So, I finally broke down and bought the complete first season of the Wonder Woman series from the seventies, starring Lynda Carter, on DVD. And yes, the series is kinda cheesy... but still, I think Lynda Carter manages to pull it off. She wears that bathing-suit costume and yet acts perfectly comfortable in her own skin, and she delivers those hokey lines with complete sincerity, and as a result, they're *not* hokey... sort of like Christopher Reeve's first Superman movie. (And hey, she even did many of her own stunts-- including hanging onto a helicopter 100 feet in the air and flipping a football star over her shoulder.)
So, I got curious, and I found out a couple of interesting factoids about Wonder Woman's past...
Firstly, the Lynda Carter series was not the first time Wonder Woman appeared on television. There were two tries to bring her to the small screen before that, both of which thankfully failed. The first is barely worth mentioning-- a 4-minute spoof presented to Warner Brothers by William Dozier in 1967, then-producer of Batman. It was fairly well agreed to be awful, and Warner Brothers turned it down for a series. The second-- and this one's even more amusing-- was a 1974 made-for-TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde Wonder Woman in a star-spangled track suit. Ricardo Montalban (remember Fantasy Island? Same white suit) was part of the supporting cast, and by all accounts it was even worse than the first try. It had nothing to do with the original character concept at all-- she had no powers, and acted more like a secret agent than superhero. It was supposed to be the pilot movie for a series, but it bombed so badly that they never continued with it (thank goodness). (After that flop, they decided to return to the character's roots and drop (most of) the camp for the third go.)
My second little factoid is about Wonder Woman's *real* "origin story." Her creator, William Moulton Marston, was *not* your typical comic book writer. In fact, he was *Doctor* Marston, eminent psychologist and instrumental in the creation of the polygraph. (So *that's* where Wonder Woman's golden Lasso of Truth came from....) Marston was also a feminist theorist and wrote about the problems of gender stereotyping, and the need for a heroine "with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." And he was the perfect person to create such a heroine-- in 1940, he'd been hired by as an educational consultant by Detective (DC) Comics. With the enthusiastic support of Max Charles Gaines, Detective Comics' publisher, he debuted his superheroine in Dec. 1941; in fact, he gave up writing articles on psychology and devoted himself to writing for Wonder Woman for the last six years of his life. How's that for turning one's theories into reality?
Oh, and one more tidbit about the TV show-- Oscar-nominated actress Debra Winger got her big start playing Wonder Woman's kid sister, Wonder Girl, in the series.
I don't feel like I got a heck of a lot done at work to day (ironic, since I was off the desk the whole day). On the other hand, I *did* help a lot of other people get *their* work done, so I suppose it balanced out. For example, the YA librarian asked my help in choosing movies to show for her teen programs this fall, since I'm about the closest thing in age and mindset to a teen that she had handy. (Sad, isn't it?) In the course of looking up properly creepy (but no more than PG-13-rated) movies for the October selection, I came across an interesting tidbit. Did you know that Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and a young actor called Jack Nicholson all shared the screen at the same time, once? It's a Roger Corman comedy/horror movie called The Raven. But wait, there's more! Corman finished shooting The Raven ahead of schedule and still had Boris Karloff under contract... so rather than "waste" all that talent he'd already paid for, he knocked off another script and, using the leftover sets from The Raven, filmed The Terror with Karloff and Nicholson in *three* days! To help him finish, he called in four other young directors, including Mr. Nicholson and a then-unknown Francis Ford Coppola. A-mazing.
**WARNING: HOMELESS SNAILS AHEAD**
Well, it's been pouring today (and much of this week), and you know what *that* means, don't you? It's time again for the amazing Slug Races! Okay, so they're not very fast. But if I watch very carefully, I *can* see them move as they slime their way up the basement office window. And it occurred to me, today, to wonder how it is they manage to float along on a slime trail laid on a vertical piece of glass without just sliding back down. And so, ladies and gentleman, I give you far more than you ever wanted to know about slugs.
A couple of interesting tidbits today...
in the news, marine researchers have discovered a new genus (containing two new species) of deep-sea worm that live off the bones of dead whales. They're small, only about 1 to 2 1/2 inches long, and they have frondy red tops (their "gills") and green "roots" laced with bacteria that help them digest the fats in the bone. Otherwise, they have no eyes, no mouths, no stomachs, even. They're most closely related (genetically, anyway) to the giant tube worms that live close to thermal vents in the ocean floor. At first, the researchers were puzzled at only seeing what appeared to be females. Study showed that the males live *inside* the female. The new genus is called Osedax ("bone-eating" in Latin), and the findings will be reported in the 7/30/2004 issue of Science.
And in a completely unrelated sort of discovery... did you know that scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton once worked for the British Royal Mint? (I didn't.) He was, in fact, first Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint. He helped introduce machines to mill the edges of coins and so reduce the ability to counterfeit or clip the coins without detection.
This has been the day for weird words, I swear.
"Springtails" came across my desk-- quite literally-- at about 1 a.m. this morning. That is, in the quiet of the office, I noticed a little, almost raindrop-like noise, as if someone had just tapped a stack of papers on the desk very lightly with a fingernail. And then I heard it again, and suddenly a tiny, skinny insect (3 mm long or so) was sitting in the middle of my desk. I moved my hand toward it and the insect moved about a foot and a half (if you're counting, that's about 150 times its body-length) in an eyeblink. After a couple of tries, I squooshed it, but there was another one hopping about just a minute later. And I realized, after I peered at one-- they *were* hopping, they didn't have wings. I was worried that they were fleas, but they didn't look like fleas. I got a good, close look, went hunting on the 'net, and found them. (I am, after all, a librarian. Something worries or scares me and what do I do? I look it up.)
It turns out they weren't after my blood (I'm human, not humus); the desk lamp and the damp from all the rain brought them out. And the more I read about them, the more I learned that they're kind of nifty critters. Besides having this amazing cataput built into their butts, they're one of the few insects that are active on snow banks, and some even glow in the dark. And a springtail is the oldest fossil insect in the world!
As for "quine", I ran across the word as part of a title, The Harper's Quine. (My techie readers shouldn't get all excited, it's not THAT kind of quine.) The book description gave no indication of what the weird word in the title might mean. It's a mystery novel set in 15th c. Scotland. Armed with that information, a bit of poking turned up "Quine - from the Doric dialect (used in the North East of Scotland), meaning 'young woman' or 'daughter'." Further poking indicated that it's a fairly generic term in that region for "girl," as in "guys and girls." (For the curious, the word for a guy in the same cant is "loon."
Alright, one more and I'm going to bed. The fall children's book preview issue of PW held an ad for an amusing-looking picture book entitled Pigaroons. I didn't even get a description on that one, just a few subject headings from Amazon.com-- pigs, festivals, and stealing. But one look at that jaunty balloon-ship on the cover and a little background knowledge of the word picaroon, and the canny reader might opine that we're in for a aerial tale of piratical, plunderous porkers. We Shall See.
Just a quick entry, before I dive back into playing with one of my New Things... in the process of responding to my last post, I went and learned a little bit about the Baha'i faith, which I'd heard of but never really known much about.
And today, the Meade Hall's wiki section went live, and it is *very cool.* I've been having loads of fun this evening playing with it. (Sorry, registered Patrons only.) And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play s'more. ^_^
A couple of things I picked up in the course of work today.... One, I never knew that Jack Kerouac was a Buddhist (or at least embraced Buddhist enlightenment on a philosophical level). But-- true! I ran across a copy of his Dharma Bums today on the shelf, and sure enough, Amazon's description reads:
One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac.
And in a similar vein (but probably less interesting to the general populace), I learned why mythology is classed in the high 200's (which is religion) instead of the high 300s (which is folklore). The heading in DDC is actually "classical religion" (or, more precisely, "Greek religion," "Roman religion," and "Norse religion." When I think about it, yes, that's a logical fit (gods, goddesses... yep, sounds like a religion to me), it's just... sort of weird. I grew up reading folklore and mythology all mixed up together as literature, so it's a little odd for me to think of part of it as, yes, this was once part of an organized practice of worship. Hm. I guess it gives me a little better insight onto those who look at the Bible purely as a work of literature.
...and other antiquated phrases. :D)
It occurred to me to look up a couple of somewhat antiquated terms this evening (actually, one was a request), and so I felt I might as well share. So:
the vapours (as in, an attack of the vapours): not a case of anxiety, as I had thought, but in fact a state of depression, usually brought on by a shock.
Great Scott!: An expression of surprise, amazement or outrage. Its origin is uncertain, but etymologists (that's word-people, not bug-people) are fairly certain it comes from the US around the 1860s, and most likely refers to General Winfield-Scott, a hero of the Mexican-American War and the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army when the Civil War broke out.
(Oh... and if you want to know the origin of "oh my stars and garters," go look it up yourself.)
Well.
It's been a quiet day, and most of it has involved seeing my sister off (she stayed over the night), making potato salad, and watching Big Fish (which I enjoyed very much, tho' I agree with critiques that said more attention could have been paid to the frame tale). So, you get a few tidbits from my day... I learned Oma's secret to getting such nice, rounded small slices of potato in her potato salad (which I will not share here, because what sort of secret would it be then?).
On the other hand, some secrets are meant to be shared, and so I will share the trick to find the "easter egg" on the Big Fish DVD: From the main menu, move the fish icon over to "Special Features." Press the "up" button twice, and a small red star will appear over the top hat. Press "Enter" and you get a clip of Tim Burton in *front* of the camera, for a change.
^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^
It's not often that one gets the chance to wish someone a happy 100th. We had a wonderful party for her-- just family and a few close friends-- and even though she's not fond of "hullabaloo" on her account, she did enjoy it. She must've been excited for all that she's been trying to act blase about the whole deal... I found out she was up and about with the dawn this morning. She got several calls from relatives in Germany, about a half-dozen bouquets of flowers (including one very cool one in the shape of a birthday cake), and, at last count, about 40 cards, including the traditional Presidential greeting and one from Willard Scott (of NBC).
And for those wondering what I finally decided to get her... Oma taught me last year how to make her hallmark dish, her German potato salad. Since I wasn't bring potato salad to the restaurant, I wrapped a raw Yukon Gold potato (those being the closest American equivalent to the German mauschen, although I hear there's something else they call the "German butterball" you can get now for gardens) in gold wrapping paper and gave it to her as a "promissory potato," which she was delighted to receive. It turned out she'd been hoping someone would think to make her potato salad, and she had been a little disappointed when none turned up on the menu (which was, otherwise, fabulous-- it was a German restaurant, and they did it *right*). So this weekend, I'll be making Oma's potato salad for *her,* which is sort of a neat turnaround, in my opinion.
And, in honor of her day, two new things I learned about my Oma:
1) Oma was not sent her ticket by her older brother (already in this country), as I had thought-- she was sponsored to this country by an American family who paid for her ship ticket over. She spent several years working to pay them back for the price of the ticket.
2) After Opa died, Oma kept the greenhouse business going for a full 15 years on her own, with the help of her kids. (The greenhouses finally came down the same year my eldest sister was born.) Pretty good for someone who didn't even know how to make out a check when she started.
Okay, it's time to bore the non-librarians.
Just because something's new (to me, at least) doesn't make it all that fascinating. I've been trying to pick out the more interesting things, but this time, alas, I inflict the workaday upon you. I've been pushing an update of the Dewey Decimal Classification numbers on our computer books to DDC 22 because the collection is shelved rather haphazardly according to (as far as I can tell) the numbers of at least two previous editions and some weird in-house number decisions. Part of the reason the old numbers just aren't doing the job is that the nature, scope, and popularity of the field of computing changes *fast,* and library classification... doesn't.
Think about it-- DDC 21 was released in 1996. DDC 20 was released in... 1989? Who the heck knew in 1989 that I'd have to find someplace to squash about 500 extremely popular titles on something called "the World Wide Web"? Anyway, it's taken until DDC 22 for Dewey to really get its act together on classifying works on computers, and I'm trying to neaten things up a bit into a decent browsing collection, since it *is* an area we collect heavily in. But of course, before I can figure out where to put books on "QuarkXPress," "Crystal Reports," and "Linux Fedora Core," I have to figure out what %&*$ category they fit in besides "ummmm... programs! I'm pretty sure they're all programs. Except that last one, that's an OS." Well, that would narrow everything down to 005, at least, but that would hardly improve browsability. That's still three full shelves' worth of titles to wade through.
(Bored yet? I haven't even gotten to the good part!)
So today I learned that QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing program like the more easily-identifiable Microsoft Publisher (moved in DDC 22 from 686.2254 to 005.52 to snuggle with works on word processor programs). (It has nothing to do with cheese, alas.)
Crystal Reports is (duh!) a rather nifty-looking report-generating program that's supposed to work with all kinds of proprietary database programs. At the moment I'm trying to decide whether it'll get better exposure if I leave it up in 651.7802 with "business reports" (as in, the paper kind) or put it in 005.72 with the database books.
And as for Linux, which probably seems the most duh-worthy subject here... the problem (for me) was figuring out what *type* of OS Linux is. (Thank God it wasn't a database, for those numbers are the stuff of non-techie nightmares... object-oriented, parallel, hypertext... there's a different number for every type of database out there, and little guidance to match up the generic with the brand name. Sorting out types of OS was bad enough, thanks.) Does Linux belong in the more general number of 005.43 with the Unix books because it's not a computer-specific OS (and by "computer" don't think IBM vs. Dell vs. Apple-- think mainframe vs. microcomputer vs. handheld)? Does it belong around MS Windows books at 005.4326 (I think? I'm doing this off the top of my head, here-- anyway, the number for user interfaces and windowing systems, specific to microcomputers). Or how about around the Mac books at 005.446 (operating systems for specific microcomputers-- since, as far as I know, the software doesn't come without the hardware)?
Yes, such are the exciting decisions of which a cataloger's job is made. I mean... the book about Linux Fedora Core has pictures of a pretty desktop and everything-- stability aside, is it really that different, OS-wise, from Windows? I'm still semi-agonizing over this one and I think I'm going to have to survey what we have again, but I think it deserves the more general number. After all, Linux doesn't *rely* on that interface. You can go commando-- um, command-line if you prefer, and as people are getting it to run on Ataris it's certainly not computer-specific. (The reason Windows got the "interface" number in the first place is because it started out as just that-- the interface between MS-DOS and the user... nowadays it's inextricable, but it still gets the number. Go figure.)
Well, you know how people keep telling you that you need to stop and smell the roses? I got a little sidetracked in searching for ideas for Oma's birthday gift today, and stopped to *fold* the roses. I had the idea of possibly making 100 origami roses for Oma's birthday... until I realized just how complicated and finicky origami roses ARE. (A good friend gave me a very touching gift of paper roses one Valentine's Day, and now that I've tried my hand at them, I'm even MORE impressed with his work.) So, now I may, or I may not. But at the very least, I can show you the two types of roses I've sort of learned to fold (not well).
The "classic" origami rose is known as the Kawasaki rose, or K-rose. It is *not* for ameteurs (which would explain why mine looks like... well... a rolled-up wad of paper). Carlos Furuti's Origami Roses page contains a plethora of bibliographic citations for it, as well as easy-for-experts diagrams in .png and .pdf format. Bloom4ever has even better step-by-step picture instructions (even a video clip for the really tricky bit!), but I'll warn you, this is still not an easy rose. (See the "wad of paper" comment above.)
Something a little easier-- once I figured out that "stretchable creased paper" meant, in fact, 3 1/4" crepe-paper ribbon, and that steps 7-8 meant "keep folding the paper back when you get about 2 cm from the end of the folded bit, until you run out of paper to fold back"-- is this crepe rose from opane.com. The mock-up I created with plain 20-lb. typing paper is understandably stiff and imperfect (it's far from crepe paper, after all), but I got the general idea of it, and I think the end product done with the right materials would be quite pretty. Whether I'm ready to do 100 of them (that's 8 1/3 dozen, if you're curious) remains to be seen... I'm still exploring my options.
And yes, this seems sort of last-minute (her birthday is Friday), but I've been contemplating this for the last month. It is *not* easy to come up with a gift for someone who's had 100 years of birthday presents. She doesn't really wear jewelry, her vision is fading.... Besides, Oma doesn't really like getting "things." She *does* appreciate little handmade gifts... gifts of time. And it occurred to me as well (and forgive me if this sounds a little too macabre to you) that Oma *is* going to be 100, and she's not going to live forever. Certainly, I know her eventual passing has been on her mind, as it's been on the mind of everyone in my family ever since she took a spill last month. (Heck, it's been on our minds to a greater or lesser extent for the last 20 years or so.) And I thought... well, maybe paper roses are something she *could* take with her.
See? I told you you'd be seeing more from this book. More amusing word cousins:
What do hors d'oeuvres, mosquitos, sofas, and awnings have in common? Heh. Well, let's start from the parent-word and work down from there: konopos, which is the Greek for a gnat or mosquito. From that, the Greeks derived konopion, meaning "a bed or couch surrounded by curtains to keep away mosquitoes." Hop sideways to Latin, which takes the Greek word, ditches the divan, and uses canopeum to refer to mosquito netting. English eventually inherits this word as canopy, the cloth covering suspended over a four-poster bed, or-- you guessed it-- an awning. But where's the snack food in all this? It's those wacky French again... they take the original Greek, ditch the awning, and use the word canape to refer to a sofa. And then, because some chef needed a word when he came up with an appetizer that *sits* nummy little treats on pieces of toast or crackers, he called it a "couch"-- a canape.
And one more quick one that is, perhaps, even more bizarre: a reed, a pen, a candy, and a squid. (Hee. Gotcha with that last one, didn't I?) Here's how they're linked: the Latin for "reed" is calamus, and because cut reeds were used for as pens, the word got inherited directly. In fact, the technical term for the hollow part of a feather (which is why feathers also get used as quills), thanks to this inheritance, is also known as the calamus.) The candy? Caramel. The L --> R corruption is pretty common when Latin words get pulled into English, so calamellus (a diminutive of our "reed" word, since the sweet is made from sugar CANE) becomes the Portuguese caramel, which is the same in English (tho' they say it with a cool accent). And the squid? Go back to the pen. Pens are long and slender, and they give out ink. So do squid (when they're frightened, anyway). Hence the Italian calamari, the food-word for squid.
You're probably going to be seeing quite a few concepts out of this book over time... at the moment I'm reading Martha Barnette's Ladyfingers and Nun's Tummies, which is about the origins of food words. It's a browsing sort of book... not the sort of thing that's easy to read at one go (because no matter how interesting, it still gets a bit repetitive after awhile), but nice for picking up for an odd 5-10 minutes when you're looking for something to fill time. The drawback to reading a food book, of course, is that one feels compelled to *cook* things. Last night, for example, I made Spaghetti Caruso, named for guess-who.
Anyway, Barnette makes some delightful linguistic side-jaunts at times, and one of them is what I wanted to share: the word boudoir (which she mentions because ladyfingers are also known in England as boudoir biscuits) has an amusing etymology. The word means "a lady's private sitting room or bedroom." It's the sort of word one associates with Regency romances and bodice-rippers, yes? A voluptuous sort of word. Well, that's not quite how it started. It's derived from the Old French word bouder, meaning "to sulk" (is this how we got "boo-hoo"?... oh. That's interesting. Boohoo is another word for a sailfish. For that matter, so is woohoo. Maybe one is what you use for the one you caught, and the other is the one that got away? :-D). So anyway, back to my original point... I'm deeply amused that the original meaning of "boudoir" was "a private room for sulking." Those tempermental French, eh?
And for another amusing word origin from the same source... you're familiar with the avocado, yes? You probably know that it also goes by the name "alligator pear" because, well, it's sort of pear-shaped, but the rough, dark-green "hide" is reminiscent of an alligator's, right? Well, that's not what it reminded the Aztecs of. The Aztecs called it ahuacatl, which is their word for "testicle," and the Spanish lifted the word entire and took a stab at spelling it in Spanish. (For that matter, the Spanish spelling is the same as the original Spanish word for "lawyer"-- I wonder what THAT implies?)
And guacamole? Same source, actually, for all that it sounds like such a different word. The Aztec word is ahuacamolli-- ahuacatl + molli, sauce (the same word that shows up as mole, a spicy sauce in Mexican and South American cooking). The Spanish spelling of that jaw-breaker turned into "guacamole." Voila.
Alright, you get a few more than two, today.
Not everything I learn is something I necessarily *want* to know about. Some of it... ::shakes head:: ..some things I'd just rather not give head-space. But as Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," so it's as important (perhaps *more* important) to give attention to the less-than-stellar moments of our history, as to our sucesses.
One of the failures of our country's past (and, let's face it, present) is how we have dealt with the issue of race. The topic came up for me because a friend of a friend was interested in the concept of "passing" in literature-- that is, when a person of one sex or race attempts to pass him- or herself off as another, and so enter a segment of society from which they might otherwise be barred. (For example, a woman dressing as a man in order to fight as a soldier-- that's a popular example of "passing" that goes waaaaaaay back.) Specifically, this friend was looking for instances of race-related passing set in the "Jim Crow" era of the South. (That, by the way, was "new thing" number one, right there. I knew basically what "Jim Crow laws" were, but I didn't know the origin of the term, or realize the full scope of civil wrongs they protected and perpetuated. I thought they only concerned the unfair voting practices.) And when I started looking into it, I turned up a whole bunch of things I didn't know but probably should have.
It's sort of funny for me to look at the dates on these events... the entire Civil Rights Movement happened before I was born. I know this sounds horribly self-centered, but to me, anything that didn't happen in my lifetime is as much "done deal, history" as, say, WW II, the American Revolution, or the Magna Carta. I grew up with affirmative action, equal opportunity, universal suffrage... to me, "the black vote" is just another liberal faction the Democrats court, which (to me, anyway) has more to do these days with black activists and politicians than a major segment of the voting population. I can't even *conceive* of the level of prejudice that would cause someone to install two water fountains for white and black. I mean... it's silly. And when you get down to it, it's still the same water anyway, isn't it?
But really, none of this happened *that* far before I was born. And to my dad, it's like the Cold War, or Apartheid is to me. It's "over," sort of, but he can remember being in the thick of it. He remembers hearing Dr. King on the radio, live. He remembers the bussing, and the sit-ins, and the riots. He can remember when the local bank refused to sell a house to a middle-class black couple down the road from us. (They lived in an apartment in the city and wanted a house in the 'burbs, so that their kids could grow up with trees around them. They'd done all their business by mail, so the bank didn't even realize they were black until they came in to sign the final papers. Their realtor was so appalled at the way they'd been treated, after dealing in good faith, that he bought the house outright from the bank and sold it to the couple the same afternoon.)
It's just hard for me to remember sometimes that for a lot of people, this still isn't considered "history".... so. Whew. This is getting REALLY long. On with the lesson, I'll try to keep the rest of it brief....
To begin with, I learned that most "passing" literature about the Jim Crow era (or earlier) was written *during* the Jim Crow era, and had an awfully hard time getting published. I learned that Mark Twain wrote a novel in this genre (Pudd'nhead Wilson). I learned that this was a popular theme with authors of the Harlem Renaissance-- some of whom, like Charles Waddell Chesnutt, were writing semi-autobiographically (Chesnutt himself was very light-skinned, and when his stories were first printed in the Atlantic Monthly, the publisher withheld the fact that he was black).
Then I learned about some of the social and legal inequalities that made "passing" such a risky proposition (well... risky if you got caught, anyway). I learned, to my disgust, about miscegenation and the one drop theory (just how far will people go to make up stupid rationalizations of why they're "better" than the next guy? Pretty damn far). And while we're on the subject of blood-- I also learned what an octoroon was. (And no, it has nothing to do with coconut-almond cookies, or a dark brownish-purple-red.) I learned that the state of Kentucky ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution 112 years late, in 1976 (um... whoops?).
And to my relief, when I was done with all this, I learned that I can hear this online.
If anyone's curious about the bibliography I finally came up with, I can post it here. There are some really great books in the list.
It's amazing what context can do for understanding. Today we received a book I'd ordered for the library, and I got spam. (Yes, I know: woohoo.) I was browsing-- ahem-- checking the condition of the book when I ran across a term I *thought* I knew. And actually, I did, sort of, I just had a bad understanding of it.
I'd heard of a "Fresnel lens" (pronounced fray-NELL) from my theater friends in college, and I knew it was a type of spotlight. Without bothering to look it up (oh, shame!), I'd assumed it was a type of lens that focused light ( so you get this = instead of this < ). Well... sort of. You know those cheap plastic "magnifier pages," the ones with all the concentric circles inscribed into one side? Guess what? *That's* a Fresnel lens, too. A Fresnel lens, named for Augustin Jean Fresnel, is "a compound lens formed by placing around a central convex lens [concentric] rings of glass [or plastic] so curved as to have the same focus; used... for concentrating light in a particular direction." (Dictionary.com) They were originally designed for use in lighthouses, where being able to get a LARGE, thin lens to throw light far out to sea was more important than having a long focal length. And so, voila, spotlights. And car headlights. And lighthouses. And overhead projectors. And those little plastic flimsies that help you magnify text on a page. Cool, neh?
And as for the spam... occasionally I get semi-interesting spam. It doesn't make me want to open it any more than I open regular spam, but I sort of like the ones that string together random words from the dictionary for their subject lines. One contained a word I'd seen before, but only knew a rather, um, dated definition for. I'll let you guess for yourself which definition of lorica I already knew. ^_^
Well, this is the day for names-no-one-seems-to-know-but-should. Here's another one for you: Victor Gruen. Never heard of him? Nope, probably not. Ever been to a shopping mall? Yes? Well, up until about 50 years ago, the shopping mall as Americans know and love(?) it-- huge blank box, oceans of parking lot, multiple levels with anchor stores at either end and chain-stores within along a central indoor promenade-- didn't exist. Victor Gruen, an urban planner and architect from Vienna, created it, and malls ever since have been built on his model.
Think about it: one man with his vision of an ideal America, a piece of architecture that would offer convenience for businessman and consumer alike and enrich people's communities and lives... and his model would completely change the face of American consumerism, if not in the way he expected. Later in life, when he saw what his "enclosed mall" concept created-- the rampant consumerism, the destruction of local businesses, the suburban sprawl-- he became disillusioned with the American dream. He left the U.S. for his home country of Austria, only to discover that America had gotten there first. There was a new mall just south of his hometown of Vienna, putting local shops out of business and sucking away the city's charm and life. He died February 14, 1980, barely two years after moving back home.
There's a new book out about him (actually, it came out at the end of last year, but I've just started seeing pub alerts about it now) entitled Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream. Go read, it's fascinating, and a little heartbreaking-- the New Yorker (3/15/04 issue) has a good article about him.
My other new thing of the day isn't a book *yet,* but I hope it soon will be. Amir Nayef Toma al-Sayegh is a retired Iraq soldier who makes his living these days as a translator. He translates auto repair manuals from English into Arabic for Iraqi mechanics. Since the American invasion last year, he's also been documenting and translating the more than 1,700 pieces of commentary he's found on the walls of post-Saddam Hussein Baghdad in the form of graffiti. Under Saddam, political graffiti was not only illegal, it was often fatal. Infractions would be punished with long jail time and sometimes execution. Since the Americans, "taggers" have been using the walls to anonymously explore and sometimes test the limits of their freedom of speech. "If these walls could speak," indeed. Go read.
I don't expect this name to spark instant recognition in many people-- I'll freely admit it didn't in me. You've probably never met him or seen him on TV. If you've seen his name at all, it was most likely in passing and wouldn't have registered.
But if you speak English, if you've ever listened to the radio, if you've ever written an essay, if you've ever had to look up a word in the dictionary... this man has had an impact on your life, and you didn't even realize it.
Robert Burchfield was the Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries. From 1957 until his retirement in 1986, he worked on and published the four volumes of the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, about six thousand pages' worth of update to the original OED. (As a side note, he's the editor responsible for getting all those naughty "four-letter words" included for the first time, as well as a number of "Americanisms," jargon, and slang words. He believed in inclusivity of language over exclusivity.) After his retirement, his Supplement was electronically incorporated into the original OED to produce the 20-volume Second Edition (which is what we use now).
As a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, he studied under such eminent professors as C. T. Onions (Fellow Librarian of Magdalen at Oxford, and the last editor of the first edition of the OED), Jack Bennett, C. S. Lewis, Gabriel Turville-Petre, and finally J. R. R. Tolkien, who was his graduate supervisor.
While the Supplement was his masterwork, it certainly was not his only work. In 1981 he published The Spoken Word, the results of his survey of spoken English on the BBC. It continues to be used as a pronunciation and usage guide for broadcasters, and after its publication Mr. Burchfield was frequently consulted by the press and media as the final authority on the English tongue. In 1995, Cambridge University Press hired him for a complete rewrite and update of H. W. Fowler's popular Modern English Usage, originally published in 1926.
John Simpson, the current Chief Editor of the OED, says this of his predecessor:
"He will perhaps be best remembered for two things: for championing the ‘varieties’ of world English, and ensuring that these were accorded their rightful place in the Dictionary, and as the editor responsible for including the previously ‘taboo’ Anglo-Saxon four-letter words in the OED. The editorial traditions of the OED today owe much to Bob Burchfield's no-nonsense, practical approach to a task of gargantuan proportions. He didn't suffer fools gladly; he didn't suffer fools at all."
Robert Burchfield died in Abingdon, Oxfordshire on July 5, 2004. He was suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease.
As one English major to another, thank you, Mr. Burchfield.
Believe it or not, these two things didn't *start out* related. A friend suggested a cool... well, alright, incredibly GEEKY way for me to blog more often.
As I aspire to learn at least two new things a day, she suggested I blog them. (She claimed that people other than me would be interested in it. If I bore you to tears with my obscurity, you can go blame her. I, of course, will hog all the credit if this entertains you.)
And so, the dubious fruit of my labors for today: slime mold and bit of procedural verbiage from the Senate.
Today I learned that slime mold isn't exactly a mold, and it's not exactly a single organism, either. They're frequently classified as protoctists, as they have characteristics of both plants and animals. They're basically just a slushy mass of protoplasm-- think of a gang of amoeba hanging out-- but they reproduce by spores, like fungi.
And in a completely (no, really!) unrelated search, I learned that there *is* a way to end a filibuster (that is, blocking a bill by B.S.'ing endlessly about it on the Senate Floor) in the U.S. Senate: by invoking something called "cloture." From the Senate's own glossary, cloture is "the only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes." And that's basically why the gay marriage ban amendment failed in the Senate-- they couldn't pass cloture.
Today, on the way home from work, I realized I was low on gas and so made a detour to fill up. And suddenly, there it was, heading in the other direction down the four lane: a giant plastic Holstein cow being pulled on a trailer behind an ice cream truck. I was lucky I was coming to a red stop light, or I probably would have crashed into something in doing my triple-take.
And lest you think I lie (for lo, truth really IS stranger than fiction):
Turkey Hill Dairy's Giant Cow.
