The mediaeval fable “Belling the Cat” comes with the moral that a planned undertaking should be both advantageous and feasible.
T.S. Eliot’s term “Jellicle Cat” came about when his four year old goddaughter, hearing the term “angelical cat” asked “What’s a Jellicle Cat”
Although born in St. Louis to an old-line Yankee family, Thomas Stearns Eliot emigrated to England and was naturalized as a UK citizen. That compensated for Wystan Hugh “W.H.” Auden, who made the reverse journey, in the poetic Law of Conservation of Transatlantic Citizenship.
T. S Eliot once remarked “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Jonathan Larson would later write the lyrics in Rent’s Seasons of Love:
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, W. C. Fields played Larson E. Whipsnade, the owner of a carnival who feuded with his main act, Charlie McCarthy.
Gary Larson was so nervous when he first met with a representative of a comics syndicate that he left his portfolio behind. He soon got a call from the representative, who said “These are sick… I love them!” Soon The Far Side was making its historic mark on the funny pages.
The far side of the moon has far more craters, and fewer maria, than the near side of the moon.
The moon is tidally locked to the earth, which means the same face always faces the earth, and as the moon orbits the earth the earth’s tides bulge towards the moon. The moon, therefore, is in a synchronous rotation around the earth. Lunar libration is the a slow rocking back and forth of the moon as viewed from the earth - the same side of the moon always faces the earth, but the moon also rocks a little bit, such that over time, we can see slightly more than half of the moon’s surface - about 59% of it.
This site gives a good, fast-motion animation of the moon’s libration:
http://www.wwu.edu/skywise/lunar_libration.html
Pretty cool.
The word ‘libration’ is derived from the Latin libra, a balance or set of scales.
This is also the source of the name of the zodiacal sign.
lbs. is the abbreviation for pounds and comes as the plural from libra. This usage came from early borrowing from the Latin pondo “pound,” originally in libra pondo “a pound by weight.”
Plural is one of two grammatical numbers used in English; the other is singular.
Other languages can have more than two grammatical numbers. Some, like Ancient Greek, had three numbers:
- singular, referring to one item;
- dual, referring to two items, particularly when they came in pairs e.g. eyes
- plural, referring to many items.
Old English also had a dual grammatical number, but it died out. Dual is still part of Icelandic, which shared similarities with Old English.
In Iceland they drink more Coca Cola per capita than anywhere else in the world.
The Parliament of Iceland, the Alþingi, is one of the oldest parliaments in the world. Its original meeting place was in the fields of þingvellir, outside Reykjavik.
Icelandic is the only living language that uses the Runic letter thorn (Þþ), which transliterates to th.
A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. For most dialects of English, the phrase “no highway cowboys” contains five distinct diphthongs.
Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move significantly and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong.
Gliding is a hobby/sport where people fly unpowered craft known as gliders, staying aloft using wind currents.
The wind apparently comes sweeping down the plain in Oklahoma.
These lines from Dorothea Mackellar’s poem *My Country *are often quoted in Australia:
Burnt Orange and White are the official school colors of the University of Texas at Austin.