The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong....The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
"Arrant" is an adjective meaning thorough or complete. It has run a tortuous course. It is a variant of "errant," meaning wandering or vagrant, e.g. arrant thief or arrant knave. Over time the word began to be taken as an intensifier so an arrant fool was no longer a vagrant fool, but a complete fool. It has it origin in the Latin iterare (to journey).
"Arrant" is an adjective meaning thorough or complete. It has run a tortuous course. It is a variant of "errant," meaning wandering or vagrant, e.g. arrant thief or arrant knave. Over time the word began to be taken as an intensifier so an arrant fool was no longer a vagrant fool, but a complete fool. It has it origin in the Latin iterare (to journey).
Cesare Borgia was a terror. The son of Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), made Cardinal, the Duke of Valentinois he bullied, murdered and plundered his way through the riches of Italy. The Venetian ambassador reported back to his government, "Every night four or five men are discovered assassinated, bishops, prelates and others, so that all Rome trembles for fear of being murdered by the duke." The Orsini family was his special target. He spent much of his free time in outlandish orgies. He was terribly disfigured by syphilis and usually wore a mask. He died in battle at Navarre, leaving at least eleven illegitimate children. He was 31.
About 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and programmed to visit sites, according to estimates cited recently by the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group.– Wall Street Journal,
The Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA) is a one-inch wide, three-inch long glass slide, but packed in a checkerboard pattern within the device are 388,000 probes set to detect more than 2,000 viruses and about 900 bacteria. The device can also detect multiple pathogens at the same time. It can be used for security but also for analysis. Disturbingly, it found a pig virus in a children's vaccine.
Who is....Abou Ben Adhem
Josh Hamilton is expected to spend the following six to eight weeks in recovery because he dove into first base and tore a ligament in his left thumb. He was hitting .462.
Keynesian economics (or Keynesianism) is the view that in the short run, especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy). Government can step in and artificially stimulate demand when demand naturally turns down. This is done through the issuing of debt. But doesn't debt just move the aggregate demand forward? Doesn't debt just displace consumption from the future into the present? Isn't that sort of stealing from the future? Will that mean that the aggregate demand that had been displaced will have to be made up by government stimulus?
Coca-Cola was developed while looking for an antidote to the common morphine addictions that followed the Civil War: Veteran and pharmacist John Stith Pemberton concocted the original Coca-Cola mixture while experimenting with opiate-free painkillers to soothe his own war wounds. The company’s first advertisement ran on the patent-medicine page of the Atlanta Journal in 1886, and made it clear that Coca-Cola was viewed as a health drink, “containing the properties of the wonderful Coca plant (Cocaine) and the famous Cola nuts (Caffene).” Recipes suggest about 0.01 grams of cocaine used in fountain sodas.
"In two recent studies, we find that: (1) Upward income mobility varies substantially within the U.S. Areas with greater mobility tend to have five characteristics: less segregation, less income inequality, better schools, greater social capital, and more stable families. (2) Contrary to popular perception, economic mobility has not changed significantly over time; however, it is consistently lower in the U.S. than in most developed countries."--Harvard study including Nathaniel Hendren.
A United Nations affiliate organization sent two representatives—one from France and one from Armenia—to monitor Tennessee elections in 2012 because the state had enacted a law requiring a photo identification for voting. Read that again.
Jane Jacob was the great critic of the modern tendency to bleach and plan cities colorless in her Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities. Her four rules: "To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable: 1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common. 2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent. 3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained. 4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purpose they maybe there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence."
Golden oldie:
A Norwegian study on income recently demonstrated that age factors are significant across a range of countries and that when you adjust for age, income inequality (with the exception of the extreme 1/10 of 1%) narrows dramatically. Interestingly, high-income households have more than four times as many wage earners (on average) as poor households. And married and thus two-earner households make more than single-person households. Ditto higher education and delay of pregnancy.
"In the kitchen, the egg is neither ingredient nor finished dish, but rather a singularity with 1,000 ends. Scrambled eggs and angel food cake and ice cream and aioli and popovers and gougeres and macaroons and a gin fizz aren't separate entities. They're all part of the egg continuum. They are all one thing. The egg is a lens through which to view the entire craft of cooking. By working our way through the egg, we become powerful cooks. "--Michael Rulhman, who won a James Beard Foundation Award in 2012
AAAaaaaannnnddddd.....
No comments:
Post a Comment