Table of Contents
<:>i n t e r a l i a<:>
15 May 2000
St. Dymphna Day, patron of the insane
In Today's Issue
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1. A Word A Day -- Gordian knot
2. Graphic of the Day -- Morning Glories
3. QOTD -- Angelo Verga
4. HotSites - Reference
5. Weird Stuff -- Cowshit Lane
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1. A Word A Day
Gordian knot (GOR-dee-un not) noun
1. An exceedingly complicated problem or deadlock.
2. An intricate knot tied by King Gordius of Phrygia and cut by Alexander
the Great with his sword after hearing an oracle promise that whoever
could undo it would be the next ruler of Asia.
"The sword that will cut the Gordian knot of race and crime will not be
found in the criminal-justice system alone. Perhaps it will emerge when
individuals come together to dismantle the social structures that foster
racial bias."
Roxann Ryan, The Gordian knot of race and crime, The Des Moines Register,
Sep 12, 1999.
--
>From A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphic of the Day
Morning Glories
by David J. L'Hoste
http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/gotd/0005mornglory.htm
--
GOTD Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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My Wife's Therapist -- Angelo Verga
My wife's therapist is explaining how counterproductive anger is.
There's a difference between asserting oneself and aggression, she says.
Flying into tirades can cause others to withdraw, and then we can't negotiate
With them anymore.
She illustrates her point.
I have to get into a new office, right away, she says.
Yeah, I agree, this place is a mess.
Fixing her hair with both hands, she continues:
At the meeting to sign the new lease, the other party makes impossible demands
And suddenly walks out, slams the door, leaves.
I want to blow up, Angelo, but I don't.
Do I know what her response should be? She asks suddenly.
I shake my head.
She doesn't scream fuck you or kick ass, I bet.
I examine my feelings, Angelo, and then I cry. She leans toward me:
The realtor will set up another meeting later in the week and I'll get to try again.
My wife is breathing deeply so I know she is being moved.
Do I understand how this example is useful?
Sure. Definitely. It's clear to me.
How do I feel about it? What changes can I make in myself to show what I've learned?
I stand up, smack my head, and grasp everything she's been leading me to.
I'm transformed by her analysis.
I grasp her hands in my hands:
Ann, would you like me to go over there and fuck with them for you?
I could yell and curse. I could make them treat you good.
I could scare the piss out of them.
No, she says, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Let's begin again.
Anger is hurtful. Anger is bad.
Understand?
I nod my head.
Angelo Verga
The Massachusetts Review
Volume XL, Number 3
Autumn 1999
Copyright © 1999 by The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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4. HotSites -- Reference
Ask Jeeves: http://www.askjeeves.com
CIA World Factbook: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
FedStats (gov't. statistics): http://www.fedstats.gov
Internet Public Library: http://www.ipl.org
Learn2: http://www.learn2.com
MapQuest: http://www.mapquest.com
--
HotSites Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_hs.htm
Another: http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/hot_archive.htm
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5. Weird Stuff
Friday May 12 9:06 AM ET
Villagers Opt to Keep Cowshit Lane
LONDON (Reuters) - It is not the sort of address most
people would want but a group of English villagers has
turned down a proposal to rename Cowshit Lane.
The name stirred controversy when the village of Golant
in southwest England decided to have a map drawn up for
visitors.
``I live there and I have no objection to the name,''
local council chairman Alistair Barr was quoted as saying
by the Times newspaper Friday.
``Some others have suggested renaming it Cowslip Lane,
which I don't agree with.''
Douglas Cooper, Barr's predecessor as chairman, said:
``I only wish I lived there because I could put it on
my headed notepaper.''
From: Yahoo! Oddly Enough Headlines
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/od/nm/
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Table of Contents
<:>i n t e r a l i a<:>
22 May 2000
Happy Haitian National Sovereignty Day
In Today's Issue
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1. A Word A Day -- Morpheus
2. Graphic of the Day -- Black-crowned Night-Heron
3. QOTD -- Kayne Robinson
4. HotSites -- Discovery
5. Weird Stuff -- Mawashi troubles
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1. A Word A Day
Morpheus (MOR-fee-uhs, -fyoos), noun
1. A son of Hypnos and the god of dreams.
2. In the arms of Morpheus: asleep.
[Middle English from Latin from Greek morphe + Latin -eus; coined by Ovid,
with allusion to the forms seen in dreams.]
"Let for the people be the first to admit a certain familiarity with
sleepless nights and an envy of those who claim to fall into the arms of
Morpheus the moment their head touches a pillow. But sleepless or
sleep-short nights are one thing; sleepless decades are something else
entirely. Decades? Yes. Nguyen Thi Tu, an elderly Vietnamese lady who
lives in the southern province of Ca Mau, claims that she hasn't slept
a single wink since 1967."
Stephen Goode, A woman who never dreams or sleeps a wink, Insight on the
News, Nov 22, 1999.
--
From A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphic of the Day
Black-crowned Night-Heron
by David J. L'Hoste
http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/gotd/000423bcnh.htm
GOTD Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. QOTD -- Kayne Robinson
"If we win, we'll have a president ... where we
work out of their office."
-- Kayne Robinson, NRA first vice president,
referring to George W. Bush
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4. HotSites -- Discovery
Two fine sites from Discovery.com:
Everglades Forever
Take a voyage of ecological discovery through the Everglades.
http://www.discovery.com/news/features/everglades/everglades.html
Unexpected Everest
Take a voyeuristic climb and a virtual journey up the mythical
mountain.
http://www.discovery.com/exp/mteverest/mteverest.html
--
HotSites Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_hs.htm
Another: http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/hot_archive.htm
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Weird Stuff
Monday May 15 8:36 AM ET
Wrestler Exposes Too Much, Loses Match
TOKYO (Reuters) - Sumo wrestler Asanokiri lost a match and
his dignity Saturday after his loin cloth fell off, exposing his
manhood on national television.
The red-faced giant automatically forfeited the match under
an obscure rule that penalizes a wrestler for allowing his privates to
be exposed by not wrapping his ``mawashi'' belt tightly enough.
``This is the first time in the 83 years since we instituted the
rule that anyone has lost a match,'' a Japan Sumo Association
official said.
Asanokiri was in a hard fought match with Chiyohakuho but it
was stopped immediately when a Sumo elder sitting ringside
saw the offending member and invoked the exposure rule.
The mawashi belts are about 23-26 feet long and are wrapped
tightly several times around the bodies of the massive wrestlers.
``I tied my mawashi the way I always do, but today it just came
loose,'' local media quoted Asanokiri as saying.
From: Yahoo! Oddly Enough Headlines
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/od/nm/
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Table of Contents
<:>i n t e r a l i a<:>
1 June 2000
Happy Samoan Independence Day
In Today's Issue
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1. A Word A Day -- zeitgeber
2. Graphic of the Day -- Eastern Kingbird
3. QOTD -- Miller Williams
4. HotSites -- Miscellany
5. Weird Stuff -- Buy a spot to see Cowboy buy it?
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1. A Word A Day
zeitgeber (TSYT-ge-buhr) noun
An environmental cue, as the length of daylight or the degree of
temperature, that helps to regulate the cycles of an organism's
biological clock.
[From German, literally, time-giver, on the model of Taktgeber an
electronic synchronization device]
"According to Hallow, the eight-hour work day is also a zeitgeber,
but one that interrupts the body's natural desire to rest between 3
and 4 p.m."
Jill Jedlowski and Erica Jacobson, A midday nap can be a valuable
pick-me-up, The State Journal-Register Springfield, 9 Nov 1998.
--
>From A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
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2. Graphic of the Day
Eastern Kingbird
by David J. L'Hoste
http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/gotd/000429eaki.htm
GOTD Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. QOTD -- Miller Williams
Love Poem with Toast
Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
Miller Williams
Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems
University of Illinois Press
Copyright © 1999 by Miller Williams.
All rights reserved.
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4. HotSites -- Miscellany
LibrarySpot.com was recently selected as the "Best Reference
Site" by Forbes.com: Best of the Web.
http://www.libraryspot.com
-- -- -- --
The Feather Trade and the American Conservation Movement
from the Smithsonian Institution
Tens of millions of birds were taken at the height of
the feather-trade years, between 1870 and 1920. The two
groups most damaged by fashion hunting were the white
egrets or herons, and the small terns. One auction
record alone lists more than one million heron or egret
skins sold in London between 1897 and 1911 . . .
http://americanhistory.si.edu/feather/index.htm
-- -- -- --
BBC's Evolution Site
BBC crammed 4000 million years of evolution into one
Web site.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/darwin/index.shtml
--
HotSites Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_hs.htm
Another: http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/hot_archive.htm
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5. Weird Stuff
Friday May 26 1:10 PM ET
Inmate Auctions Execution Seats on eBay
FORT WORTH, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas death row inmate
tried to sell seats for his execution on Internet
auction site eBay, but the listing was removed before
he got any bids, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
Michael Toney, sentenced to die for the 1985 bombing
deaths of three people, wanted to sell the rights to
witness seats at his still unscheduled execution and
give the money to his two daughters, the Fort Worth
Star Telegram said.
Had there been any takers, bidding would have started
at $100. Prosecutors were not eligible to bid.
``My name is Michael Toney. Most people call me
'Cowboy.' I am on Texas death row awaiting execution
for a crime I did not commit,'' said the eBay listing,
which was posted on Wednesday for several hours before
the company removed it.
``I do not know what kind of people would donate money
to watch an innocent man be murdered. However, I do
know there are people out there that will,'' he wrote.
Condemned inmates in Texas, which leads the nation in
meting out capital punishment, are permitted to have
five witnesses at their execution in the state death
chamber at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas.
The inmates are killed by lethal injection.
But Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman
Larry Fitzgerald told Reuters that no bidders would be
allowed in.
``The bottom line policy is that our executive director
of prisons has final say on who attends an execution,
period,'' he said. ``The inmate has to make that list
out and that list has to be approved weeks before an
execution.''
``Clever idea, but it never had a chance to get off the
ground,'' Fitzgerald said.
eBay direct of communications Kevin Pursglove said the
listing was removed because Toney violated several eBay
policies, the main one being that he did not have the
right to sell the seats.
``This is an individual who is not the rightful owner.
He cannot sell those seats,'' he told Reuters.
Pursglove said eBay does not screen auction listings
before they are posted. The firm found out about
Toney's sale when the Star-Telegram reporter called, he
said.
Toney killed three people in Lake Worth, Texas when he
placed a briefcase bomb outside their mobile home. The
murders went unsolved for a decade until he bragged
about the killings to a fellow inmate while in jail for
another offense.
A woman who testified against Toney, but now is a
friend, told the Star-Telegram she set up the listing
for him because he said it would help his efforts to
prove his innocence.
He has been conducting a letter-writing campaign in
hopes of reversing his conviction. In the eBay listing,
Toney asked anyone interested in the case to write or
visit him in prison.
Toney's case is still under legal appeal, so no
execution date has been set.
From: Yahoo! Oddly Enough Headlines
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/od/nm/
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Table of Contents
<:>i n t e r a l i a<:>
13 Junel 2000
Birthday of William Butler Yeats (1865)
In Today's Issue
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1. A Word A Day -- stalking-horse
2. Graphic of the Day -- Light and Statue, Paris 1976
3. QOTD -- Albert Goldbarth
4. HotSites -- weird and whacky
5. Reading List -- W
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1. A Word A Day
stalking-horse (STOK-ing-hors) noun
1. Something used to cover one's true purpose; a decoy.
2. A sham candidate put forward to conceal the candidacy of another
or to divide the opposition.
3. A horse trained to conceal the hunter while stalking. A canvas
screen made in the figure of a horse, used for similar concealment.
"The main parties in the 23 May Front are the leftist Combatant Clergy
Society and the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Party. Both groups
view Rafsanjani, who says he is an independent, as a stalking horse for
rightwing factions opposed to Khatami."
Khatami coalition weighs Rafsanjani role, Middle East Economic Digest,
Jan 2000.
--
>From A Word A Day:
http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ia~~~~~~
2. Graphic of the Day
Light and Statue, Paris 1976
by David J. L'Hoste
http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/gotd/76panth.htm
GOTD Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_graphics.htm
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3. QOTD -- Albert Goldbarth
"A Welcome Relief from Serious Work"
— George Plimpton
Introduction: "Pomework: An Exercise in Occasional Poetry,"
from The Paris Review...
The English are so nice! One night
during dinner at the captain's table, vicar
Houndstooth-Herringbone accidentally spilled his tea
upon Julia's breasts, and his stuttered apologies
outdid even her uplifted, overspilling delights
in airy profusion. What he didn't know,
that I could tell . . . she liked it. "If that
was high tea," she opined a few hours later,
taking a break in our stateroom bed
from working her jaws around my upper and nether
extremities, "where does his low tea get
deposited?" She was that kind of lady. Here's
how it happened: I'd been loitering wishfully
about the docks, looking for someone likely upon whom
I could use a few of my surefire
lines to seduce a stranger. "An hour before
the ship sails," she whispered, offering me a scented
card with her stateroom number inscribed in a dainty
lilac hand. We began by playing doctor.
Strange love—that was her specialty:
upside-down; all knotted up; in a chicken outfit;
etc. And when the ship left port . . . well,
there I was, her bed toy for the length
of the voyage. At first it was exhilarating,
filling the role of sex stowaway. Sometimes
she was as spotless as a lavatory in a cathedral;
other times, au contraire, she was as shameless
as a confessional in a cathouse. But the truth
is, that a steady diet of even various pleasure
numbs the palate. Now, a full week
of our nautical naughtiness later, and the dual howl
of delight is more the grunt of obligation. I believe
we both look forward to our liberation
at voyage's end. Who'd guess the vasty limits
of this vessel, the Titanic, would eventually be confining?
And yet they are. She's waiting on the sheets,
an empty surfboard on a flat sea. And
I'll join her for a quick, eventless ride. But first
I simply need to linger at the rail here,
alone a moment, and pondering how
what used to be a passion
has become the merest exercise.
Albert Goldbarth
The Paris Review
Volume 42, Number 154
Spring 2000: The Poetry Issue
Copyright © 2000 by the Paris Review.
All rights reserved.
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4. HotSites -- weird and whacky
Weird animation:
http://heavy.com/
Whacky, but you freaks (you know who you are)
will love it:
http://www.online.ee/~noobik/perfect/
Bozo Criminal of the Day (stupid crooks):
http://www.electricferret.com/bozo/
--
HotSites Archive: http://lhostelaw.com/iaa/ia_hs.htm
Another: http://lhostelaw.com/ia/ia2/hot_archive.htm
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5. Reading List - W
When George W. Bush announced a 30-day reprieve June
1 for condemned murderer Ricky McGinn, the Texas
governor said he took the action because "I want the
man to have his full day in court." But a "full day
in court" in Texas may not be what most Americans
have in mind.
Less than a week after Bush's announcement, the Texas
attorney general's office was in New Orleans trying
to convince a federal appeals court that Calvin
Burdine had received his full day in court and
adequate legal representation despite the fact that
Burdine's lawyer slept through major portions of his
murder trial. "He must show harm," the state's deputy
solicitor general told the judge. "Burdine has not
done that." There was, however, the small matter of
Burdine's death sentence. ("But other than that, Mrs.
Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?")
Bush's decision in the McGinn case has been widely
seen as an astute move by the presumptive GOP
presidential nominee to moderate a perception that he
may be too zealous about executing people. "By
granting a reprieve to a convicted murderer," a Time
magazine headline opined, "Bush highlights the first
part of compassionate conservative."
Because Bush had signed off on 131 executions without
granting a single reprieve, his action on McGinn was
a man-bites-dog novelty story deserving the full-
blown front page coverage it received. . .
From Salon: http://www.salon1999.com/
Full Story:
http://www.salon1999.com/politics/feature/2000/06/12/death/index.html
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