dies Martis

 

 

Tucson Weather Today

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I will probably watch the debate between the two politicians tonight, although I expect no surprises. Neither will speak of anything new. No matter what questions are asked of them, each will merely repeat the same ol', same ol' metaphorical trash that has been oozing from their lying lips since... well... since always.

 

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For those who have never visited my personal website (not this blog) here is the LINK -- The opening page has a menu of links on the right side which will take you to additional pages, such as a short biography with some pictures from the past.

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I just viewed a ten minute video featuring a serious talk about Malala Yousuf Zai, the young girl who was shot in the head and neck by a radical 'Moslem'.

LINK

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Delancey Place has an interesting piece on the habit of defaulting by several U.S. States' debts back around 1839.

Excerpt:
By 1839, nine [state and territory] governments [including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Michigan, Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas, and the territory of Florida], responsible for two-thirds of all the American government debt in private hands, were routinely missing interest payments, attempting to sidestep creditors, or flatly repudiating their obligations. Across the Atlantic, investors were outraged.

Yankee Doodle borrows cash,
Yankee Doodle spends it,
And then he snaps his fingers at
The jolly flat who lends it.
Ask him when he means to pay,
He shews no hesitation,
But says he'll take the shortest way,
And that's repudiation!
--Literary Gazette, London, January 1845

LINK

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Any updates that occur to me throughout the day will go here...

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WORD FOR TODAY

macabre [muh-kah-bruh, or muh-kahb]
adjective
1.
gruesome and horrifying; ghastly; horrible.
2.
of, pertaining to, dealing with, or representing death.
3.
of or suggestive of the allegorical dance of death.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

 

 

Suzanne Somers

 

 

 

Born Oct 16, 1946
Age: 65 years old.

 

Suzanne Somers is an American actress, author, singer and businesswoman, known for her television roles as Chrissy Snow on Three's Company and as Carol Lambert on Step by Step.

Somers later became the author of a series of best-selling self-help books, including Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (2006), a book about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. She has also released two autobiographies, four diet books, and a book of poetry entitled "Touch Me" (1980). She currently features items of her design on ShopNBC.

She is criticized for her views on some medical subjects and her advocacy of the Wiley Protocol, which has been labelled as "scientifically unproven and dangerous". Her promotion of alternative cancer treatments has received criticism from the American Cancer Society.

Angela Lansbury

 

Born Oct 16, 1925
Age: 86 years old.

Angela Brigid Lansbury is a British actress and singer in theatre, television, and motion pictures. Her career has spanned eight decades and earned an unsurpassed number of performance Tony Awards (tied with Julie Harris and Audra McDonald), with five wins. Her first film appearance was in the film Gaslight (1944) as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).

Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her twelve-year run starring as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996).

Tim Robbins

 

Born Oct 16, 1958
Age: 53 years old.

Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon. He is known for his roles as Nuke in Bull Durham, Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, and as Dave Boyle in Mystic River, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Noah Webster

 

Born Oct 16, 1758
Died May 28, 1843

Noah Webster, Jr., was a lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education." His blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read, secularizing their education. According to Ellis (1979) he gave Americans "a secular catechism to the nation-state." His name became synonymous with "dictionary," especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.

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I am a man of few words, but many riddles.
--Frank Gorshin

Muslim Or Moslem?

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Tucson Weather Today


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I have noticed in my readings that many of the American and British blogs are, for good reason, recounting and commenting upon the horrors perpetrated by men on their women by the foreign followers of Islam. And I noticed that the word Muslim appears frequently. Throughout most of my life I, and everyone with whom I associated, used the word Moslem. Because that was how we were taught in school back then in the 1940s and 1950s.  I wondered whether there is actually a difference between Muslim and Moslem so I conducted a brief Google search.

The consensus seems to be that there is no real difference but that Moslems believe that there is.

According to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies,"Moslem and Muslim are basically two different spellings for the same word." But the seemingly arbitrary choice of spellings is a sensitive subject for many followers of Islam. Whereas for most English speakers, the two words are synonymous in meaning, the Arabic roots of the two words are very different. A Muslim in Arabic means "one who gives himself to God," and is by definition, someone who adheres to Islam. By contrast, a Moslem in Arabic means "one who is evil and unjust" when the word is pronounced, as it is in English, Mozlem with a z.

Ah-hah!

Here is a personal observation; even when I write it down as Muslim, my mind speaks it back to me as Moslem.

But, that's probably just me being me.

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"One day Americans will regret our Militant Atheism"



source . . .

Now that is an interesting observation.

I sure am glad I'm not an Atheist, and especially not a militant Atheist.

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WORD FOR TODAY

engage
verb
-  consume all of one's attention or time
-  carry out or participate in an activity; be involved in
-  get caught
-  give to in marriage

Engage means to bind, catch, or involve. If your sink is stopped up, engage, or hire, a plumber to fix it. Otherwise the smell of rotten food in the garbage disposal will engage your attention (in a bad way).

Engage comes from a French word for pledge. If you agree to marry your sweetheart, you are engaged to marry. If you engage the kid next door to water your plants, she will expect to be paid for it. Engagement is also used to talk about war or conflict. An army engages its enemy in battle, just as you might engage in debate with a traffic cop over whether the light was yellow or red.

source . . .

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Claudette Colbert

Born Sept 13, 1903
Died July 30, 1996

Claudette Colbert was a French-born American actress of stage and film. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures, and is recognized as one of the leading female exponents of screwball comedy. Colbert was the highest paid actress in American cinema during late 1930s, and later became a freelance performer. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her comedic performance in It Happened One Night (1934), and she also received Academy Award nominations for her dramatic roles in Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944).

Mel Torme

Born Sep 13, 1925
Died June 5, 1999

Melvin Howard Tormé, nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, known for his jazz singing. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, a drummer, an actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books. He composed the music for the classic holiday song "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") and co-wrote the lyrics with Bob Wells.

Roald Dahl

Born Sep 13, 1916

Died Nov 23, 1990

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter. Dahl rose to prominence in the 1940s, with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's best-selling authors. He has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". In 2008 The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, often very dark humor.

Some of his notable works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine and The BFG.

John J. Pershing

Born Sep 13, 1860
Died July 15, 1948

John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing was a general officer in the United States Army who led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Pershing is the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to the highest rank ever held in the United States Army--General of the Armies (a retroactive Congressional edict passed in 1976 promoted George Washington to the same rank but with higher seniority). Pershing holds the first United States officer service number (O-1). He was regarded as a mentor by the generation of American generals who led the United States Army in Europe during World War II, including George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley, and George S. Patton.


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I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
--Barack Obama