Answer to yesterday trivia question was Germany.
Answer will be posted on Tuesday.
Trivia Question: “Literature”
Filed under Trivia question
Monday morning writing joke: “habit”
Three women walk in and sit down at the bar. Two are in street clothes, modest attire. The third is in nun’s clothing.
Bartender asks them what they are having.
The two in street clothes say, “Boilermakers.”
The nun says, “Water.”
After the third round of drinks, when the other two women start getting loud and sloppy, the bartender asks the nun why she is hanging out with these two lushes.
“They are nuns, too,” she says calmly, “They have just gotten out of the habit.”
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
Trivia question: history
Filed under Poll, Trivia question
New words to live by: “fogget”
It is the first weekend of the month and time again for a new word to live. This is a word or phrase not currently in use in the U.S. English lexicon, but should be considered. Other words, such as obsurd, crumpify, subsus, flib, congressed, and others, can be found by clicking on the tags below. The new word for January is fogget. This is a combination of fog and forget.
fog, n. has several meanings, from a meteorological condition to a metaphorical one. For example:
1. a cloud-like mass or layer of minute water droplets or ice crystals near the surface of the earth, appreciably reducing visibility.
2. a darkened state of the atmosphere, or the diffused substance that causes it.
3. a state of mental confusion or unawareness.
forgetful, n. means apt to forget, and forget, v. means to fail or cease to remember.
Fogget, v. means to apt to have a vague sense of where somebody or something is. You don’t cease to remember, but you don’t completely remember either.
For example, with three children under the age of five, Alice was always foggetting where she put the kids’ extra diapers, pacifiers, and sundry other accoutrements of babyhood and toddlerdum. She knew she had them; she just wasn’t sure exactly where she or one of her kids had left the object inducing the crisis of the moment. She could only hope that at some point the foggetting, like the baby’s need for strained peas, would pass.
Filed under new word, New words to live by
‘Losing Yourself’ In A Fictional Character Can Affect Your Real Life – Ohio State Research and Innovation Communications
Below, a sample of the article. Click on the link above for the complete article.
“LOSING YOURSELF” IN A FICTIONAL CHARACTER CAN AFFECT YOUR REAL LIFE
COLUMBUS, Ohio – When you “lose yourself” inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behavior and thoughts to match that of the character, a new study suggests.
Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own – a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”
They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.
Filed under fictional character, losing yourself, reading
Photo finish Friday: “Rock of ages”
“Well, Captain, she’s either the biggest lump of coal Santa ever brought, or one of the largest dilithium crystal piles I’ve ever seem. Would explain what powers those eight tiny reindeer.”
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday, Uncategorized
What Do Y’All, Yinz, and Yix Call Stretchy Office Supplies? : The New Yorker
What Do Y'All, Yinz, and Yix Call Stretchy Office Supplies? : The New Yorker.
Sample of quiz:
How well does this test of regional slang reveal where you’re from? Answer the questions below to find out.
What do you call sweetened carbonated beverages?
a. Soda
b. Pop
c. Coke
d. Dope
e. Horse
f. Fizz-bang
g. Explodo
h. Gentleman’s seltzer
i. Heaven bubbles
What do you call the stretchy office supplies used to hold items together?
a. Rubber bands
b. Elastics
c. Flippos
d. Snapshooters
e. Wigglers
f. Stretchums
g. Satan’s bracelets
Looking Backward: My Top Ten American History Books | New Republic
Looking Backward: My Top Ten American History Books | New Republic.
A sample of the article by John B. Judis:
I woke up on Christmas morning thinking about American historians. It probably was because I had a dream about a historian I knew, or maybe it reflected my own wish—having never taken or taught an American history course, but having written five books of American history—to be regarded as one of the gang. I had hours to kill before my family got up, so I started thinking of what historians and books had most influenced my view of American history, and I came up with a list of ten. They’re my favorites; they’re not the best books, because I haven’t read comprehensively, especially in certain periods. It’s much heavier on the history of religion than on social history, and on the Progressive Era than on, say, the Civil War.
1. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness. (1956) Miller, a professor at Harvard for two decades after World War II, wrote how Puritan theology—before that, popularly identified with sexual repression and witch burning—influenced America’s idea of itself as having a mission—an “errand into the wilderness.” In Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, Miller also parsed the early conflicts within American Christianity that issued, paradoxically, in the First Amendment. Ideas of American exceptionalism and of America having a special mission in the world all date from the Puritan beliefs that Miller described in his books.
Filed under history books
Doctors Are Now Prescribing Books to Treat Depression | Smart News
Doctors Are Now Prescribing Books to Treat Depression | Smart News.
Sample of article:
William Nicholson once said, “We read to know that we are not alone.” And that sentiment, of reading to connect with the world and to feel less isolated, may be more than just a poetic thought. Doctors are now prescribing books to patients with depression, hoping that reading will help them find connections.
Leah Price at the Boston Globe reports on the a new program that launched in the United Kingdom this June:
If your primary care physician diagnoses you with “mild to moderate” depression, one of her options is now to scribble a title on a prescription pad. You take the torn-off sheet not to the pharmacy but to your local library, where it can be exchanged for a copy of “Overcoming Depression,” “Mind Over Mood,” or “The Feeling Good Handbook.” And depression is only one of over a dozen conditions treated. Other titles endorsed by the NHS include “Break Free from OCD,” “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway,” “Getting Better Bit(e) by Bit(e),” and “How to Stop Worrying.”
Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/12/doctors-are-now-prescribing-books-to-treat-depression/#ixzz2pHkNT3OX
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12!: http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
Filed under Uncategorized
Haiku to you Thursday: “Blossoms begin dark”
Blossoms begin dark – /
seeded in the deepest heart /
of soil, humans, and stars.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
