtaposition of different colors and tints in forming a harmonious whole. --Fairholt.

4. Painting that applies the pigment thickly so that brush or palette knife marks are visible.

Niccoló Paganini

Italian violin master Niccoló Paganini died in 1840. An eccentric man, Paganini was known to stop in the middle of a concert and cut three or four strings on his instrument, then go play brilliantly. He extended the violin's diversity by developing harmonics, the use of double and triple stops, and reviving scordatura—diverse tuning of strings.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

By and For the People

It was decided in 1911 that the people of the United States would begin electing senators. Previously, senators had been chosen by each state's legislature. This change made government even more "by the people, for the people."

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

Color of Racing

References are often made, in Road & Track, to the "red" cars from Ferrari or Maserati, the "green" cars from Vanwall, Aston Martin or Jaguar and the "white" or "silver" cars from Mercedes-Benz.

These are not arbitrary colors picked by each constructor for his cars (except in the case of strictly national, local or club competition, where anything goes), but are the result of a decision reached in the early days of racing. Cars were, and still are, distinguishable by assigned numbers, but further separation (prompted no doubt by nationalistic feelings) was felt desirable.

This is why racing cars from Italy are red, the cars from England are green and the cars from Germany are white (or sometimes silver-the result of leaving the aluminum body unpainted).

from a 1960 Road & Track found on Miata.net

Im Anfang war die Tät

Im Anfang war die Tät. In the beginning was the deed. This is the first line of Goethe's Faust and arguably the most famous words in the German language.

The opening lines of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word" are inverted in a penstroke.

The whole Christian tradition is turned on its head. We do not originate in the benediction of an incarnated word, but in the hazard of an unmediated act.

from Pitchfork Media

Bhutan Claims

Thimpu, Bhutan is the only world capital with no traffic lights.

from Ed

A Clan of Stans : Kyrgyzstan

In Old Turkic, kyrg means "40" and yz means "tribes," so the word means "40 tribes." The Kyrgyz may have lived in a part of Central Siberia and begun speaking a Turkic language by about the 9th century.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Turkmenistan

In Turkic, turk refers to the Turks, an ancient people from that region. The word men means "I" or "me." So Turkmen means "I am a Turk." The Turkmen were originally nomadic tribes, known as the Oghuz, who came from what is now Mongolia and southern Syria.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Tajikistan

In Persian, Taj means "crown" and ik means "head," so tajik means "a person who wears a crown on his head." Tajiks are originally Iranian. (There are many Tajiks living in Uzbekistan. The 3 million Tajiks living in Afghanistan speak a dialect of Persian known as Dari.)

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Afghanistan

Versions of the word Afghan go back as far as the 3rd century AD. Afgan may come from an 8th or 9th century Iraninan emperor named Apakan. Tribes related to modern Afghans have been living in the region for many generations. Afghanistan was a monarchy from 1747 to 1973.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Pakistan

This name was made up in the 1930s when India's Muslims were trying to break away and form their own country. (They succeeded in 1947.) P-A-K is an acronym for some of the regions the people claimed as part of their homeland: Punjab, Afghania and Kashmir. The country's founders also chose pak because it means pure, in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. So Pakistan means "the land of the spiritually pure." Kazakh is an Old Turkic word meaning "somebody who is independent and free."

(The word traveled to Russia, where it was taken by the people who came to be known as Cossacks.)

The Kazakhs are a mix of Turkic and Mongol tribes who migrated to the region in the 13th century.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Kazakhstan

Kazakh is an Old Turkic word meaning "somebody who is independent and free." (The word traveled to Russia, where it was taken by the people who came to be known as Cossacks.) The Kazakhs are a mix of Turkic and Mongol tribes who migrated to the region in the 13th century.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Uzbekistan

Uzbek probably comes from two Turkic words: öz, which means "genuine" and bek, which means man. So, the word means "genuine man."

The Uzbeks are a mingling of ancient Iranian populations with nomadic Mongol or Turkic tribes that invaded the region between the 11th and 15th centuries.

(Another possible explanation: the name refers to Öz Beg, a powerful Mongol khan, or king.)

from the Washington 'kids' Post

A Clan of Stans : Intro

What's the deal with all the 'stan countries in Central Asia?

"Istan" is Persian for "place of." Many Central Asian towns and villages, as well as countries, have names ending with "istan."

Where do the beginnings of these country names come from? Some are Turkic, the main group of languages spoken in that area. Others are Persian (also known as Farsi), the main language spoken in Iran.

from the Washington 'kids' Post

Aircraft Carriers

Most of the US aircraft carriers have well known names. Some are not as well known. Here is a quick list:

John C. Stennis was a Senator from Mississippi for nearly 42 years, the second-longest tenure in U.S. history. Lots of stuff is named after him.

Carl Vinson was a long serving senator from Georgia (over 50 years -- sworn in January 1914 at age 30, the youngest senator at the time). He was very influential in modernizing the Armed Services.

Chester Nimitz was the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II. Nimitz is also a class a carriers.

Enterprise is the 8th US ship to bear that name. The first USS Enterprise, a British supply sloop, was captured in May 1775 at St. Johns, Quebec, Canada, by Colonel B. Arnold and armed for use on Lake Champlain.

Kitty Hawk is the second ship named after the town where the Wright Brothers flew their historic flight.

Constellation was the name of the first ship (a three-masted U.S. Frigate) to be commissioned in the United States Navy, the first to put to sea and the first to engage, defeat and capture an enemy vessel. This ship is now a National Historic Landmark on display in Baltimore, MD.

Not to slight the rest, with better known namesakes:

Pennsylvania (to be decommissioned), John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan (being built)

This ideogram is from the French hobo or gypsy sign system. It means here live scared people.

There are synonyms, graphically quite similar, in all the four researched hobo systems.

straight outta symbols.com

Hosed

The sense of "to hose" meaning "foul up to the point of complete non-functionality" is fairly new and largely confined to the computer field, where fumble-fingered consumers can wreak a special kind of havoc. Almost any machine can be broken, of course, and we've invented many colorful terms to sum up the damage. You can "blow" or "fry" electronic equipment, and "total" a car, for instance. But "hose" carries overtones of utter collapse and hopelessness that perfectly match the impossibly complex but absurdly fragile nature of computer systems.

That apocalyptic flavor of "hose" is appropriate, since it owes its origins to one of mankind's least subtle inventions, the machine gun. "To hose," military slang since World War I, means to saturate a target with sustained machine gun or other high-powered fire, washing over it with bullets or shells as if with a powerful fire hose. The result, of course, is a smoking, bullet riddled ruin. Or, in the case of a "hosed" computer, a very large and expensive beige paperweight.

from the Word Detective

The Time Machine

In H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, the human race of the future has split into two distinct species: the weak, surface dwelling Eloi and the large-eyed, nocturnal Morlocks. The Time Traveler assumes that the Morlocks are the descendants of the working class, due to the large amount of machinery under the Eloi's city. That machinery is in place to perpetuate the easy life that the Eloi have apparently enjoyed for generations.

The Eloi are then the descendants of the leisure class, seemingly existing in simple luxury thanks to the efforts of the Morlocks. Only on a visit into the depths below the Eloi city does the Time Traveler realize the horrible truth to the simple balance between the Eloi and Morlocks.

kakistocracy

Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

Frédéric Fraçois Chopin

Franco-Polish composer Frédéric Fraçois Chopin established the piano as a solo instrument without need for choral or orchestral accompaniment. His 1833 Concerto in E  Minor demonstrated how the piano could dominate an orchestra. Chopin's piano expressiveness was unprecedented.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

First Assassination Attempt

The first U.S. Presidential assassination attempt was made 30 January 1835. President Andrew Jackson attended a congressional funeral in the Capitol building. As he exited, Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, pointed a pistol at Jackson and fired. The percussion cap exploded, but the bullet did not discharge. The enraged Jackson raised his cane to throttle his attacker, who fired again from another pistol. A second explosion rang out, but again the gun failed to fire. The sixty seven year old president escaped unharmed. The odds against both guns misfiring was 125,000 to 1.

The thirty two year old would be assassin claimed that Jackson had killed his father three years earlier. He also claimed to be the rightful heir to the British throne and said that Jackson, in a conspiracy with various steamship companies, had prevented him from getting money which would enable him to claim the English crown. Since Lawrence's father had been dead for twelve years and had never visited America, a jury found Lawrence not guilty on grounds of insanity. Jackson was convinced that Lawrence was hired by his political enemies, the Whigs, to stop his plan to destroy the Bank of the United States. Lawrence was hospitalized and died 26 years later at Washington's Government Hospital for the Insane.

The Best Fondue Cheese

The most legendary fondue cheese in the world is a specialty Swiss product called Vacherin a Fondue. When fondue is made with this runny, supple (and terribly expensive) cheese, the cheese dissolves completely in the water before it boils, creating a delicate softness that cannot be matched.

from CheeseNet

Daniel Vierge — The Father of Modern Illustration

Up through the 1870's, magazines and books that reproduced line drawings were engraved on wood, usually by another person. No matter how dense the wood into which the image was cut, the engraver was faced with the physical constraints of the technique and the medium. After all, the amount of wood that was left on the printing surface had to be sufficient to withstand the rigors of multiple impacts of the press - one for each copy printed. An exceedingly fine line could only be created with an exceedingly fine sliver of wood that would be easily destroyed early on in the print run. At some point, the wood collapsed and could no longer convey ink to the paper. Rather than a thin line, there was no line. Every artist had to face these inherent restrictions. There was no such thing as a "fine line pen & ink" drawing in print. In fact, most of the images drawn for reproduction on wood were done in pencil or brush - often right on the wood.

In 1875 methods were developed to transfer images to wood via photography. From here the engraver was able to make a more exact copy of the original work. This art still depended upon the skill of the engraver and the limitations of wood as a medium.

By 1882, Daniel Vierge was fed up with the "interpretations" of the engravers - no matter how talented and well-intentioned. Why, he asked, can't one use the same photographic techniques to reproduce the original drawing onto a metal printing plate instead of onto the engraver's block? With the help of a talented French photo-engraver named Gillot, he did just that. Gillot took a drawing and through photography and some hand-retouching managed to create a metal plate directly from the art. With the etched grooves in the near-impervious metal holding the ink, there were no restrictions on line weight. Vierge was suddenly unfettered.

He could draw twice-up and reduce the image to create lines as fine as the camera could see. He could spot blacks that weren't totally black - but weren't speckled with the cross-hatching the engraver's used to "suggest" almost black. He could draw with his pen and create patterns and textures that were previously impossible. Nothing stood between him and the final image except his own abilities.

from Bud Plant Illustrated Books

Backronym

[portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what linguists call `back formation'. Examples are given under recursive acronym (Cygnus), Acme, and mung. Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare retcon.

from the Jargon file

Armadillos with Leprosy

It was long thought only humans could get leprosy. Then in the late 1960s researchers speculated that armadillos might be a good test bed for leprosy research because (a) M. leprae thrives in cooler parts of the body (feet, nose, ears, etc.); (b) armadillos have a relatively low body temperature as mammals go, 30 to 35 degrees Celsius compared to 37 degrees in humans (98.6 Fahrenheit for you retro types); (c) armadillos live long enough, 12 to 15 years, for this slow-acting disease to emerge; and (d) armadillo litters almost invariably consist of identical quadruplets, which was useful for genetic experiments.

Later the researchers discovered something odd: some armadillos already had leprosy.

from the The Straight Dope

Reading Biorhythms

To demonstrate the folly of using subjective validation to count as support for biorhythm theory, James Randi had George Thommen, president of Biorhythm Computers, Inc., do a biorhythm chart for Randi and his secretary. One of the listeners to Randi's radio program was selected for an experiment. She was to be given her own personal chart and she was to keep a day-by-day diary for two months and to rate her chart for accuracy. She reported that the chart had been "at least ninety percent accurate."

The devious Randi had actually sent her his own chart. He told the subject that he had done this by mistake. She agreed to check her diary with her real chart, which Randi gave her. She reported that the new chart was even more accurate than the other one. Actually, she'd been given Randi's secretary's chart.

This kind of data retrofitting is common among believers in such pseudosciences as astrology, graphology and biorhythms. In fact, similar tests of subjective validation, with identical results, have been done on astrological charts and graphological readings. Randi's deception, of course, was not intended to disprove biorhythms, but to call attention to the problem of subjective validation, something consistently overlooked by devotees of astrology, graphology and biorhythms.

from the Skeptics Dictionary

Absolute Zero

Temperature is a physical quantity which gives us an idea of how hot or cold an object is. The temperature of an object depends on how fast the atoms and molecules which make up the object can shake, or oscillate. As an object is cooled, the oscillations of its atoms and molecules slow down. For example, as water cools, the slowing oscillations of the molecules allow the water to freeze into ice. In all materials, a point is eventually reached at which all oscillations are the slowest they can possibly be. The temperature which corresponds to this point is called absolute zero. Note that the oscillations never come to a complete stop, even at absolute zero.

from Ask Science Theatre

How to Read a Tape Measure

You might have noticed that every 24" on the tape measure are marked with a contrasting black background and every 16" is marked with a red background. The marks are used by construction workers for spacing wood studs in a wall or joists in a floor/roof. 16" spacing is used most commonly for load bearing walls and 24" for non-load bearing walls. The small black diamonds represent a less common spacing scheme.

Virginia Common Law

Virginia Common Law Doctrine states that written disclosure is not required in the settlement of property. The Virginia Residential Property Disclosure Act states that either a Residential Property Disclaimer Statement or a Residential Property Disclosure Statement be furnished to the purchaser. The Residential Property Disclaimer Statement states:

... owner(s) of the real property described above make no representations or warranties as to the condition of the real property or any improvements thereon, the purchaser will be receiving the property “as is”, that is, with all defects which may exist...

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.

Monkey Planet

The Planet of the Apes franchise started with a short story, Monkey Planet, written in 1963 by French author Pierre Boulle--who also wrote Bridge on the River Kwai.

Three plot notes from Monkey Planet:

1. The astronauts crash-land on a different, non-Earth planet.

2. The apes are considerably more evolved than their movie counterparts. The apes in Monkey drive cars, fly in airplanes and live in sprawling cities.

3. Boulle's astronauts are all French. (Well, it is science-fiction.)

Old Bulb

There is a light bulb in Livermore, California that has been burning for over 100 years. After a centennial celebration, a woman came forward with a matching bulb—not used in 100 years.

Closest runners up include a bulb in a New York City hardware store had been working since 1912 and a bulb in a washroom at the Martin & Newby Electrical Shop in Ipswich, England which was dated from 1930 but burned out in January 2001.

Symbols

A very old ideogram for cave, farm, village or fortress. It appears, for instance, in the mysterious mound of Kivik (see ).

It is sometimes found on modern maps to signify caves. When turned to , it becomes very similar to the Greek letter omega.

In the US system of hobo signs means that the house owner is in, whereas means house owner is not at home.

In the form , as the letter omega in the Greek alphabet, it can mean an end, the end (by being the last of the letters of the Greek alphabet) and has been used as a staff of a god.

 

The Egyptians used as a cartouche, that is a hieroglyph surrounding other hieroglyphs. (On some Egyptian grave paintings the sign sometimes occurs as , the Greek sign omega.)

In the Australian designer Bliss' system was used to mean day. Bliss used the same structure, but turned upside down, to denote night.

As a modern military sign it is used to denote an outpost.

from symbols.com

Van Gogh's Self Portraits

Interested in portraiture as a source of income, but unable to afford models while perfecting his skills, Vincent turns to his own image: "I deliberately bought a good mirror so that if I lacked a model I could work from my own likeness." He paints at least 20 self-portraits in Paris. The range of his experiments in style and color can be read in the series. The earliest are executed in the grays and browns of his Brabant period; these somber colors soon give way to yellows, reds, greens, and blues, and his brushwork takes on the disconnected stroke of the Impressionists. To his sister he writes: "My intention is to show that a variety of very different portraits can be made of the same person." One of the last portraits Vincent paints in Paris, Self-Portrait as an Artist, is a dramatic illustration of his personal and artistic identity.

courtesy of the Van Gogh museum

Alexander Calder

Calder also developed "stabiles," static sculptures that suggest volume in multiple flat planes, as well as standing mobiles, in which a mobile is balanced on top of a stabile. Calder furthered his work by developing a monumental scale. His later objects were huge sculptures of arching lines and graceful abstract shapes that now inhabit public plazas worldwide.

Hey Aqualung

Jethro Tull, an English farmer and inventor, designed a seed-sowing machine that could plant seeds in a straight line in 1701. Previously, seeds had been hand-scattered throughout fields, which left a haphazard array of plants. The new planter made weeding and harvesting much easier.

courtesy of my LIFE: Through the Second Millennium calendar

Ba ba ba, ba ballerino

The proper term for a male ballet dancer is not ballerino. You can use "danseur" (meaning "dancer") or simply male ballet dancer, if you don't want to speak French.

Dancing about Architecture

A cool thing to say to a music critic is "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

Problem is, no one seems too sure who said this first. I first heard it attributed to Steve Martin. That's what Laurie Anderson said. In the same vein, she goes on to mention the square dance.

According to this guy's research, it seems that the most likely author is... Elvis Costello.

Passing the Salt

The proper response to this very simple sounding request is to pick up both the salt and the pepper and to place them on the table within reach of the person next to you, who will do the same, and so on, until they reach the person who asked for them. They are not passed hand-to-hand, nor should anyone other than the original requester sprinkle her food when she has the shakers in her possession. The reason for this, as Judith Martin points out more than once, is that American etiquette is not about efficiency. Often, the most refined action is that which requires the greatest number of steps to carry it out (as in, for example, the zig-zag method of handling a fork and knife).

Gaudy

The term gaudy, meaning tastelessly ornate or showy, is often misattributed to the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The Word Detective reports: "A more likely source is the obsolete English word 'gaud,' meaning 'joke, toy, or showy ornament.' This 'gaud' came from the French 'gaudir,' meaning 'to rejoice or jest,' which came in turn from the Latin 'gaudere,' meaning 'to rejoice or delight in.' (That Latin 'gaudere,' by the way, is also the source of the English word 'joy.')"

As for Gaudi, a celebration is planned for the 150th anniversary of his birthday. His style, far from garish, is an unique "sensuous, curving, almost surreal design style which established him as the innovative leader of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement."

Sweeping the Nation

According to a Yahoo! and Google searches, the following things are sweeping the nation:

• The kickboxing class craze
• Groan. Wow. An appropriately named game. 
• Sore/Loserman posters
• Linesavors, Wherever there is a point of contact on your fishing line, you should soften the blow with our new Linesavors.
• Calculations of guitar Note (string) Frequency, Density, Tension, and Velocity of the wave.
• Cold Plugs: cylinder-shaped paper tissues that are designed to stop a runny nose.
• Broomball craze sweeping nation's college campuses 
• Microsoft Hot Lab Fever 
• MP3 Audio Compression Technology 
• A Peek at PPOs, the Delivery Model That's Sweeping the Nation 
• TURBO/PM Dietary Supplement
• The Mallstars
• Home & Garden party
• Outdoor education phenomenon sweeping the nation, helps build cooperation
• Marathon Madness
• The Adoption Revolution
• GET PAID EATING CANDY
• Vacuum innovations
• Sudden, uncontrollable lesbianism

Jumbo Question

Unfortunately, no one is certain where "jumbo" came from, though we do have a few clues. There is a good possibility that it comes from "Mumbo Jumbo" (or "Mama Dyumbo"), which was the name of a god worshipped in parts of Africa. Because Europeans at the time regarded such worship as mysterious and primitive, "mumbo jumbo" came to mean "nonsense" or "gibberish" in English.

Just how "mumbo jumbo" might have led to "jumbo" meaning "large" is unclear, but by 1823 "jumbo" was being used to mean a big, clumsy person, animal or thing. The most famous "jumbo" of the 1800s was a very large elephant named, naturally, "Jumbo," that was exhibited in London and eventually sold to P.T. Barnum in 1882. Jumbo was so popular that from then on anything a bit larger than normal, from peanuts to jet airplanes, was described as "jumbo."

courtesy of The Word Detective

Steganography

Steganography is one popular method of hiding messages, where a message (either text or image) can be hidden within other files containing text, images, or even sound, without a perceptible change in the original file's quality.

The concept predates modern computing. Greek soldiers tattooed maps on their heads, and then grew their hair out; after arriving behind enemy lines, they delivered the message by shaving their heads. Romans obscured messages by applying layers of wax onto the tablets on which they were written, then melted the wax to read the message. Microdots, used during World War II, is yet another example. During the recent U.S. Embassy bombing case, several documents came to light that suggest Osama bin Laden and his associates have been using steganography to hide terrorist plans inside pornography and MP3 files that are freely distributed over the Internet.

Time series: Extra Five Days 

Early Egyptians accounted for the year's "extra" five days (beyond 360) by creating a myth about Nut, a sky goddess. According to the story, Nut was allowed to bear a child in "no month of no year." In answer to her pleading, her lover Thoth played dice with the moon and won an extra five days in the year. He gave them to Nut.

Because these days were outside the old 360-day calendar, the prohibition against Nut bearing children did not apply. Nut's son Osiris was born on the first of them. Earth-god Geb was said to be the father.

It's easy to find a similarity between this Egyptian allegory and one written by Plutarch: "Hermes playing at draughts with the moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, and intercalated them as an addition to the 360 days."

In both of these stories the moon is the loosing player. Regardless of the game played, each account claims that the moon's loss extended the year's length from 360 to 365 days.

Time series: The Egyptian calendar — What day is it?

In the Egyptian calendar, the only unit of time that was larger than a year was the reign of a king. The usual custom of dating by reign was: "year 1, 2, 3 . . . , etc., of King So-and-So," and with each new king the counting reverted back to year One. King lists recorded consecutive rulers and the total years of their respective reigns. 

The civil year was divided into three seasons, commonly translated: Inundation, when the Nile overflowed the agricultural land; Going Forth, the time of planting when the Nile returned to its bed; and Deficiency, the time of low water and harvest. 

The months of the civil calendar were numbered according to their respective seasons and were not listed by any particular name-e.g., third month of Inundation-but for religious purposes the months had names. How early these names were employed in the later lunar calendar is obscure. 

The days in the civil calendar were also indicated by number and listed according to their respective months. Thus a full civil date would be: "Regnal year 1, fourth month of Inundation, day 5, under the majesty of King So-and-So."

Time series: The Egyptian calendar

The ancient Egyptians originally employed a calendar based upon the Moon, regulated by means of the guidance of a sidereal calendar. They used the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius (Sothis); this corresponded closely to the true solar year, being only 12 minutes shorter. Certain difficulties arose, however, because of the inherent incompatibility of lunar and solar years. To solve this problem the Egyptians invented a schematized civil year of 365 days divided into three seasons, each of which consisted of four months of 30 days each. To complete the year, five intercalary days were added at its end, so that the 12 months were equal to 360 days plus five extra days. This civil calendar was derived from the lunar calendar (using months) and the agricultural, or Nile, fluctuations (using seasons); it was, however, no longer directly connected to either and thus was not controlled by them. The civil calendar served government and administration, while the lunar calendar continued to regulate religious affairs and everyday life.

Unlike most people who used a lunar calendar, the Egyptians began their day with sunrise instead of sunset because they began their month, and consequently their day, by the disappearance of the old Moon just before dawn.

Time series: The Greek calendar

The Greek calendar is much like ancient Greece itself. It shared a certain basic similarity from region to region, but each city-state kept its own version. All the Greek calendars were lunisolar, in which months are lunar but years are solar. It featured twelve months, with a periodic intercalation of a thirteenth.

The Athenian months were named Hekatombion, Metageitnion, Boedromion, Pyanepsion, Maimakterion, Poseidon, Gamelion, Anthesterion, Elaphebolion, Munychion, Thargelion, Skirophorion and an intercalary month called second Poseidon, which usually came after Poseidon. Hekatombion, and hence the beginning of the year, fell in the summer. Other Greek regions started their year at different times (e.g., Sparta, Macedonia in fall, Delos in winter).

In addition to this calendar, which has been called the festival calendar, Athenians maintained a second calendar for the political year. This "conciliar" year divided the year into "prytanies," one for each of the "phylai," the subdivisions of Athenian citizens.

Time series: The Clepsydra

The clepsydra, or water clock, is an ancient device for measuring time by means of the flow of water from a container. It may have been an invention of the Chaldeans of ancient Babylonia; specimens from Egypt date from the 14th century BC, from Egypt they were introduced into Greece and later from there into Rome. A simple form of clepsydra was an earthenware vessel with a small opening through which the water dripped; as the water level dropped, it exposed marks on the walls of the vessel that indicated the time that had elapsed since the vessel was full.

One form, used by the North American Indians and some African peoples, consisted of a small boat or floating vessel that shipped water through a hole until it sank.

More elaborate clepsydras were later developed. Some were double vessels, the larger one below containing a float that rose with the water and marked the hours on a scale. A form more closely foreshadowing the clock had a cord fastened to the float so that it turned a wheel, whose movement indicated the time. A further step was the use of gear wheels and a turning pointer.

As late as the 16th century, Galileo used a mercury clepsydra to time his experimental falling bodies.

Time series: Dividing the Hours

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks divided the day by hours of unequal length.

The Egyptians used this simple equation: the time between sunrise and sunset was divided by twelve. Each twelfth was declared an hour of the day. Likewise, the time from sunset to sunrise was also divided by twelve to determine the hours of the night. Therefore the hours of the day and night varied depending on the amount of sunlight, except during the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

The standard hour of constant length was never employed in ancient Egypt.

Time series: The Months

In the classical age and later, the months, named after festivals of the city, began in principle with the New Moon. The lunar year of 12 months and about 354 days was to be matched with the solar year by inserting an extra month every other year. The Macedonians used this system as late as the 3rd century BC, although 25 lunar months amount to about 737 days, while two solar years count about 730 days. In fact, as the evidence from the second half of the 5th century BC shows, at this early time the calendar was already no longer tied in with the phases of the Moon. The cities, rather, intercalated months and added or omitted days at will to adjust the calendar to the course of the Sun and stars and also for the sake of convenience, as, for instance, to postpone or advance a festival without changing its traditional calendar date.

Time series: The Oldest Calendars

Five thousand years ago, Sumerians in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in had a calendar that divided the year into 30-day months, divided the day into 12 periods (each about 2 hours), and divided these periods into 30 parts (each about 4 minutes).

The earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon's cycles, but later the Egyptians realized that the "Dog Star" in Canis Major (Sirius), rose next to the sun every 365 days, about when the annual inundation of the Nile began. Based on this knowledge, they devised a 365-day calendar that seems to have begun in 4236 B.C., the earliest recorded year in history.

In Babylonia, again in Iraq, a year of 12 alternating 29-day and 30-day lunar months was observed before 2000 B.C., giving a 354-day year. In contrast, the Mayans of Central America relied not only on the sun and moon, but also the planet Venus, to establish 260-day and 365-day calendars. This culture flourished from around 2000 B.C. until about 1500 A.D. They left celestial-cycle records indicating their belief that the creation of the world occurred in 3113 B.C.

Time series: The Gregorian Calendar

In 1582 the new Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, declared January 1 as the first day of the year. The previous Julian system considered the new year to being in late March (although this date was not in total agreement). The Gregorian calendar also cut ten days from October to better reflect the change in seasons.

2 Quotations: 

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because ’t is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
John Selden (1584–1654)

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.
Andy Warhol (recalled on his death, Newsweek 9 Mar 87)

Sex for Madonna

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German Internet Web site offering a ticket to a sold-out Madonna concert in exchange for sex picked a winner on Monday after being bombarded with applicants from around the world.

Thema1 publisher Bernd Heusinger said 120 readers applied for a chance to win the ticket to attend the Berlin concert of the pop icon as his guest on Friday.

The winner was identified only as 26-year-old ``Aaron'' from Frankfurt, Heusinger said. He will spend the night with the Web site's columnist Shelley Masters.

OED News

Doh has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. They favor the version without the apostrophe (no D'Oh). Other new entries are Full Monty; cheesy, which means second-rate or inferior; six-pack, meaning rippling abdominal muscles, and Bollywood, which refers to the Hindi film industry based in Bombay, India.

"Doh" is now defined as "Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish," according to the new entry in the dictionary.

In other recent OED news, "Although marchpane and marzipan both derive ultimately from Italian marzapane, they have a claim to being distinct words, and in the revised OED they are treated as such..."

The Pledge of Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931) in 1892. In 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the leadership of the American Legion and the DAR, changed "my Flag," to "the Flag of the United States of America," despite Bellamy's objections. The pledge was officially recognized by the US in 1942.

In 1954, Congress added the words, "under God," to the Pledge after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus and President Eisenhower. Bellamy likely would have disapproved this second change, too. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.

The phrase "In God we trust" was added to US coinage starting in 1864.

People who say these things were written by the founding fathers are wrong.

Varian Fry

In August 1940, Varian Fry, a Harvard-educated American journalist arrived in Marseilles "to rescue what is left of European culture before it is too late." He meant people, not works of art. Before the borders of Vichy France were closed, he lead in the escape of over 1500 people into Spain. Among the people he rescued were Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, the Surrealists Max Ernst, Andre Breton and Andre Masson and Alma Mahler-Werfel. In 1996, Fry was named as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heros and Martyrs Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem -- the first American recipient of Israel's highest honor for rescuers during the Holocaust, an honor also received by Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.

Alma's life is the subject of a new movie, Bride of the Wind. She was married or associated with a who's who of central European artists of the day. She married: composer Gustav Mahler, who wrote of Das Lied von der Erde, architect Walter Gropius, of the Bauhaus school of design, and writer Franz Werfel, author of the Song of Bernadette. She was also associated with artist Gustav Klimt, composer Arnold Schoenberg, writer Gerhart Hauptman, composer Alban Berg, and singer Enrico Caruso. Composer Alban Berg dedicated his opera Wozzeck (1921) to her.

JEB Stuart

JEB Stuart distinguished himself at the first battle of Bull Run (July, 1861) and in September was made a brigadier general. In June, 1862, he conducted the first of his celebrated cavalry raids, making a complete circuit of General McClellan's army on the Virginia peninsula, noting the Union positions. General Lee used this information to advantage in the Peninsular campaign. Stuart was promoted to major general in July and given command of all the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. After another bold and successful raid (Aug., 1862), this time to John Pope's rear, he covered the last stage of Stonewall Jackson's flanking movement before the second battle of Bull Run (Aug., 1862). He was actively engaged in that battle and in the subsequent Antietam campaign. Again in Oct., 1862, Stuart rode around the Union Army ranging as far as S Pennsylvania and capturing 1,200 horses. He made effective use of his famous horse artillery in the battle of Fredericksburg (Dec., 1862). In the battle of Chancellorsville, he moved with Stonewall Jackson in the brilliant flank attack. When both Jackson and A. P. Hill were wounded, Stuart took command. In June, 1863, he fought his greatest cavalry battle at Brandy Station. For knowledge of the enemy Lee depended on Stuart, who, he said, never brought him a piece of false information. But in the Gettysburg campaign, Stuart was absent from the army on a raid, and Lee was not apprised soon enough of the Union concentration North of the Potomac. On May 11, 1864, his corps, now decreased in size and deficient in equipment, met a force of Union cavalry at Yellow Tavern, and JEB Stuart was mortally wounded.

Moses Illuminated

For hundreds of years the Bible passage regarding Moses, after he descended from Mt. Sinai, was thought to say he was horned. Turns out it was a bad translation from Hebrew. Should have said "illuminated." This was a misinterpretation that was even displayed in Michelangelo's statue of Moses in San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome (above). They thought that maybe he was so mad at the Israelites that he grew horns.

The Bowler

The bowler, named for William Bowler, a London hatter who invented it, is sometimes known as a "billycock" in the UK and the derby in the United States. It was introduced in 1850.

The Einstein Family

The real name of Actor/director Albert Brooks (Modern Romance, Defending Your Life, Mother) is Albert Einstein. His brother is Bob Einstein , a.k.a. Super Dave Osborn. His father was comedian Harry Einstein, a.k.a. Parkyakarkas. He died after giving a rousing roast of Lucy and Dezi.

John Calvin Took 3 Years

Protestant reformer John Calvin wrote his faith testament The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. His intention was to end divisions among Protestant sects. Henry VIII of England denounced the authority of the Pope, effectively starting the Protestant movement in 1533, only three years earlier.

Aquafer

Def: an underground bed or layer of earth, gravel, or porous stone that yields water.

the current dose

i knew that