Saturday, November 6, 2010
Getting Into Some Courses Is Especially Difficult - NYTimes.com
Getting Into Some Courses Is Especially Difficult - NYTimes.com: "Ms. Hanger recalls. “At Harvard, there are always students extremely talented in every way. The athletes are Olympians, the artists have had their work commissioned since the age of 15. It’s a tough environment to try something new.”"
Friday, November 5, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
diaphanous
1.
Of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent.
2.
Vague; insubstantial.
Quotes:
The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane thatcan't quite contain the light outside.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian
She needed more than diaphanous hope, more thanI could give her.
-- Tej Rae, "One Hand Extended", Washington Post ,August 12, 2001
This phantom wore many faces, but it always hadgolden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud,and floated airily before his mind's eye in a pleasingchaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blueribbons.
-- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Origin:
Diaphanous ultimately derives from Greek diaphanes , "showing through," from diaphainein , "to showthrough, to be transparent," from dia- , "through" + phainein , "to show, to appear." It is related tophantom , something apparently sensed but having no physical reality.
Monday, September 6, 2010
PRIAM, the name, Lateline - 14/04/2009: Malouf turns to Homer for latest inspiration
Lateline - 14/04/2009: Malouf turns to Homer for latest inspiration
You can have anything you want," and she takes him down amongst these children and says, "I want him, he's my brother, and he's the last survivor of the royal line." And Hercules doesn't entirely believe her but he says, "If that's what you want, then the brat is yours. But because I've kept my word to you, from now on he will be called Priam, the 'price paid' in Greek."
Myrmidons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Myrmidons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Myrmidon (disambiguation).
The Myrmidons (or Myrmidones; Greek: Μυρμιδόνες) are people of ancient Greek mythology. They are very brave and skilled warriors as described in Homer's Iliad, and are commanded by Achilles.[1] Their eponymous ancestor was Myrmidon, a king of Thessalian Phthia who was a son of Zeus and "wide-ruling" Eurymedousa, a princess of Phthia. She was seduced by him in the form of an ant. An etiological myth of their origins, simply expanding upon their supposed etymology — the name in Classical Greek was interpreted as "ant-people", from μυρμηδών (murmedon) "ant's nest"[2] and that from μύρμηξ(murmex) "ant"[3] — was first mentioned by Ovid, in Metamorphoses: in Ovid's telling, King Aeacus of Aegina, father of Peleus, pleaded with Zeus to populate his country after a terrible plague. Zeus said his people would number as the ants on his sacred oak, and from the ants sprang the people of Aegina, the Myrmidons.
According to Homer's Iliad, the Myrmidons were the fiercest warriors in all of Greece. As said in Iliad, "Go home, then, with your ships and comrades to lord it over the Myrmidons".
[edit]Later use of the term
The Myrmidons of Greek myth were known for their loyalty to their leaders, so that in pre-industrial Europe the word "myrmidon" carried many of the same connotations that "robot" does today. Myrmidon later came to mean "hired ruffian" (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) or "a loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity, unquestioning followers." (Dictionary.com).
Myrmidons is also the title of the first of a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus, collectively known as Achilles. The other plays in the trilogy are Nereids and Phrygians. See Achilles (play) for more.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Neil Gaiman's "I believe" speech from American Gods
Neil Gaiman's "I believe" speech from American Gods
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen–I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Writing Tools
on line rhyming tool:
http://www.rhymer.com/
http://www.rhymezone.com/
++++ overusing a word, see it big:
http://www.wordle.net/
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
fix it? http://thesaurus.reference.com/
++++++++++++++
need to start?
100 Best First Lines of Novels
As chosen by the editors of American Book Review
http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html
now....
NEED TO FINISH, a PDF, but.....
http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/100_Best_Last_Lines_from_Novels.pdf
+++++++++++++++
Alliteration is one of several aural devices in literature making use of the repetition of single sounds or groups of sounds.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~in/Poet/VocAll.htm
I found the format difficult to handle, but . . .
+++++++++++++++++++
the experts speak:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/500.Jorge_Luis_Borges
http://www.rhymer.com/
http://www.rhymezone.com/
++++ overusing a word, see it big:
http://www.wordle.net/
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
fix it? http://thesaurus.reference.com/
++++++++++++++
need to start?
100 Best First Lines of Novels
As chosen by the editors of American Book Review
http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html
now....
NEED TO FINISH, a PDF, but.....
http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/100_Best_Last_Lines_from_Novels.pdf
+++++++++++++++
Alliteration is one of several aural devices in literature making use of the repetition of single sounds or groups of sounds.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~in/Poet/VocAll.htm
I found the format difficult to handle, but . . .
+++++++++++++++++++
the experts speak:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/500.Jorge_Luis_Borges
Sunday, January 24, 2010
synecdoche
SYN-EC-DO-CHE (si nek' da ke) n. [< Gr. Synekdochê, lit., a receiving together < synekdochesthai, to receive together] A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or the reverse of
From: Beckham, John (John.Beckham@latimes.com)
Sent: Thu 12/28/06 3:11 PM
To:
http://www.vanguard.edu/english/synecdoche/index.aspx?doc_id=9099
Introduction
Dr. Jerry Camery-Hoggatt
Welcome to the Spring issue of Vanguard University's student literary journal, Synecdoche. An aptly-named journal, this. The dictionary defines the term synecdoche this way:
SYN-EC-DO-CHE (si nek' da ke) n. [< Gr. Synekdochê, lit., a receiving together < synekdochesthai, to receive together] A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or the reverse of any of these. -syn´ec-doch´i-cal-ly adv.
When the captain bellows out the order, "All hands on deck," she is using a synecdoche. When Shakespeare's Mark Antony opens his famous speech with, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," he surely wants more than their ears; he wants their whole heads, and their hearts, too. When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are praying synecdochically.
The title Synecdoche is a clue to what you will find in this issue, in three ways. First, this is a part that represents the whole of the literary stuff of a vigorous and curious student body. In this issue you will find poetry, a short play, a rather free-form essay or two, and some carefully researched papers on topics of importance at this moment in history. You'll even find one on historiography itself.
The poems and essays in this issue were selected from nearly two hundred pieces, entered for consideration in two categories - critical and creative. The student editorial board passed to me the five best selections from each category. Student committees on the Synecdochestaff made the selections and participated in the editing, which suggests a second way in which this issue is synecdochical: What you find here is indirect evidence of the literary tastes and critical sensibilities of Vanguard students turned critics.
The third way in which these poems and essays turn out to be synecdochical is that each one stakes out a tiny piece of reality, and by subjecting it to critical scrutiny or refracting it through a poetic lens makes it a window through which larger human issues can be seen more clearly. Perhaps that is one function of good writing, both creative and critical. The particular can become a clue to the universal.
Emily Key's short poem, "Mein Doravka," is angular, lean, and unsettling. It is a poem of only twenty lines, too brief to do much more than intimate something or other about a love gone wrong-or perhaps right. The intimations are agonizing and cryptic (even the title is cryptic), so that the poem finally splinters into sharp slivers of hope and loss.
Aaron Abubo's haunting poem, "Janie Didn't Know," is a double-sided mystery, a slice out of a woman's deep grief. It is as though we are viewing this woman's experience through a scratched and damaged lens, a lens that replicates her puzzlement and confusion, her inability to see very clearly what has happened. Like "Mein Doravka," "Janie Didn't Know" gives us too little information to get a good fix on what happened, and so leaves us bewildered, trying to understand what this loss might have been. If we surrender to it, the poem ends up being a kind of sponge that draws out our own experiences of loss, and grief, and confusion. Then, as often happens in good narrative writing, it refuses to close its plot complications, and leaves them open instead like the festering wound that Janie, the protagonist, must feel.
From: Beckham, John (John.Beckham@latimes.com)
Sent: Thu 12/28/06 3:11 PM
To:
http://www.vanguard.edu/english/synecdoche/index.aspx?doc_id=9099
Introduction
Dr. Jerry Camery-Hoggatt
Welcome to the Spring issue of Vanguard University's student literary journal, Synecdoche. An aptly-named journal, this. The dictionary defines the term synecdoche this way:
SYN-EC-DO-CHE (si nek' da ke) n. [< Gr. Synekdochê, lit., a receiving together < synekdochesthai, to receive together] A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole, an individual for a class, a material for a thing, or the reverse of any of these. -syn´ec-doch´i-cal-ly adv.
When the captain bellows out the order, "All hands on deck," she is using a synecdoche. When Shakespeare's Mark Antony opens his famous speech with, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," he surely wants more than their ears; he wants their whole heads, and their hearts, too. When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are praying synecdochically.
The title Synecdoche is a clue to what you will find in this issue, in three ways. First, this is a part that represents the whole of the literary stuff of a vigorous and curious student body. In this issue you will find poetry, a short play, a rather free-form essay or two, and some carefully researched papers on topics of importance at this moment in history. You'll even find one on historiography itself.
The poems and essays in this issue were selected from nearly two hundred pieces, entered for consideration in two categories - critical and creative. The student editorial board passed to me the five best selections from each category. Student committees on the Synecdochestaff made the selections and participated in the editing, which suggests a second way in which this issue is synecdochical: What you find here is indirect evidence of the literary tastes and critical sensibilities of Vanguard students turned critics.
The third way in which these poems and essays turn out to be synecdochical is that each one stakes out a tiny piece of reality, and by subjecting it to critical scrutiny or refracting it through a poetic lens makes it a window through which larger human issues can be seen more clearly. Perhaps that is one function of good writing, both creative and critical. The particular can become a clue to the universal.
Emily Key's short poem, "Mein Doravka," is angular, lean, and unsettling. It is a poem of only twenty lines, too brief to do much more than intimate something or other about a love gone wrong-or perhaps right. The intimations are agonizing and cryptic (even the title is cryptic), so that the poem finally splinters into sharp slivers of hope and loss.
Aaron Abubo's haunting poem, "Janie Didn't Know," is a double-sided mystery, a slice out of a woman's deep grief. It is as though we are viewing this woman's experience through a scratched and damaged lens, a lens that replicates her puzzlement and confusion, her inability to see very clearly what has happened. Like "Mein Doravka," "Janie Didn't Know" gives us too little information to get a good fix on what happened, and so leaves us bewildered, trying to understand what this loss might have been. If we surrender to it, the poem ends up being a kind of sponge that draws out our own experiences of loss, and grief, and confusion. Then, as often happens in good narrative writing, it refuses to close its plot complications, and leaves them open instead like the festering wound that Janie, the protagonist, must feel.
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