maitani

maitani imported maitani's feed
Monthly etymological gleanings for May 2013 | OUPblog - http://blog.oup.com/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Language controlled by ruling powers? Very much depends on whether the country has a language academy that decides what is correct and what is wrong. Even in the absence of such an organization, a committee consisting of respected scholars and politicians sometimes lays down the law. Spelling is a classic case of “ruling the language.” Once a certain norm is established, deviations in printed sources become impossible. Exceptions are rare. For instance, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, some American journals allowed their contributors to use “simplified” variants (liket for liked, and so forth). Other than that, languages like English, Spanish, French, and German (to mention a few) have what is called the Standard. Editors and teachers enforce it, but in oral communication people are free to go their own way, which they do. Consider the universal use of ain’t, and the war on it by the “establishment.” Sometimes the rules imposed on speakers enjoy universal support. Modern Icelandic is a case in point. Icelanders believe that they should avoid borrowings and welcome native substitutes. By contrast, no one likes English spelling (see Masha Bell’s comment on her mail). Yet the illogical rules will be upheld until some “power”changes them." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
BBC News - India's ancient university returns to life - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"It was an eminent centre of learning long before Oxford, Cambridge and Europe's oldest university Bologna were founded." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

Cool! - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
LAWDI 2013 Websites - A list of websites associated with the attendees at the 2013 running of the Linked Ancient World Data Institute - http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/LAWDI_2...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"A list of websites associated with the attendees at the 2013 running of the Linked Ancient World Data Institute" - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
The Hell of Being Christopher Robin « Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog - http://www.strangehistory.net/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Put in these terms it cannot have been easy to be, say, Alice Liddell or Christopher Robin Milne. In the case of Christopher Robin at least we have a little window into the human test-tube: for CR wrote a book describing the hell of being Christopher Robin, The Enchanted Places (1974). In this book Christopher Robin describes how his father first wrote the poems and the books. The warning signs were there for all to see. It seems that writing the books was essentially an excuse not to be with his son, or perhaps better, to be with him in a different way." - maitani - -

"Your mentor – a father, a family friend… – tells you, and then writes a series of stories where you are the hero. You can’t help but notice, however, that said mentor spends more time at the typewriter than reading these stories to you: the first bad sign? Then the publications appear and you see you, but not you, in some crass illustrations in a 4×8 book. Then, Disney start negotiating over the films rights and the nasty boys and girls at school go to the cinema to see ‘you’ running off with the fairies or making a house in the Never Ever Tree. Bad days follow. For the rest of your adolescence every time that someone holds up one of those damn volumes you feel nauseous. Yet that is what you are and you nothing you do will allow you to cut the ball and chain of your childhood fame." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Arrested Development: The English language in cut-offs | OUPblog - http://blog.oup.com/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Arrested Development—the cult comedy set to rise from the dead on Netflix 26 May 2013—had its own distinctive language. It was a show of catchphrases. “I’ve made a huge mistake.” “No touching!” “I’m a monster!” “There’s always money in the Banana Stand.” “Steve Holt!” “Her?” Unlike 30 Rock, Seinfeld, or The Simpsons, Arrested Development didn’t crank out many new words. Much like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Arrested Development took characters, rather than language, to the limit. Sure, there was hop-on, as in “You’re gonna get some hop-ons” (while driving the preposterous stair car). “Douche chill” was a memorable exclamation by Tobias, though it was used in only one episode. Cornballer is a fun word for a ridiculously unsafe product that produced delicious cornballs and first-degree burns." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
The History of the Tulip ~ Kuriositas - http://www.kuriositas.com/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The Himalayan mountain range was the original home of the tulip even though most of us associate the flower with the Netherlands. How it got there makes for a fascinating story, from the courts of the Turkish dynasties to its Dutch arrival, this animation gives us the whole history. That shouldn’t really be too much of a surprise as it was created especially for the Tulip Museum in Amsterdam by Stepahne Kaas, an independent Dutch maker of film, documentaries, short fiction, music videos, commercials and this." - maitani - -

"When the tulip got there it was considered such a rare and interesting flower that it sparked something of a social frenzy which would eventually lead to the down fall of an entire economy (known as the tulip bubble). It’s amazing to think that a single flower could be responsible for all of that, but watch the video and discover the truth for yourself!" - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
A Digital Tutorial For Ancient Greek Based on John William White's First Greek Book - http://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGr...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"John William White's First Greek Book was originally published in 1896. The book contains a guided curriculum built around the language and vocabulary of Xenophon’s Anabasis. This digital tutorial is an evolving edition that is designed to run on both traditional browsers, tablet devices, and phones. Each lesson includes drill and practice exercises in addition to the text itself. The site also includes tab-delimited files for all of the vocabulary and grammar that can be imported into flashcard programs." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

Introduction <a rel="nofollow" href="http://daedalus.umkc.edu/... ; title="http://daedalus.umkc.edu/... ; - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Fwd: North American birds made from Lego – in pictures - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeand... (via http://friendfeed.com/theguar...)

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Sweet! - maitani - -

Ever since I gave Lego bricks to my son, and that was a very long time ago, I have particularly enjoyed looking at Lego toys. I didn't have Lego when I was a child. :-) - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Storchencam | Storchennest-Hoechstadt.de - http://storchennest-hoechstadt.de/live-ca...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

so does the stork visit the stork to bring more storks? - maitani - -

12 other comments... | Show last 10...

:-) - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Gogol Bordello - My Companjera (acoustic) - YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Immigraniada <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.youtube.com/wa... ; title="http://www.youtube.com/wa... ; - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Games With Words - http://www.gameswithwords.org/VerbCor...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Ultimately, we hope to probe dozens of aspects of the meaning of thousands of verbs. This is a massive project, which is why we need your help! We will be sharing the results of this project freely with scientists and the public alike, and we expect it to make a valuable contribution to linguistics, psychology, and computer science." - maitani - -

"Dictionaries have existed for centuries, but scientists still haven't worked out the exact meanings for most words. At VerbCorner, we are trying to work out what verbs mean. Rather than try to work out the definition of a word all at once, we have broken the problem into a series of tasks. Each task has a fanciful backstory -- which we hope you enjoy! -- but at its heart, each task is asking about a specific component of meaning that scientists suspect makes up one of the building blocks of verb meaning." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
BBC News - How religions change their mind - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Once upon a time, animal sacrifice was an important part of Hindu life, Catholic priests weren't celibate and visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad were part of Islamic art. And soon some churches in the UK may be marrying gay couples. How do religions manage to change their mind?" - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
For Plants, Polyploidy Is Not a Four-Letter Word | The Artful Amoeba, Scientific American Blog Network - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"For animals, inheriting more than the usual two copies of DNA is usually a very bad thing. It can happen when two sperm fertilize one egg, or when sexual cell division errs, leaving a sperm or an egg with double the approved payload. But for animal embryos, the result is usually the same: death. This is particularly true in mammals and birds, where more than two copies — a condition termed polyploidy — produces something euphemistically termed “general developmental disruption”. Practically speaking, this means system meltdown, and it happens very quickly. In humans, three or more whole genome copies occurs in about 5% of human miscarriages." - maitani - -

"Only two cases of successful polyploidy are known among birds, and only one among mammals: the South American red viscacha rat (which is much cuter than it sounds). It has four copies of its genome, which makes it tetraploid." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Vulcans through the eye of the bottleneck : Gene Expression - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Yes, there is a remnant of ten thousand Vulcans left. At the end of the movie, we are told that they have found a new planet to settle on. Still, we must ask: If we are now in a new timeline and all we have left are a few thousand survivors, will the Vulcans have any political influence at all? Or will they just become a relic on a museum planet? Spock even refers to his people as an endangered species." - maitani - -

"I noticed during Peter Ralph and Graham Coop’s Ask Me Anything about their new paper, The Geography of Recent Genetic Ancestry across Europe, someone brought up the effects of plague. Recall that ~1/3 of Europe’s population died during the Black Death. And population size reductions on the order of ~50% due to epidemics are not unknown in human history. Surely this would have a major genetic effect? Well, in fact it would have a genetic effect due to possible adaptations to disease (see CCR5). But there would be little overall impact on genetic diversity, at least in the short term. That is because for bottlenecks to produce major change in the genetic character of a population they have to be rather extreme in magnitude. This issue came to mind for me in 2009 when I watched Stark Trek. If you haven’t watched the J. J. Abrams reboot, and are a spoilerphobe, read no more! Now, with that out of the way you may recall that during this film the Vulcans suffered a genocidal attack. Out of billions of Vulcans only ~10,000 survived. Here’s some commentary on the possible consequences, New Star Trek Movie: A Vulcan Holocaust?" - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. 1828-1877. | Scribd - http://de.scribd.com/collect...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Goran Bregovic feat. Eugene Hütz (of Gogol Bordello) - Be That Man http://www.youtube.com/watch...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Champagne for Gypsies Album Trailer <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.youtube.com/wa... ; title="http://www.youtube.com/wa... ; - maitani - -

3 other comments...

He is performing with great musicians. - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Language Evolution: The Inca Connection: A Quechua Word Game - http://langevo.blogspot.de/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Excellent series of posts and a blog to follow. Thanks for sharing once more. - maitani - -

2 other comments...

LOL. - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Oxford Digital Library - Flora Graeca for the 21st century - http://www2.odl.ox.ac.uk/gsdl...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Sibthorp and Smith's Flora Graeca, illustrated by Ferdinand Bauer and often described as 'Oxford's finest botanical treasure', is considered the most splendid and expensive Flora ever produced. The collections include not only the printed volumes but also the original hand-coloured drawings from which the printed engravings were made, the original botanical specimens they illustrate, unpublished drawings of the Fauna Graeca and a unique series of topographical Mediterranean Scenes, also never published. Accompanying these are diaries and notebooks from the two expeditions to the Levant in which Sibthorp set out to discover the wild plants described by Dioscorides in c.AD 60- and in doing so laid the foundations for modern botanical exploration." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Bess of Hardwick's Letters | The complete correspondence, 1550-1608 - http://www.bessofhardwick.org/home...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Bess of Hardwick's Letters brings together, for the first time, the remarkable letters written to and from Bess of Hardwick. Bess of Hardwick (c.1521/2-1608) is one of Elizabethan England's most famous figures. She is renowned for her reputation as a dynast and indomitable matriarch and perhaps best known as the builder of great stately homes like the magnificent Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House. The story of her life told to date typically emphasises her modest birth, her rise through the ranks of society, her four husbands, each of greater wealth than the last, and her ambitious aggrandisement of her family. Bess's letters bring to life her extraordinary story and allow us to eavesdrop on her world. The letters allow us to reposition Bess as a complex woman of her times, immersed in the literacy and textual practices of everyday life as she weaves a web of correspondence that stretches from servants, friends and family, to queens and officers of state." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Minoans, First Advanced European Civilization, Originated From Europe Not Africa : D-brief - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the skeletons of 37 well-preserved ancient Minoans found in a cave in east-central Crete. The team compared the mtDNA from the remains with that of 135 modern and ancient populations." - maitani - -

4 other comments...

A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nature.com/nco... ; title="http://www.nature.com/nco... ; - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Bhutan’s Paradoxical Development | GeoCurrents - http://geocurrents.info/economi...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Bhutan has been lauded by many critics of the global economic order for its heterodox position on development. The Bhutanese government’s recent decision to convert all agriculture to organic methods has received an especially favorable response from the environmental press. As one recent article put it:" - maitani - -

2 other comments...

"The economy of Bhutan, one of the world’s smallest and least developed, is based on agriculture and forestry, which provide the main livelihood for more than 60% of the population. Agriculture consists largely of subsistence farming and animal husbandry. Rugged mountains dominate the terrain and make the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
3quarksdaily: The skies and scenes of Südtirol: Photographs - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarks...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

These photographs remind me of a vacation I once spent in a village near Brixen, Onach. - maitani - -

"The light is very dramatic in the mountains of the Eisacktal at sunrise and sunset and changes from minute to minute. Even at a given time the sky can often look completely different in different directions. Yesterday evening I took a walk from my house in Brixen to the nearby village of Neustift and took some photographs along the way. Here they are without further commentary:" - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Handel över havet 2000 år före vikingarna - Vetandets värld (Trade over the sea, 2,000 years before the Vikings) - http://sverigesradio.se/sida...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Moving metals or indigenous mining? Provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotopes and trace elements" Science Direct <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sciencedirect.... ; title="http://www.sciencedirect.... ; - maitani - -

2 other comments...

" It turns out that all examined Swedish subject except one - a slaggbit - comes from mines and ore deposits from sites in Cyprus, Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, the Massif Central in the current France, Tyrol and the British Isles. Copper has been transported, and in return it has been shipped back large amounts of amber. What emerges is a picture of a time when international contacts over large water was obvious, and there are already some 2000 years before the Vikings set off on their journeys." (Translation) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sverigesradio.se/s... ; title="http://sverigesradio.se/s... ; - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Official Blog: A picture of Earth through time - http://googleblog.blogspot.de/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Built from millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, you can explore this global, zoomable time-lapse map as part of TIME's new Timelapse project. View stunning phenomena such as the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon and urban growth in Las Vegas from 1984 to 2012:" - maitani - -

"Today, we're making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we're releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
The Last of the Great Chained Libraries | medievalfragments - http://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"On a beautiful sunny day last week, the Turning Over a New Leaf project team decided to take a day off from the office to visit a spectacular chained library in the small town of Zutphen (located in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Built in 1564 as part of the church of St Walburga, it is one of only five chained libraries in the world that survive ‘intact’—that is, complete with the original books, chains, rods, and furniture." - maitani - -

"Needless to say, it was a rather surreal moment for all of us to step into the little room to see the dark-wood lecterns, upon which were placed (in neat rows, side-by-side) beautiful 15th- and 16th-century books, secured in place by metal chains." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Light Speaking by V. Penelope Pelizzon - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrym...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Did he enjoy photographing cats? Was it aesthetically appealing? As appealing as snapping pictures of pussies? Or did freelance work really just add up to more money at the end of the week? I’ll never  know. He died when I was ten; my memories of him are sweet and self-absorbed. Some days he’d bring me with him to his darkroom in the city. At Government Center we’d get take-away donuts and milky coffee. All I can recall about his workspace are surfaces cluttered with electrical cords and the air’s sinus-chilling chemical smell. He’d have to clear a spot so we could spread napkins below our breakfast. But that rich milk of odors — lactose plus fructose plus fixer — seeped into my brain and obsessed me with photographs." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

"I discovered this sideline a few years ago when I inherited hundreds of negatives that had been in storage since his death in 1977. My dad had spent his life trying to succeed as a photographer. He’d had some early achievements as a filmmaker in Trieste after the war; his short documentary about that city won an award at the Venice Biennale. But after immigrating to the States in 1958, his artistic career stalled. Family needs — combined with quirky English — landed him in a  series of low-wage jobs. He was a gardener, a fry cook in a hotel, then an audio-visual specialist in a state mental hospital, where his tasks included making educational films about psychiatric treatments. His freelance work allowed him some creativity behind the lens, though many of his negatives show predictably “marketable” scenes: winsome animals, lobster boats at anchor, New England woods in the snow. I vaguely remember one commercial triumph when he sold a photo to a pet food company and thereafter our kittens appeared on the twenty-five-pound bags of kibble." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani

Warning!