"I am just going outside and may be some time" Lawrence Oates, leaving his tent to die on Scott's return from his doomed South Pole expedition.
From the "A man's actions are only an opaque window to his soul" Department: Charles Manson is engaged to be married. This fact alone should spread a blanket of care over the very notion of love and marriage. Clearly there should be a screening process, some vetting of such plans. When the old religions wane, all sorts of things are lost. Like Banns.
Who is....William Sidney Porter?
From the "A man's actions are only an opaque window to his soul" Department: Charles Manson is engaged to be married. This fact alone should spread a blanket of care over the very notion of love and marriage. Clearly there should be a screening process, some vetting of such plans. When the old religions wane, all sorts of things are lost. Like Banns.
Who is....William Sidney Porter?
An average of 13 people have been killed daily in eastern Ukraine since the 5 September ceasefire came into place, the UN human rights office says. So maybe we should call it something other than a "ceasefire."
The NYT wrote that insurers were among the biggest supporters of the ACA. "...the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership." Crony capitalism, also known as socialism for the powerful.
E. O. Wilson writes of the “Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society.” So productive and protective drives like tribalism, racism, our refusal to curb population growth, our failure to cooperate with one another on a scale commensurate with the challenges we face and our devastation of the natural environment--all of these early evolutionary advantages now, in the modern world, become disadvantages. Like the appendix, these ancient qualities have not just outrun their advantages, they have become an active risk to our survival.
strafe: verb tr.: 1. To attack with machine-gun fire or bombs from a low-flying aircraft. 2. To criticize severely. noun: 1. An attack from a low-flying aircraft. 2. A severe criticism. Interesting derivation from the German slogan "Gott strafe England!" ([May] God punish England!) during WWI. From German strafen (to punish). Earliest documented use: 1915.
Joe Biden recently called shady lenders a bunch of "Shylocks." He was immediately attacked, but carefully. The word “shylock” is an eponym from a character in Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice" who brutally enforces a loan. So it is used in reference to loan sharking. But the character in the play is Jewish. So is the use of the word a slur? Should we ban the play? This is the heart of political correctness: It is Bowdlerizing.
A battle is going on in Texas over some academic books in schools. "Academics and activists on the left have criticized the books for exaggerating the influence of Moses and other biblical figures on American democracy. Conservative experts, however, complain that they are too politically correct, ignoring connections between radical Islam and modern terrorism."And why does the rest of the country care? "Texas is such a large textbook market that it sometimes affects books used elsewhere." (AP)
Golden oldie:
If you calculate the future value of $4,500 invested per year (your contribution plus your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (a bit much now but usual historically) after 49 years of working you would have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last more than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit. If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
But the government returns from Social Security...
Shakespeare had a written vocabulary of 17, 245 words, many he coined. Coining a word is difficult. Some examples: "Malaprop "from Mrs Malaprop, in the 1775 play The Rivals by Irish playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan, "Banana Republic" from O. Henry (the penname of William Sidney Porter) in Cabbages and Kings, a collection of short stories. "Free Lance" was invented by Sir Walter Scott and became its mirror image in Martin's GoT "Sellsword."
Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac died at the age of thirty-six. He was the model for Edmond Rostand's 1897 hit play, and a writer himself -- several plays, and two science-fantasy novels about voyages to the moon and sun. He was a sword fighter and did have a big nose. He died with less drama than did Rostand's Cyrano: from injuries caused when a piece of lumber, perhaps dropped intentionally by one of his enemies, fell from a third story window and hit him on the head.
AAAAAAAaaaaaaannnnndddddd.....a graph:
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