'All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.'--Oscar Wilde
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is sending out William Shakespeare's First Folio to all 50 states, to mark the 400th anniversary of his death. Published seven years after he died, the First Folio is the first printed collection of all of Shakespeare's plays.The Folger has 82 First Folios — the largest collection in the world.
It has been a bloody year in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city. On November 14th the police department reported the city’s 300th homicide in 2015, a total not seen since 1999. The surge in killings in the majority-black city of roughly 623,000 began after the death on April 19th of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally injured while in police custody. Since Mr Gray’s death the city has recorded 244 homicides, a 78% increase over the same period in 2014, representing more than 100 additional deaths
A great advantage afforded by freedom and diversity: Bigotry in a free society should always be defeated. Say, for example, good credit risks who are denied mortgage applications because of bigotry provide opportunities for other mortgage lenders to profitably serve those borrowers.
It has been a bloody year in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city. On November 14th the police department reported the city’s 300th homicide in 2015, a total not seen since 1999. The surge in killings in the majority-black city of roughly 623,000 began after the death on April 19th of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was fatally injured while in police custody. Since Mr Gray’s death the city has recorded 244 homicides, a 78% increase over the same period in 2014, representing more than 100 additional deaths
A great advantage afforded by freedom and diversity: Bigotry in a free society should always be defeated. Say, for example, good credit risks who are denied mortgage applications because of bigotry provide opportunities for other mortgage lenders to profitably serve those borrowers.
Obama has, acting strangely again, not gone to the Scalia funeral. I find that difficult to understand. Scalia's death is probably the most important event of his presidency, more than Obamacare. (I think the real importance of Obamacare is his decision to use the Democrat majority in the first years to work on health care and not the financial problems. I will bet that, in history, that will be seen as a great error.)
America incarcerates people awaiting trial at triple the world average. Every day, roughly 500,000 people who have been convicted of no crime sit in county jails.
In 1823, the Christmas classic, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas") was published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel. Twenty years and much popularity later, Clement C. Moore claimed and was accorded authorship, but recent scholarship by forensic literary critic Don Foster -- the man who established the author of Primary Colors -- has cast this very much in doubt.
America incarcerates people awaiting trial at triple the world average. Every day, roughly 500,000 people who have been convicted of no crime sit in county jails.
In 1823, the Christmas classic, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas") was published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel. Twenty years and much popularity later, Clement C. Moore claimed and was accorded authorship, but recent scholarship by forensic literary critic Don Foster -- the man who established the author of Primary Colors -- has cast this very much in doubt.
Who is...Michael Burry?
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another. As a result, spending grows. I personally believe in helping one's fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one's own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another's pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation. --Williams
One of the first things a lawyer learns is never ask a question for which you do not know the answer. A characteristic of the modern West is its reluctance to ask hard questions for fear of hearing hard answers.
Michael Burry is the strange M.D. in The Big Short. There is a lot about him in the book, not all flattering, but one of the book's ideas is that only a true outsider, a guy who does not quite think with everyone--and Burry is certainly that--can see these economic distortions coming. He said this recently: "Interest rates are used to price risk." This is a very simple and profound statement. What he means is that the central banks have been using artificially low interest rates to avoid risk and stimulate the economy. This is contrary to the very nature of things and, thus, must be dangerous.
Golden oldie:
Golden oldie:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/07/computers-writing-and-phaedrus.html
The very popular author Alexandre Dumas wrote 250 books but he had a staff of some seventy "assistants" churning out copy for his first drafts, and there was no rule against borrowing passages from earlier writers. His was a confused and confusing history. At the age of twenty-three he declared to live a "career as a romantic" and promptly got involved in several duels that were delayed or postponed or simply dissolved from disinterest or incompetence. Finally he quarreled with a politician and both sides agreed to draw lots, the loser pledging to shoot himself. Dumas lost and withdrew to another room, closing the door behind him. Long moments followed on both sides. Hearing a shot at last, the crowd rushed in to find Dumas unhurt and holding a smoking gun: "Gentlemen, a most regrettable thing has happened. I missed."
The very popular author Alexandre Dumas wrote 250 books but he had a staff of some seventy "assistants" churning out copy for his first drafts, and there was no rule against borrowing passages from earlier writers. His was a confused and confusing history. At the age of twenty-three he declared to live a "career as a romantic" and promptly got involved in several duels that were delayed or postponed or simply dissolved from disinterest or incompetence. Finally he quarreled with a politician and both sides agreed to draw lots, the loser pledging to shoot himself. Dumas lost and withdrew to another room, closing the door behind him. Long moments followed on both sides. Hearing a shot at last, the crowd rushed in to find Dumas unhurt and holding a smoking gun: "Gentlemen, a most regrettable thing has happened. I missed."
Trump won the majority of independents and equaled the sum of Cruz and Rubio among Hispanics. Read that again
The federal government's 1980 "Dietary Guidelines for Americans" warned about the baleful effects of saturated fats. Public interest activists/entrepreneurs joined the fight and managed to persuade major food companies to switch to the shiny new alternative: trans fats.
Thirty-five years later, the Food and Drug Administration finally determined that trans fats are not just useless but unsafe, and ordered them removed from all foods.
Thirty-five years later, the Food and Drug Administration finally determined that trans fats are not just useless but unsafe, and ordered them removed from all foods.
Science in the hands of the amateur is a dangerous tool.
The deadliest hurricane on record is the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in Bangladesh, which killed between 150,000-300,000 people.
In 1841 twenty-two year-old Herman Melville set sail aboard the Acushnet, a New England whaler heading for the South Seas. His experiences on this and several subsequent voyages would provide the basis for a half-dozen sea novels written in a five-year burst, 1846-51. In his lifetime, and much to his disgust, Melville's reputation was not made on the last of those, Moby Dick, but on the first, Typee, and its sequel, Omoo. Typee was originally rejected--the cannibalism, naked women and religion-bashing in the book was felt by American publishers as too fantastic--but the stories were confirmed by Melville's fellow sailors.
One in every five people in the world is Chinese.
One in every five people in the world is Chinese.
Baleful: adj: 1. Portending evil; ominous: The guard's baleful glare frightened the children. 2. Harmful or malignant in intent or effect: a baleful influence. ety: Old English bealu-full "dire, wicked, cruel," with -ful + bealu "harm, injury, ruin, evil, mischief, wickedness, a noxious thing," from Proto-Germanic *balwom (cognates: Old Saxon balu, Old Frisian balu "evil," Old High German balo "destruction," Old Norse bol, Gothic balwjan "to torment"), from PIE root *bhelu- "to harm." During Anglo-Saxon times, the noun was in poetic use only (in compounds such as bealubenn "mortal wound," bealuðonc "evil thought"), and for long baleful has belonged exclusively to poets. Related: Balefully.
Baleful and baneful overlap in meaning, but baleful usually applies to something that is menacing or foreshadows evil: a baleful look. Baneful most often describes that which is actually harmful or destructive: baneful effects of their foreign policy.
Is Kasick staying in the race because he thinks that he could be offered the v-p?
Pozzuoli was a Roman port town near the supervolcano Campi Flegrei. The Roman philosopher Seneca noted, the “dust at Puteoli [the city’s Latin name] becomes stone if it touches water.” Why? Pozzolana is a mixture of silica oxides and lime, two of the three key ingredients in cement; the third ingredient is water. Geochemist Tiziana Vanorio suspects the ancient Romans first watched pozzolana hardening into cement in the seawater surrounding Campi Flegrei. They co-opted the natural process, mixing in small chunks of pumice — a porous volcanic rock that forms when superheated magma is quickly cooled. And Roman concrete was born. It became an iconic building material of the ancient world, and it’s the reason many Roman structures, including the Colosseum and the Pantheon, have survived to the present day.
What come next is hard to believe, the stuff of sci-fi: After the fall of the Roman empire, the art of concrete-making was all but forgotten. It disappeared.
It gradually returned centuries later, but didn’t become widespread again until 1824, when Joseph Aspdin developed and patented Portland cement.
The Romans used to add horse hair to concrete to keep it from cracking while hardening. Now there are additives that increase concrete’s electrical conductivity, strength, ductility, and resistance to acid corrosion. There are chemical retardants that slow concrete’s hydration, accelerators that speed it up, and plasticizers that increase its workability. There are corrosion inhibitors. There are pigments. There are decorative stones and seashells.
The Romans used to add horse hair to concrete to keep it from cracking while hardening. Now there are additives that increase concrete’s electrical conductivity, strength, ductility, and resistance to acid corrosion. There are chemical retardants that slow concrete’s hydration, accelerators that speed it up, and plasticizers that increase its workability. There are corrosion inhibitors. There are pigments. There are decorative stones and seashells.
All from the products of a volcano and the sea.
“The Confidence Game” by Maria Konnikova--apparently no pun intended--describes the history and nature of the con man and his victim. She is a psychologist and a contributor to NewYorker.com. It is a Gladwell-like construction of readable, sensible stories, popular analysis and advice. And the occasional hair-raiser: She recounts the story of a lonely 68-year-old physics professor at the University of North Carolina whose trip to Bolivia and Argentina to meet a Czech model with whom he’d been corresponding via an online dating service lands him in jail after unwittingly serving as a cocaine mule. But it all has a bright side: “Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope,” Konnikova writes. Ah, yes, the audacity--and self-deception--of hope.
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