Lanny-yap: March 2013

30 March 2013

Easter 2013

Ms. Lanny-yap's perennial favorite

27 March 2013

Words And Phrases We Need To Resurrect

A "polar bear plunger"
experiences "curglaff."
Source

Snoutfair - a person with a handsome countenance.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Pussyvan - a flurry, temper.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Wonder-wench - a sweetheart.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Lunting - walking while smoking a pipe.
John Mactaggart’s Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824.

California widow - a married woman whose husband is away from her for any extended period.
John Farmer’s Americanisms Old and New, 1889.

Groak - to silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them. www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Jirble - to pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram.
www.Wordnik.com

Curglaff - the shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water.
John Jamieson’s Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808.

Spermologer - picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Tyromancy - divining by the coagulation of cheese.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Beef-witted - having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef.
John Phin’s Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and Glossary, 1902.

Queerplungers - cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea each, and the supposed drowned person, pretending he was driven to that extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket.
The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Englishable - that which may be rendered into English.
John Ogilvie’s Comprehensive English Dictionary, 1865.

Resistentialism - the seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects.
www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Bookwright - a writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt.
Daniel Lyons’s Dictionary of the English Language, 1897.

Soda-squirt - one who works at a soda fountain in New Mexico.
Elsie Warnock’s Dialect Speech in California and New Mexico, 1919.

With squirrel - pregnant.
Vance Randolph’s Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech, 1953.

Zafty - a person very easily imposed upon.
Maj. B. Lowsley’s A Glossary of Berkshire Words and Phrases, 1888.

I must be bacon-witted.

Death and Taxes

Bedtime Bandit

YouTube

From the mom who posted this video:

This is what our 2 yr old does at night. He picks the lock to his sister's room and takes her stuff ... We caught it on video.

Via Gawker

20 March 2013

Over One Million Gun Deaths In U.S. Since John Lennon Was Shot

The death of a loved one is a hollowing experience. After 33 years our son Sean and I still miss him. Yoko Ono Lennon twitter.com/yokoono/status…
— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) March 20, 2013

Via Brooklyn Mutt

19 March 2013

NOVA | Becoming Human, Episode One

YouTube

Where did we come from? What makes us human? This three-part series investigates dramatic new discoveries that are transforming the picture of how we became human. The first program explores fresh clues about our earliest ancestors in Africa, including the stunningly complete fossil nicknamed 'Lucy's Child'. These three million-year-old bones from Ethiopia reveal humanity's oldest and most telltale trait: upright walking rather than a big brain.

18 March 2013

Monkey Monday | Chimp Chooses Human Porn

Photo by Pablo Herreros

Gina [the chimpanzee is] a resident of the Seville Zoo in Spain. To enliven Gina's nights, officials apparently decided to install a television, protected behind glass, and gave her a remote control so she could change the channels herself.

... “The surprise was when they found that within a few days, Gina was not only using the remote control perfectly well, but that she also used to choose the porn channel for entertainment ... ” [primatologist Pablo] Herreros wrote. “Although a small study estimated that porn films are only watched for about 12 minutes on average, the truth is that human and non-human primates possess an intense sexual life.”

NY Daily News

14 March 2013

Amazon | Catch & Release Spider Thingee

The perfect gadget for kids who want to catch and study insects or for anyone who needs to get rid of a bug without touching or killing it. Plastic, long-handled tool has fiber-optic bristles that open and close with a squeeze of the trigger. It's designed to trap and remove spiders, moths, bees and other insects from a safe distance quickly, cleanly and without harm. At about 26" long, you'll be able to grab bugs hiding in hard-to-reach places.

Only $9.99

For tomB

12 March 2013

Snapdragon | Bug Circus Generator

YouTube

Thanks, Rick

Best Of Criggo

Happiness Is ...

Pleated Jeans

Article: Chocolate can give you the same high as opium

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RECOMMENDED: The Death of Expertise

From Amazon: People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. Nichols has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy-or in the worst case, a combination of both. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

RECOMMENDED: The Magic of Reality

From Amazon: Richard Dawkins, bestselling author and the world’s most celebrated evolutionary biologist, has spent his career elucidating the many wonders of science. Here, he takes a broader approach and uses his unrivaled explanatory powers to illuminate the ways in which the world really works. Filled with clever thought experiments and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena: How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? Starting with the magical, mythical explanations for the wonders of nature, Dawkins reveals the exhilarating scientific truths behind these occurrences. This is a page-turning detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well. Click the pic to buy the book at Amazon.

RECOMMENDED: Decoding Your Dog

From Amazon: "More than ninety percent of dog owners consider their pets to be members of their family. But often, despite our best intentions, we are letting our dogs down by not giving them the guidance and direction they need. Unwanted behavior is the number-one reason dogs are relinquished to shelters and rescue groups. The key to training dogs effectively is first to understand why our dogs do what they do. And no one can address this more authoritatively than the diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Behavior, whose work, the culmination of years of rigorous training, takes them deep into the minds of dogs in an effort to decode how they think, how they communicate, and how they learn. In Decoding Your Dog, these experts analyze problem behaviors, decipher the latest studies, and correct common misconceptions and outmoded theories. The book includes:effective, veterinary-approved positive training methods, expert advice on socialization, housetraining, diet, and exercise, and remedies for behavior problems such as OCD and aggression."

RECOMMENDED: The Sixth Extinction

From Amazon: "Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.'

RECOMMENDED: When Strangers Meet

From Amazon: When Strangers Meet argues for the pleasures and transformative possibilities of talking to people you don’t know. Our lives are increasingly insular. We are in a hurry, our heads are down, minds elsewhere, we hear only the voices we already recognize and rarely take the effort to experience something or someone new. Talking to strangers pulls you into experiences of shared humanity and creates genuine emotional connections. It opens your world. Passing interactions cement your relationship to the places you live and work and play, they’re beautiful interruptions in the steady routines of our lives. In luminous prose, Stark shows how talking to strangers wakes you up. Threaded throughout are powerful vignettes from Stark’s own lifelong practice of talking to strangers and documenting brief encounters, along with a deep exploration of the dynamics of where, how, and why strangers come together. Ultimately, When Strangers Meet explores the rich emotional and political meanings that are conjured up in even the briefest conversations and unexpected connections with strangers. Stark renders visible the hidden processes by which we decide who to greet and trust in passing, and the unwritten rules by which these encounters operate. When Strangers Meet teaches readers how to start talking to strangers and includes adventurous challenges for those who dare.

RECOMMENDED: Shrink-Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work

RECOMMENDED: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

From Booklist: "Science writer Kean explores the vagaries and inconsistencies of the human brain via diverting stories that chronicle medical science’s fits and starts. To say these are diverting is, however, an oversimplification since their subjects—primarily unfortunate individuals with brain injuries—command sympathy if not empathy. Yet Kean’s focus is on their contribution to the field of neuroscience along with, in too many instances, the misguided misinformation of the medical professionals who treated them. Take the case of France’s King Henry II. When he lost his right eye plus a bit of his brain to a poorly aimed jousting spear, his physicians’ limited knowledge of the brain’s physiognomy cost him his life. Then there’s President Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, whose undiagnosed bipolar mind was further addled by syphilis and who, naturally . . . thought himself fit for politics. To pick up one of these stories is to lose oneself in them. Where does the brain end and the mind begin? Curious readers will find both brain and mind fully revved up while engaging with this powerfully appealing and thought-provoking work of neuroscience history."

RECOMMENDED: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

From Amazon: According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of presidential elections.

RECOMMENDED: Gulf War Vets: The Richest Of Resources

From Amazon: "We are now poised as a country either to repeat the mistakes of the Vietnam era or to create the services and supports that our returning veterans deserve." This research focuses on the importance of using an integrated change management approach to bring together the civilian, corporate, and military communities to support veterans of the Global War on Terror, specifically those veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using force field analysis methodology and original survey research, the study includes a review of the current literature on Gulf War Era veterans in the areas of the labor market, diversity, employee assistance, human resources (HR), behavioral health, disability, and career management. Survey respondents … identified nine forces they believe have a large impact on change in corporate policies, practices, and programs related to the employment, engagement in productive work, and retention and advancement of veterans. The[y] … also identified the seven factors they believe are most important in effecting a change in corporations' approach to employing Gulf War Era veterans … Employers, labor market experts, educators, and human services professionals must be prepared to welcome these veterans home and support them as they navigate the social, political, and economic turbulence challenging our country now and in the coming years. Click the pic to buy the book at Amazon.

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Absurdity, ambiguity, anomalies, bacon, behavior, bonobos, brain science, consciousness, conversation, design, evolution, expressive arts, extremes, food, frontiers, gadgets, hermetics, humor, ingenuity, irony, maps, martinis, mental health, monkeys, mysteries, mysticism, nonsense, oddness, paradoxes, phenomenology, rocks, semantics, sf, social justice, spirituality, technology, tilt-shift and time-lapse, the visual presentation of data, anthropo-, bio-, eco-, etho-, ethno-, psycho- and sociology

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