the newest israeli-palestinian

the grauniad reports that daniel barenboim will become probably the first person in the world to hold israeli and palestinian citizenship at the same time after being granted palestinian status in recognition of his work promoting cultural exchange between young people in israeli and arab worlds. the full story is here.

"In a pointed reference to US president George Bush's recent comments on the Middle-East conflict in which he talked of Israel's "occupation" of the West Bank, Barenboim added: "Now even not very intelligent people are saying that the occupation has to be stopped.""

roger stone z"l

being 3000 miles away when people die, especially people who have been part of your family's life since before you were born, is an odd place to be. in a way they are no less present in your current life, since there they already exist in memory alone. at the same time, the fact is that they have gone. but if you don't go to the funeral, if you don't see them put in the ground and you don't throw some earth on top of the coffin, then in some way it isn't quite over. this is one of the few situations when i understand what it means when someone says they have 'lost' someone. i hate euphemisms, and think we should say 'dead' when we mean 'dead' and not 'passed away' or 'passed on' or other phrases of their ilk. in this case, however, they really feel lost. the fact is that i may have seen roger once in the past couple of years briefly at services. nevertheless, he existed, if ever i cared to look him up or call him. now he has gone, and where i do not know. he was my mother's b/f at the time she met my father. my grandmother always thought my mother made the wrong choice, since my father was a rabbi and roger's parents had an indoor swimming pool at their house. my mother and he stayed fond of each other ever since. roger died in hospice care on saturday night. may he rest beneath the wings of shechinah.

julie christie wins a golden globe

when the movie 'away from her' came out earlier in the year, the ny times interview with julie christie noted her utter detachment from her ueber-stardom of the sixties and seventies:

"“I have no connection with that person at all,” she said over lunch in a pub near her home in the East End. “That person has gone.”"

years before i knew what i felt or why i felt it, i was in love with that screen icon. i searched the forest for the girl in 'fahrenheit 451' ... my troika followed lara's trail across a snowy russian landscape ... bathsheba everdene, lady marian ... a succession of stunningly beautiful and completely distant women drew me to them ... but that's a story for my shrink.

today christie wins a best actress award for a woman disappearing into the world of alzheimer's disease. i hear the film is excellent. my current inertia permitting, i hope to see it one day on dvd, and congratulate her on her achievement. meanwhile, i was thrilled to recognise her recently in the role of madame rosmerta in 'harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban' :-)

nora ephron channels woody allen

i am getting old my friends and the winter closes in. a builder friend in his forties spent the night in the museum upstairs from my mother's flat. the toilet wasn't working up there so she said she would leave the front door open in case he needed to go in the night. 'i never get up in the night,' he told her. 'o he's so young,' i said to my mother when she told me and we laughed together.

just now, i think i read an op-ed in the ny times where nora ephron compares some of the past with some of the present. it included the following, which took me back to nights of reading "without feathers" under the covers with a torch:

"I have to say, there was something romantic about the desperate search for an answer. On the road to trying to remember the name of Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, for instance, you might find yourself having a brief but diverting chat about Alger Hiss’s wife, which might in turn get you to a story about Whittaker Chambers’s teeth, which might in turn get you to Time magazine, which might in turn get you to Friday nights at Time magazine back in the old days, which might in turn get you to sex. "

if i were to start ranting about the good old days, i think i would yearn for the greater time and space there was for the utterly random. today we need the answer, and it has to be correct. there is no time to spare for wondering why the opposite of 'inept' isn't 'ept'.

o yes, now go read the rest of nora ephron's piece.

plimoth piglet

piglet visits the plantation
while our students examined the thatching process at close quarters, piglet posed in the centre of the settlement. we understood that the pilgrims treated young piglets very well, although their fate was usually to be roasted.

an unforgettable moment from the vicar of dibley

my mate cantor jsm reminded me of other great british comedies today, specifically 'the vicar of dibley'. when i went home for xmas, they reran last year's special, which was happily new to me. there was a brilliant moment, which has me laughing and crying at the same time, that i wanted to embed here for your delectation and delight. sadly it is not embeddable, but do please try this link. it is the beginning of the denouement, so spoiler alert if that is important to you. n. says the bloke who plays harry is very nice, and i think she said he supports liverpool.

the major and the moose

when it comes to sharing what makes me laugh with friends in this country, sometimes i despair. even those who love mahn-tee pie-thahhhhhn cannot seem to find humour in the genius that is embedded in 'fawlty towers'. my favourite episode is probably 'the germans' from season one, and while i seek my most favourite moment of all on youtube, here is another fave to be going on with:


oh c'mon, tell me that you at least sniggered a little bit ...

as any fule kno

nigel molesworth goes to hogwarts? i am confused. my childhood hero who taught me all i knew about boys at prep skool is now in hufflepuff?

"gulp tremble chiz all eyes are upon me as i flounder. hermoine grangers hand shoot up and she cri sir SIR i kno please sir me sir she is a swot and a sneke like all gurls. Do not mind pore nigel she sa he went to a muggle prep skool and kno 0. Gosh chiz that is a bit much.

"Thank you miss Granger when i want yore opinion i shall ask for it," sa snape. Klass titter and hermoine hav the grace to turn red ha ha sucks. Snape then take five house points from huflepuf while slytherin oiks and cads larff.

"One last chance clot. who discovered the mandrake eh?"

"was it osama bin laden?"

"any more of yore cheek molesworth one and you will be cleaning out the manticor's pen for the rest of term. i supose you do not even kno how to produce lite from yore wand by saing lumos."

"But surely sir lumos hav a greek nom. ending whereas the root come from lat. lumen luminis a lite as any fule kno?"

"That will do molesworth. one trillion house points from huflepuf and see me afterwards.""

for the rest of the story, click here. meanwhile, if you kno not of molesworth one, perhaps wiki may help you.

btw, the wiki article suggests that the name 'hogwarts' may have been a shout-out to molesworth by j k rowling.

says his name is buzsaky

akos in action this afternoon
defiant in defeat, i celebrate my latest rangers hero, and rue the fact that i did not run down loftus road with the little boy, his parents, and some yobboes to ask akos to take a picture with me.

new team, old result - the 'r's lose in sheffield

patrick agyemang scores on his debut, but two goals in four minutes send qpr to another defeat, this time at bramall lane.

i am strangely numb at the final whistle, although this may have more to do with the news from home that one of my mother's oldest friends (and the man she was dating when she met my father) just entered hospice care. we lost, the scum won, and roger is dying ... may he go in peace.

tom hanks knows his footie

about 50 seconds into the report, mr. hanks namechecks my rangers:

fear of phobias

the times yesterday picked up a cute little story from the new scientist magazine about the proliferation of obscure phobias that plague modern humans. i cannot seem to find the original online, although i can offer you this site, through which you may find a gazillion phobias and their definitions.

meanwhile, examples in the times include:

Coulrophobia - fear of clowns
Francophobia - fear of the french
Lutraphobia - fear of otters
Octophobia - fear of the number eight
Paraskavedekatriaphobia - fear of friday the thirteenth

the times article concluded: "It was left to Alexander Gardner, a psychologist, to sum up the proliferation of phobias. “I have a fear of Times reporters,” he said. “I have to go.”"

sir edmund hillary r.i.p.

breaking news from the bbc:

"Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, has died aged 88. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark described the explorer as a heroic figure and said all New Zealanders would deeply mourn his passing. Sir Edmund's health had reportedly been in decline since April, when he suffered a fall while visiting Nepal. He was the first man to climb the 8,850m (29,035ft) peak with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953."

wiki

and now, a few hours later, some obits:

"Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement — and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Tenzing Norgay. He had pride in his feats. Returning to base camp as the man who took the first step onto the top of the world's highest peak, he declared: "We knocked the bastard off.""
yahoo news

"... he had a narrow escape when the ice gave way as he was moving loads up to this camp, plunging him into a crevasse. Fortunately Tenzing, who was following, thrust his ice-axe in the snow, and whipped the rope round it in good belay. It tightened just in time to prevent Hillary being smashed to pieces at the bottom of the crevasse. Thereafter Hillary began to think of Tenzing as the ideal partner in a bid for the summit."
daily telegraph

the times 1953 report on the conquest of everest is here.

hillary's own account of the conquest here.

"Remarkably though, the climb went unrecorded in picture form. While Sir Edmund took the famous photo of his sherpa companion posing with his ice axe, he refused Norgay’s offer to take one of him. Norgay had never used a camera before “and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how”, Hillary later said."
the times online

"He will not just be remembered as a mountaineer, albeit the most celebrated in the sport's history. "Ed's greatest legacy is the assistance he gave to the Sherpa people," said Mr Dingle. "As a result of seeing Nepal and his love of the mountains and the people, he went back and suggested that he could help in some way." Known to the Sherpa people as Burra-sahib – meaning "big in stature, big in heart" – Sir Edmund never forgot the place that gave him, in every sense, his international prominence."
the independent

o my gosh - the L word is back!

thanks to ms. snarker for finding pics from the premiere party on sunday.

now *this* would make me happy!

anne frank - the musical?

the bbc reports that a musical version of the diary of anne frank will open in february in madrid. the director, rafael alvero, is quoted as saying:

""When I first came here, they had this doubt about how somebody can do a musical of a story like this, ... Of course this is emotional. The thing we want to do is through the music, to understand the story better.""

i have to say that my initial reaction is wtf?! i'm sorry, but the first picture in my mind is the nazis crashing through the offices heading for the attic and mr dussel singing "they're coming to take me away, ha ha!" i'm sorry but i just don't see hiding from the nazis and then dying in a concentration camp as subject matter for musical theatre. not even really for an opera. hmmmmm.

read the whole piece here.

current uk teen slang

just to make us, well, me at least, feel unbearably ancient, here are some definitions of the latest language developments in the world of some young brits:

Book: an adjective to describe something that's really cool. That's because it's the first option given in predictive text when typing "c o o l".

Cotch down: hang out, chill or sleep. Thought to derive from the French word for sleep, "coucher".

Elton: a lavatory. Derived from the fact that "john" means this in America, and the name of a well-known pop star.

Flat roofin': to be overworked and stressed, as in "I was flat roofin' for my GCSEs".

Igry: embarrassed. "Stop doing that, you're making me igry."

Klingon: younger child - particularly your irritating brother or sister.

Mouldies: parents. Abbreviation for "mouldy oldies". See also rents.

Nang: cool, excellent, brilliant.

Oudish: very good, excellent, wicked.

Tear: to leave quickly, run away. "You ready to go? Then let's tear"

Vanilla: boring, dull - particularly when referring to someone's taste in clothes. "Look at her checkers - vanilla or what!"

Wafwaan: what's up, what's going on. Originally from Jamaican slang

Za: abbreviation of "pizza". "Let's grab a za before the movie."

nb the original article is here.

what the papers said when it was all over

poor old lee
although i presume that the second-string team chelski put out would have moved up a gear if we had actually put the ball into their net, the fact is that we only lost 0-1, and they couldn't even score the goal themselves. the amount of energy and excitement this match has engendered in the current qpr fanbase as i experience it (i.e., through the listserve and message boards) is unparallelled in recent years. i just hope it continues over the rest of the season - it really can have an effect on the team! meanwhile, let's trot out the platitudes of the national press:

"Queens Park Rangers, with their regiment of newly-signed players, gave Chelsea a thorough run for their money in this London derby, going down to a single, freakish goal which came after 28 minutes. Chelsea’s Claudio Pizarro drove in a right-footed shot, Lee Camp, the QPR goalkeeper, seemed to misjudge it as he dived and had the mortification of deflecting the ball into his own net off his arm as it came back off the left-hand post."
brian glanville in the sunday times

"There was a period of pressure in the penalty area that threatened to put QPR on their way to their first win at Stamford Bridge in 21 years, while Chelsea relied on a goal that bounced off a defender, post and goalkeeper to book their place in the fourth round. There was also an expectation that Rangers will be not only as rich, but as competitive as Chelsea in the near future."
grauniad

""It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" – Matthew 19:24. No one knows, until they shuffle off this mortal coil, whether St Matthew is right, and Premier League footballers will spend eternity with their faces pressed up against the Pearly Gates, but on this earthlyrealm having a few bob has its advantages, especially when it comes to lifting the FA Cup."
the indy

actually, these guys weren't quite as platitudinous as i had expected :-)

hugh massingberd r.i.p.

until i read this obituary, i did not know who was considered responsible for my love of reading the telegraph obituaries! i believe it was this man, hugh massingberd. read his obit here.

"Massingberd had been struck by Brief Lives, Roy Dotrice's one-man show about Aubrey at the Criterion theatre. This made writing obituaries fun, seeing how close you could get to Aubrey without becoming archaic. The new style drew in many new readers, and, surprisingly, there were few complaints. Once, a visitor, being shown around the Telegraph, was told by his embarrassed guide that the place where all the unseemly laughter was coming from was where they wrote the obituaries."

what the papers say - before the match

"A measure of the excitement engendered by the investment of Ecclestone, Briatore and Mittal is that long-suffering QPR fans are already referring to new signing Akos Buzsaky (the Hungarian international) as 'the new Stan Bowles'. "Excitement is the key word after the uncertainty of years of administration and lack of money," acknowledges Gareth Ainsworth, the much-travelled midfielder now in his fifth season at Loftus Road"
the telegraph

"Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, is well placed to tell Luigi De Canio, his opposite number at QPR, how to deal with a billionaire backer. The combined fortunes of Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal, the Coca-Cola Championship club’s owners, far outweigh that of Abramovich, giving QPR a competitive advantage over their Championship rivals that could result in the return of this West London derby as a regular fixture."
the times

"De Canio insisted that they would be spending their money sensibly. "These are successful and rich men because they've always handled their finances well," he said. "Just because we have the potential to spend a lot of money doesn't mean that we will necessarily do that. We're following a carefully planned project in which we must get the balance right between investment, footballing success and technical results."
the independent

"Rangers used to be as unassuming as Chelsea were flash. In the years since Simon Barker equalised John Spencer's goal to earn Ray Wilkins' side a point on their last visit to Stamford Bridge, the drama which has enveloped this pocket of Shepherds Bush would have been considered too outlandish for a failing soap opera."
the grauniad

"But enough vulgar triumphalism (there's time for that when we win the Champions League). Instead, a note of caution: everything we have ever known is about to change. Should we be careful what we wish for?"
our own benjie goodhart in the grauniad

"But (Ray) Wilkins cannot see the FA Cup holders being dumped out, adding: "QPR go into the tie in good form with four wins from their last six but all 11 of their players will have to be at their very best and five or six of the Chelsea boys will need to be below par if they are to get anything."
daily mail

""I remember getting promoted at Sheffield Wednesday in 2004 and still realising administration was hanging over us, with none of us knowing whether we'd be paid the next week and that we might not be getting our bonuses. "We've come full circle since then. We've got Chelsea in the FA Cup and suddenly it's potentially two of the biggest clubs in the world playing each other. It's amazing."
daily mirror

"It's WestEnders
IF the scriptwriters of Footballers Wives ever submitted QPR’s recent history for screening, the plot would be rejected as being too far-fetched. A club on the verge of bankruptcy rescued by a couple of Formula One magnates and Britain’s richest man. Then there were guns in the boardroom, a player tragically killed in a car crash, another stabbed to death, mass brawls with the Chinese national team and now a dream FA Cup clash with their superstar neighbours Chelsea."
the sun

and bbc sport on why they are NOT covering our match live:

"The other tie a number of people have mentioned is Chelsea v QPR. This will be a full-blooded local derby, but we normally prefer it if the lower-ranked club is at home, where they tend to have a better chance. Should Rangers hold Chelsea to a draw, Loftus Road would be a leading contender to stage a live replay. "

getting psyched for the f.a.cup third round tomorrow

my beloved 'r's are going to the heartland of the enemy tomorrow, having been drawn against the infamous chelski in the 3rd round of the cup. with the advent of new shareholders that have more money than god, qpr are suddenly a hot story for the newspapers et al: chelscum and their oil-rich russian billionaire owner versus newbie high-rollers backed by their steel magnate and his money pots. i just hope our fans do not embarrass themselves by showing off in the shed tomorrow - waving UKP20 notes at the opposition and chanting stupid and provocative chants for the morons and the international television audience.

meanwhile, although we are bound to be tonked, here are some pics of GOALS and scorers from the last couple of games:

stewpeas celebrates his goal against leicester city on new year's day.

rowly blasts his second goal at vicarage road.

what's his name? he said to me. said his name is buzsaky. buzsaky, buzsaky, says his name is buzsaky.

geek of the week

when ravaj was recently in london, she visited mecca, aka loftus road the home of queens park rangers. since she arrived so terribly early at the stadium, she was able to soak up such elements of the atmosphere as the smells of the burger van behind the wall, stray groups of wandering colchester fans, and the arrival of the qpr players. despite the many recent loans and transfers, ravaj was still able to recognise a few heroes and, inspired by a 4-year-old boy, decided to celebrate with a couple of photographs:
here she is with the 'r's longest-serving player in the current squad. his name is gareth ainsworth, and he is often nicknamed 'gazza' or 'wild thing'.
and here she is with the team captain, adam bolder. since there are about 8 new players who joined the club in the last couple of days, he may not be the captain for much longer. at this moment, though, passers-by are still in awe of his very presence. or his scarf.

don't deify benazir bhutto

a quote from an op-ed by william dalrymple in today's new york times:

"Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war."

i have been resisting all those who have had negative things to say about bhutto in these last few days. i did not want to accept any criticism against someone that i have admired. now the shock of her assassination has abated somewhat, it is a little bit easier to move towards a balanced view. in the interest of that purpose, i selected this particular quote. the rest of the article may be read here,

see for yourself - the 'r's end 2007 with a win over watford

the highlight of my final weekend in london (alongside the louise bourgeois exhibit at the tate modern this afternoon with the giant spider that i love so much)

did i not mention - they were second from the top, we were second from the bottom, the game was away, and we were 3-0 up at half-time and managed not to lose to another last-minute goal. hurrah!

benazir bhutto is assassinated

i just turned on my computer and saw the headline. although she escaped a previous attempt when she returned to pakistan, and has been in danger for some time, it is still unbelieveable to me that she is gone. not to mention the poor people who died with her in the suicide attack. i may not have agreed with her politics, but i admired her achievements as a woman. she was the first democratically elected woman prime minister of a muslim country. i am quite shocked.

yahoo report
the times report
key events in her career
the grauniad
her official website

may she rest in peace, although the aftermath in pakistan may make it impossible.

qpr 2-1 colchester

and i was there! in my camera, and thus not available until i get back home, are some pics from a lovely day at loftus road. i got all dorky and took pictures of myself with players. luckily i could only recognise about 4 of them since there are so many new faces these days. never mind - just wanted to share with you the joy of being there and the joy of being there when they win and, well, the joy!

come on uuuuu rrrrr's!

the richest club in the world?

that is what today's sun say about my sad darling queens park rangers. it says so right here. lakshmi mittal, the official holder of fifth place in the world's richest person championship, has become a shareholder at qpr.

this is all utterly surreal. in august, we were this close to going out of business. today, mr chelski and his minions are pocket change next to our newest investor. of course, the great worry for us as fans is - what will happen to the soul of our club? it's all very well having pots of money, but what is going to change, and do we want it to?

watch this space :-)

how to win at rock paper scissors

according to my friends at the telegraph, there is a simple strategy to winning the game of rock, paper, scissors:

"Research shows that stone, also called rock, is the most popular of the three possible moves in the game. That means that your opponent is likely to choose paper, because they will expect to you to start the game with stone. By going with scissors, you achieve an early victory."

and there you have it. Use your power for good, not for evil.

worst xmas cracker jokes ...

an english friend of mine here in boston told me the other day that americans do not know what xmas crackers are. can it be so? well i am too tired today to do the googling and linking so i ask you to take care of that business yourself if necessary. meanwhile, tomorrow's telegraph investigates the worst jokes from such crackers. here is their report, and here is their, and my favourite:

What is Santa's favourite pizza?

One that's deep pan, crisp and even.

ba dump dum!

o alright ... cannot look at those puppy-dog eyes ... here is a link to explain the crackers ... go, enjoy!

desperate diedrich

a photo from goslar in germany, demonstrating a creative way to overcome the local smoking ban in restaurants. or, how to be outside when you are inside.

???

looking a gift goat in the mouth

ethical gifts are all the rage these days with many of my friends and acquaintances. indeed, my housemates and i decided this year that instead of exchanging tchochkes, we would pool our $10 maximum and buy some bees from heifer international.

this morning, the bbc posted a story suggesting that while we may feel better about doing something like this, the recipients of our beneficence may feel patronised and demeaned.

"Charity director Ceri Dingle claims this is a prime example of how aid workers do not take into account the dreams and ambitions of people in developing countries. She says: "Giving someone a grasscutter to feed their family reinforces the assumption that these people are not like us. "Would you like a grasscutter for Christmas? People in the developing world are like us - they know the sorts of things we have and they want them too. Giving these things assume they want to continue to scrape by on the land. Survival is not development.""

the rest of the story is here.

o dear o dear o dear.

international year of the potato 2008

o my goodness! for a woman whose grandmother's grandmother was from the city of minsk aka the potato capital of all the russias, this is wonderful news. i have dedicated my life to celebrating the versatility of this tuber, and am delighted that it has now been given the recognition it deserves.

"The potato's story begins about 8,000 years ago near Lake Titicaca, which sits at 3,800 m (12,500 ft) above sea level in the Andes mountain range of South America, on the border between Bolivia and Peru. There, research indicates, communities of hunters and gatherers who had first entered the South American continent at least 7,000 years before began domesticating wild potato plants that grew around the lake in abundance ... Planting tubers remains the most important activity of the farming year near Lake Titicaca, where the potato is known as Mama Jatha, or mother of growth. The potato remains the seed of Andean society."
the official website

another reason for not growing my hair

yahoo had a spot on scariest hairdos in the movies. this one scared me the most. princess leia's doughnuts have become friendly reminders of the excesses of the seventies, but this is just unbearable. it's probably why she agreed to shave her head for 'v for vendetta'!

the great turkish delight controversy

yesterday's times has a story about turkish delight. rather than an upbeat recording of another goalscoring exploit by tugay for blackburn rovers; or an analysis of the morals of edmund pevensie, it tells the tale of a trademark war between the loukoumi yeroskipou of the greek cypriot confectioners and the lokum of turkey.

the greek cypriots have called shotgun for the european union trademark for their version of the sweet, and the national pride of turkey appears to be at stake, even though the only place where the confection is called 'turkish delight' appears to be england. it is not as if the turks will not be able to trademark their own version, and it could end up that at least three kinds of sweet will be trademarked. however, turkish nerves are a little jangly at the moment and this situation is not helping.

european diabetics await further developments with extra epipens standing by.

what have i done to deserve this?

a rather depressed baby panda sits it out while being ogled by the masses.

spiderpig

sorry, but i could not resist this:

hip hip hurrah ...

... it's a snow day today!

that's all - as you were.

the dark knight

i'm sorry but i can't help it - i do like batman, and especially the dark knight versions. i have the comicbooks, sorry, graphic novels. so i am interested in what they are going to do with the latest films. hence a pic of the new joker, hot off the internet presses - heath ledger.

i quite like the poster as well :-)

mmmmm marlee

only a few weeks until the new season of 'the l word' begins and the p.r. machines are beginning to roll. see dorothy's page for more details. i just borrowed this pic of my favourite guest on the show. am not a tibette fan, and am hoping, probably in vain, that after the writers have messed with bette's heart some more, they will let her end up with jodi. and i just saw a pig fly by my window.

er, burnley 0-2 qpr. this is not a typo

captain bolder gets stuck in
a cold night up north sees a surprise win for the 'r's against an in-form burnley team. highlight of the evening was the second goal - in the last minutes, the burnley 'keeper came up into the attack for a corner kick. qpr cleared the ball, and rowan vine collected it and sprinted down the field to tap it into an empty net. excellent! of course, all our moods have swung quicker than any hormones could move them :-) what the heck - we have more than 3 days to enjoy this brief lapse from the egregious before the next match.

say what?

akos buzsaky of queens park rangers has been named to the coca-cola championship team of the week. really. honestly. look here if you don't believe me. to tell the truth, i don't believe me, but it is there in all its pixellated glory. okay akos!

scun*horpe utd 2-2 qpr

i believe this is the rare sighting of a qpr goal. scored by an unpronounceable hungarian on loan from plymouth. they did not lose. they did not win. they let a lead go twice. apparently our defence is made of jelly, while the midfield runs through a pit of treacle. meanwhile, the manager cannot speak english, and the team members appear unable to communicate with each other. the fact is, however, that our next-door neighbour in wembley in 1970 was a qpr fan, not an arse or phlegm or scum fan. thus we are forever bound to suffer. and we did not lose!

beatboxing peter and the wolf

thanks to susie bright for pointing out this youtube clip:


i do so love peter and the wolf. the version i have on cd is narrated by michael flanders.

robot perlman et al

humanoid robots that have such fine motor control - quite thrilling! as long as they remember the 3 laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

isaac asimov wrote these in 1942. they still seem pretty applicable to me in 2007. i think we are a long way from android rights issues. meanwhile, as long as we find viable renewable power sources for such mechanical devices, the idea that they may be able to help older people to be physically safe and cared for is very attractive.

paddington bear to be arrested!

latest news from the bbc is that paddington bear, who stowed away on a boat from peru when his aunt lucy went into a nursing home, is to be arrested and questioned about his immigration status. we await further developments.

full story here.

nigella and the weight fascists

in this article, the times talks to nigella lawson (and also a little to vanessa feltz) about the perils of being comfortable with a more rubenesque body. shane watson says:

"“It isn’t great being described as overweight,” Nigella tells me over the phone, matter of factly. “Maybe I have put on weight, or maybe it’s a bad camera angle. But in real life, this is normal size. “Everyone is so critical,” she continues. “All must be sacrificed to the great god of skinny. You must say no to everything. Life has to be pretty fabulous, surely, if you can afford to turn down occasions of pleasure?”"

what a load of poo says the ravaj eloquently! nigella - overweight? what a load of rubbish! enough, however, of this philosophising. the quote in the article that stood out for me was:

"“I associate thinness with dying. My mother had real eating issues. When she had cancer, she said, ‘This is the first time I have eaten without worrying,’ and that is chilling. Something clicked, and I vowed never to say, ‘I am not allowed that.’ ”"

i remember reading a book by nigella's late husband, john diamond, describing his experiences with the cancer that eventually killed him. at one point, he described a moment of joy when he was thin enough to fit into his wife's jeans. i thought to myself, gosh, at least if i am dying, the upside is that i will be able to eat as much of my mother's cranberry cheesecake as i would like. and then there is the movie 'chocolat', where judi dench's character, a diabetic, decides to go out with one last feast - a chocolate dinner where every dish contains some of the dread sweet. again i thought, that makes total sense! i also thought once more of my mother's cranberry cheesecake - it really is that good.

nu - the writer's main thrust turns out to be that women are creating this problem for themselves:

"There is a lot of confusion about this weight fascism. We blame fashion. We blame models. We blame ageism and advertising and celebrity. But who stands to gain from ostracising women because they are too curvaceous or too thin? Other women, that’s who: women who mistrust their own sex and who lack confidence in themselves."

that is a whole other debate. for now, i am just working on finding a safe boundary between the killer threat that sugar is to me as a diabetic, and the struggle to love my body for exactly what it is right now. after all, despite my best efforts to the contrary, my body has kept me alive. it has kept faith with me rather than giving up. surely that is an excellent reason to love it? surely that is an excellent reason for so many of us :-)

the owl of learning and technology

here i am in the bowels of the brandeis library. this is getz - the technological hub of the campus, and i am waiting for the video of today's maths lesson to be transferred onto a dvd so i may add it to the class collection for viewing and critique on thursday. the room is full of worshipful i-macs, sisters to my own back at 72a. while i wait, i ask the defender of the multimedia loans desk if there is any music by martha schlamme in the collection. there are four vinyl records. i am rather excited by this. sadly, the record players do not work as the needle is broken. i ask j., the kind young man who is supervising my video tape, about turning vinyl music into mp3s. i tell him that the record-player before us was the equivalent of the i-pod when i was batmizvah. he tells me that he has seen record-players but has never used one. i shall have to roll my trousers when i get home. meanwhile, i wait ...

and the turner prize goes to ...

... mark wallinger.
according to the bbc: "Mark Wallinger has been named the winner of the Turner Prize for his replica of the one-man anti-war protest in Parliament Square, State Britain." above is a still from a recording of ten nights he spent alone in berlin's neue nationalgalerie dressed in a bear suit.

more details on the prize here
and here
and also here
nb best comment online so far:

"This is a bit dull. Perhaps he should have called the bear Mohammed.
JLS, London, UK"

gillian gibbons pardoned

the president of sudan has pardoned the schoolteacher who allowed her students to name a teddy bear 'muhammed'. hurrah.

yahoo report is here.
daily mail
telegraph
grauniad

we are the people we have been waiting for

thanks to tom friedman at the ny times for pointing out this website: vehicle design summit. if you have any interest in alternative resources of energy, and particularly a vehicle "designed to maximize occupant, pedestrian and environmental safety", then you may be interested in these guys. tired of waiting for governments and businesses to put aside short-term goals in favour of long-term solutions, the vds mission statement asserts that they "will begin by assembling a global consortium of the world's leading thinkers, dreamers, revolutionaries and change agents to develop the collaborative framework necessary to harness the world's genius, imagination and inspiration." Who are they? check them out at the people menu on the website. this appears to have begun at m.i.t., so as a temporary local i may feel some local pride. or not. i await further developments.

o yeah, and the title is also from the mission statement!

world aids day

here are some world aids day resources.

dawn french is alive and well and moving to cornwall

thank goodness for that!
read about her current plans here.

it is interesting to me that she had been reported as saying that she didn't think she would live to be very old. i have often felt like that. i don't think it is being particularly morbid, it is just a feeling. as long as i am reasonably healthy, i'm happy to hang around. i plan to see qpr win the premiership (which means at least another 30 years i'd say).

as for ms. french - the article begins thus:

"To say that Dawn French is much loved is rather like saying that some women quite like chocolate. If she wasn't a national treasure before The Vicar of Dibley hit our TV screens in 1994, that status was swiftly accorded her after she put on a cassock and answered every village's ideal of how a woman of the cloth should be: compassionate, capable and heaps of fun."

i think i'd like her to play me in the miniseries :-)

evel knievel r.i.p.

somewhat breaking news - evel knievel has died after a long illness. what is it that makes us such rubbernecks? does seeing someone defeating the odds give us hope for ourselves? or perhaps the potential that they will go down may improve the odds for ourselves? the times reports:

"Perhaps his most infamous stunt was an attempt in 1967 to jump the fountain in front of the Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas. Before the jump, Mr Knievel put $100 on the blackjack table. He lost and drank a shot of Wild Turkey bourbon. On the ramp, his motorcycle inexplicably decelerated and Mr Knievel crashed into the car park, putting him in a coma for 29 days.

When he awoke, he was a world-wide celebrity."

i have to admit that i just don't get it, but then i am someone who thinks that the sounds i hear in the car park at six flags are more like screams from a battlefield than sounds of people having fun.

times obit

"Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling. At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man."
ny times

trivial questions

the science page in yesterday's indy online has some examples of trivia questions texted to "any questions answered". here are a few of my favourites:

"How do you say "I love you" in binary code?
I love you in binary code is: 01001001 (I) 01101100 (l) 01101111 (o) 01110110 (v) 01100101 (e) 01111001 (y) 01101111 (o) 01110101 (u).

Are there more cows than cars in the world?
Yes, there are more cows in the world than cars: an estimated 1.4 billion cows compared to about 1 billion cars. Cows produce 20 per cent of all methane.

Can a turtle breathe through its bottom?
Yes. Many species of turtle have special sacs opening off the cloaca (anal chamber) permitting take-up of oxygen. Sea-cucumbers also "buttbreathe" .

In which town or city in the UK do people have the highest life expectancy, and what is that age?
The London borough of Kensington & Chelsea, at 80.8 years (men) and 85.8 (women), has the highest life expectancy. Glasgow, at 69.3 and 76.4 years, has the lowest. (hurrah - my mother lives in k&c!)

What is the world's oldest tree?
At more than 4,800 years old, the oldest living tree is "Methu-selah" , a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains, California. Its exact location is a secret.

How much does an elephant poo in its life?
An elephant would produce around 2,492,000kg of excrement over its lifetime. On an average day, the average elephant produces around 100kg. For a human, the daily amount is around 250g.

What time is it at the poles?
Time zones divide along lines of longitude and meet at the poles, causing them to be in all time zones. The South Pole is on the same time as New Zealand.

What was measured in Gillettes?
The strength of early lasers was unofficially measured in Gillettes, named after the power needed to burn a hole in one razor blade."

muhammed the bear

have you been following this awful story? the gist of it is that a british teacher named gillian gibbons has been arrested in the sudan for blasphemy. yesterday the telegraph thought that she might be released. they described the incident thus:

"Miss Gibbons arrived at Unity High School - which caters for wealthy Sudanese children as well as expatriates - in August, after leaving Liverpool in the summer. She asked one of her pupils to bring in the bear and let the children choose the name Mohammed, prompting complaints from several Muslim parents. It is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the prophet. The seven-year-old student who inspired the naming of the teddy has insisted the teacher was not trying to insult Islam. The boy, called Mohammed, told the Daily Mail: "The teacher asked me what I wanted to call the teddy. I said Mohammed. I named it after my name.""

today the bbc reports:

"Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. She escaped conviction for inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs, and will now appeal."

wtf? the idea was that each night a student took the bear home and wrote down what happened to him that evening. the reports were then collected in a booklet. kind of like flat stanley. anyway, again according to the bbc:

"Sudan's top clerics had called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam."

insulin may be causing me to lose my mind - what is their excuse?

ps a perspective from jemima khan

don't mind me ...

tourists everywhere may be devastated - the voice of the underground, the woman who recorded those immortal words "mind the gap", has been given the sack by london underground. a spokesperson said that it was because she had publicly criticised london underground. she claims that she was misquoted.

more details from the bbc here.

verity lambert r.i.p.

i am mourning the death of verity lambert, who amid myriad successes was the the producer of the first ever doctor who. the telegraph obit includes the odd sentence:

"Verity Ann Lambert was born on November 27 1935, the only child of a Jewish accountant, and educated at Roedean, where she frightened herself watching Great Expectations on the school projector."

for me, at least, a strange collection of facts for a single sentence. anyway, the rest of the obit is linked at the bottom of this note. i note her passing for being in the vanguard of women who made successful careers in television. also, it happens that she was behind many programmes that i enjoyed, e.g., the naked civil servant, minder, rock follies, edward and mrs. simpson, and rumpole of the bailey.

telegraph obit

"The common factor was Lambert's tenacity and drive. A small, energetic woman, she kept up a ferocious schedule and refused to accept the conventional wisdom. Although not a writer she had an instinctive grasp of whether scripts worked and she also had a strong business sense. She was renowned for having a short fuse, and Jeremy Isaacs, her boss at Thames Television, once remarked that she could reduce grown men to tears."
the times obit

"n drama, not the controller nor even the writer, let alone the accountant, was king, but the producer, now a creature extinct in all but name. He (Verity, was a very rare she) was poised professionally on that rich cusp between the management and the talent - writers, directors and the hundreds of skilled creatives - outside. If the bosses trusted the producer, and often they did with a combative generosity, it was the producer who made a crucial difference to the health and vitality of the entire system. Verity was at the very top of this steep, wary tree. She had the greatest range, charisma and durability. Not only the producer's producer, but the audience's finest ally."
grauniad

hurrah!

while the following quote from a recent interview in the telegraph throws a little wobbly into my respect for patricia cornwell:

"She flies helicopters, rides motorbikes and is terrier-like with her causes. Several years ago she set out to prove that the British Impressionist painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, and she is still on the case. "The Sickert Trust had better watch out," she warns tantalisingly, "when copyright expires on his letters in 2012.""

i was still excited to discover that she is now prepared to be more open about her spouse, Staci, and their relationship. the rest of the interview may be of interest if you are a fan of her books. you may find it here.

ravaj is back!

too boring to explain absence. meanwhile, was home sick today and what i want to know is: if i spent all day in my room and mostly in bed, how did my fingernails manage to collect so much dirt?

more on social participation

let us just say that when a friend tries to set up two of her other friends with each other, things that the first friend finds endearing may not be so to one or the other of the other friends ... thence the early dialogue during disastrous date three:

"(our friend) says that you like to drink milk?"
"why yes, i do (goes into cute story about why no coffee or tea)."
"hmmmm. i am a vegan."

BA DUM DUM!

a question of free speech

in the wrong exam that i took yesterday, i had to write a brief essay about whether or not universities in the usa should place any limits on free speech on campus. luckily they said "any", which made the argument much easier for me. anyway, now comes the following news from oxford university:

"Police are bracing themselves for violent clashes between university students and far-Right groups after the Holocaust-denying historian, David Irving, and the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, were invited to speak at the Oxford Union. ... The speakers were invited by Luke Tryl, the president of the union and a former chairman of the Halifax branch of Conservative Future, the Conservative Party's youth wing."

the details of the story are here, in the telegraph online.

i am an utter idealist at heart, who hopes that the individual will be able to make up her/his own mind based on the ethics and reason that underpin the culture and civilisation that i believe are most likely to lead to tolerance and peace in our world. i am always being told to be realistic, and sometimes i even am.

nu - what does one do with holocaust-deniers and fascists? and is there a difference between institutions of education, i.e., those that hope to shape and develop young minds; and other, public, forums? of course i do not know. i feel that if these people are not inciting others to violence and hatred, there are few grounds upon which to ban them. according to the article, the real problem is the people beyond the university who are planning to go up to oxford to fight for their guys. *sigh*

woody allen notes on morality

today's ny times has excerpts from more eric lax interviews with mr. allen. it also has bites from short stories old and new - if you decide to have a look, it may help to have a pocket oxford english dictionary at your fingertips. i have to admit that i still like the way this man's mind works. consider the following sentence, describing a piece of junk mail he receives from a new age goddess:

"There is a fervid endorsement by someone named Pleiades MoonStar — a name that would cause no end of consternation for me if I were told at the last minute it belonged to my brain surgeon or pilot."

i am rather fond of his tangents :-)

in the eric lax selection, allen comments on his well-documented belief that god does not exist:

"People jump to the conclusion that what I'm saying is that anything goes, but actually I'm asking the question: given the worst, how do we carry on, or even why should we choose to carry on? Of course, we don't choose — the choice is hardwired into us. The blood chooses to live. [Laughs.] Please note as I pontificate here, you're interviewing a guy with a deficient denial mechanism. Anyhow, religious people don't want to acknowledge the reality that contradicts their fairy tale."

while i suspect that he may have been traumatised in his youth by either emily dickinson or a negative experience with a rabbi, he is addressing a question in which i have some interest: wtf is the point of it all? or, with a little less melodrama, if god is not at the centre, what is? on what may morality be based? r. hillel is quoted in pirkei avot: in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man. allen says:

"Now, there are plenty of people who choose to lead their lives in a completely self-centered, homicidal way. They feel, Since nothing means anything and I can get away with murder, I'm going to. But one can also make the choice that you're alive and other people are alive and you're in a lifeboat with them and you've got to try and make it as decent as you can for yourself and everybody. And it would seem to me this is so much more moral and even much more "Christian." If you acknowledge the awful truth of human existence and choose to be a decent human being in the face of it rather than lie to yourself that there's going to be some heavenly reward or some punishment, it seems to me more noble."

i don't know for myself how important it is to be noble, but i do find it helpful to have as many reasons as possible to try to be a mensch.

the vienna vegetable orchestra

i have just watched the following video. while for me it has served as the perfect antidote to examination stresses and the nadir of november, it may not be so appealing for you. nevertheless, i urge you to watch it. a few moments of modern music, played on lettuce and carrots and cucumbers and peppers. i am particularly enamoured of the carrot recorder, and also the yellow pepper/carrot trumpet where the top of the pepper serves as a mute. here you go:


how did i discover this? thanks to the telegraph online, at a page you may view here.

also, please note the lack of waste. wherever health and safety services permit, at the end of most concerts the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup made from the instruments.

the owl of learning - bad news, good news

today ravaj took the first examination of the three that are necessary to be licenced in the state of massachusetts as an elementary school educator. the fogginess of sleep-deprivation brought on by a desperate blitz on overdue work meant that she was not exactly sure which exam she was going to take. however, she prepared as her classmates did, and spent hours making flashcards for all the technical terms about reading that she needed to know. she should have realised something was up when, instead of calling out the correct positions in italian for her swordfighting teacher, she kept saying, "phonemic awareness!" and "graphic organiser!". thanks to some coaching by a kind housemate, ravaj thought it possible to make a passing stab at the 'foundations of reading' test today. imagine her surprise when the test papers were handed out and she found she was taking the literacy exam instead! luckily, she is semi-literate, and thinks she found enough spelling and punctuation mistakes in the multiple-choice section to make the passing grade. luckily indeed. imagine how she would have felt if things had been the other way round!!

migrating and emigrating pandas

the associated press reports that pandas in southwestern china are being forced to move as the bamboo that they eat is in its regenerative phase and thus there are massive food shortages. henry sanderson writes:

"Most of the pandas' favorite arrow bamboo in a 217,000 square-mile region of Sichuan province is going through a once-in-60-year cycle of flowering and dying before regenerating, said Yang Xuyu, deputy head of the province's Wild Animal Preservation Station. The pandas are moving to other areas of Sichuan, which has about 40 reserves of various sizes. "No wild panda has been found dead of starvation," said Yang. But more than 80 percent of bamboo in the affected region, called Ruoergai, is now unfit for the animals to eat, he said. Pandas will not touch the plant once it flowers.

About 1,200 pandas — 80 percent of the surviving wild population in China — live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan. Hundreds of pandas died of starvation in Sichuan in the 1980s when arrow bamboo in some reserves flowered and then died. Pandas derive most of their nutrition from arrow bamboo and can starve once the plant enters its dying-off stage. The bamboo produces seeds before dying, and takes 10 to 20 years to grow back. Yang told a conference on panda survival in Chengdu, Sichuan, on Sunday that a shrinking habitat due to farming and industrial development makes it increasingly hard for the animals in the wild to find food during the bamboo life cycle, according to the Xinhua news agency. China's forestry bureau is carrying out a panda rescue drive and working with the World Wildlife Fund to try to restore panda migration paths, Xinhua said."

on a more positive note, mei sheng (which translates as "born in the usa"), arrives safely at the wolong nature reserve in china. mei sheng was born in the san diego zoo, and returns as part of the agreement with china that allowed his parents to go to san diego in the first place.

remembrance sunday

poppy day is here. bbc online has memories from survivors of the First World War here.

this is one of my favourite poems by the war poets:

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

Isaac Rosenberg
(1890 - 1918)

ahhhhh, bless

a pleasant image to bear in mind before i go to sleep.

kate moss mess

this is absolutely fabulous. reports are just coming out that kate moss met david cameron, and thought he was a plumber. it's going to be on parky, or maybe was already this evening. in any case, here is what yahoo had to say about the event:

"Conservative Party leader Cameron said in an interview to be broadcast Saturday that he met Moss at a charity bash recently and inexplicably found himself engaged in a conversation with her about flood damage to her home. "So I went on like this, twittering on, and she turned around and said, 'God, you sound like a really useful guy, can I have your phone number?'" he told the Parkinson chatshow on ITV1. "I went back to my table and said, 'The good news is, I met Kate Moss and she wanted my telephone number. The bad news is, I think she thinks I'm something to do with drainage'."

social participation

have been writing for class on the skills and opportunities for the social participation of children in the classroom. and then it occurred to me to consider my social participation beyond the classroom. there has been little opportunity and less time and energy for the ravaj to rampage through the social whirl of waltham. there was one first date in brooklyn which ended in disaster as my car was locked into the parking lot for the night (it closed at 10 pm. in new york city. !!!) and i ended up sleeping the night on the couch of said date. needless to say we are no longer in contact with each other. then there was the friend of a friend who invited me to a holocaust survivors' lunch to set me up with a friend. that was just scary. let us hope for third time lucky. let us hope for a third time. meanwhile, back to discussion of good ways to encourage students to make eye contact when greeting each other.

norman mailer is dead

i've never been a big fan of the work and/or person of norman mailer. i have to acknowledge that issues of masculinity kind of dip below my radar. i did, however, enjoy reading the following sentence in the bbc online obit today:

"Mailer's obsession with masculinity and violence often got him into trouble. He once beat up a sailor on a Manhattan street because he believed that the man had questioned the sexuality of his dog."

elaine is correct

owls of learning have been very demanding in the past week, leaving little time for blogging. just in case there may actually be the possibility that one person wondered for a nanosecond who the actor in the last post was, there is a comment to that post which reveals the answer.

or i can just tell you.

(daniel radcliffe)

name the actor

do you recognise the person seen here in his upcoming role as the son of rudyard kipling? today we may be remembering the fifth of november (well, those of us ex-pats for whom it still is the fifth of november), but it will soon be remembrance sunday, when this drama will be shown on british television.

qpr 2-0 hull city

celebrating the first goal
remember remember the third of november.

the first goalscorer for qpr this afternoon, pictured above, was the delightfully-named hogan ephraim. in the second half, we scored again, thanks to mikele benjamin leigertwood. five games without defeat, conceding only one goal in that time. first game with our new italian leadership. we won! and i am off out to celebrate ...

o to be in manhattan ...

... now that cyrano's there.

cyrano de bergerac by edmond rostand is my favourite play of all time. i have only seen the film versions with gerard depardieu and mel ferrer, as well as steve martin in 'roxanne'. now it is on broadway, starring kevin kline and jennifer garner. and it even got a good review today in the new york times.


if the owl of learning did not feel as if she were in the last stages of trichomoniasis (the owl kind, not the people kind. yuck!), she might consider going to nyc for a weekend to see the play. however, we have entered the nadir of november, and all time and energy must be directed to her studies and her work. :-(

thursday thirteen xxi

Thirteen Word Definitions that I can Never Remember

1. GIBBOUS
an adjective meaning humpbacked and (of a heavenly body) convex at both edges, as the moon when more than half full.

2. INCHOATE
an adjective meaning not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary; just begun; incipient.; not organized; lacking order.

3. KINESTHESIA
a noun meaning the sensation of movement or strain in muscles, tendons, and joints; muscle sense.

4. JEJUNE
an adjective that can mean without interest or significance; dull; juvenile; immature; childish;lacking knowledge or experience; uninformed.

5. TRENCHANT
an adjective that can mean incisive or keen, as language or a person; caustic; cutting: trenchant wit. clearly or sharply defined; distinct.

6. HEURISTIC
an adjective meaning serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation. also, encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error.

7. ALGORITHM
a noun meaning a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, e.g., for finding the greatest common divisor.

8. AQUILINE
an adjective that when referring to a nose means shaped like an eagle's beak; hooked. otherwise, of or like the eagle

9. EPISTEMOLOGY
a noun that means a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.

10. PALAVER
a noun meaning Idle chatter. or talk intended to charm or beguile. it used to mean a parley between european explorers and representatives of local populations, especially in africa.

11. MOOT
this one is still confusing even though i looked it up! on the one hand, it is something that has been previously decided or settled and is therefore not relevant to discuss; and on the other hand it can be understood as bringing something up in order to discuss it. for more information, look at the usage note near the bottom of this page.

12. PHLEGMATIC
an adjective that can mean having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.

13. ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM
a noun meaning originally, opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England, now opposition to the belief that there should no longer be an official church in a country. usually used, however, as an example of the longest word that someone knows :-)

phew! now, use them all in a sentence!! happy tt ...

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
ps not for the faint of heart, well, not for anyone who faints easily ... the first tt i viewed after posting was really quite fascinating - 13 operations. those of you with a medical bent may enjoy it.