Thursday, March 19, 2009

florid \FLOR-id\, adjective:

1. Flushed with red; of a lively reddish color.
2. Excessively ornate; flowery; as, "a florid style; florid eloquence."

Florid comes from Latin floridus, "flowery," from flos, flor-, "flower."
Zombie Company

1. A technically bankrupt company that is kept alive with large infusions of government money for the sake of "stability" in the U.S. financial system.
2. A large financial company with negative net worth that continues to operate, despite having no clear path to solvency.
3. The UnDead of Wall Street.

"AIG is the premier example of a zombie company -- kept alive only by $120 billion in federal bailout money. Apparently, it's considered too large to fail."

Trivia
What does a petrologist study?

• Rocks—their origin, formation, and composition.

Today in History:

• bank robbery: the first recorded bank heist took place in NYC; Edward Smith escaped with some $245,000, but was later caught and imprisoned (1831)
• SS Georgiana: Confederate ship was wrecked (1863); it was discovered on the same date in 1965 by underwater archeologist E. Lee Spence in his teenage years
• 25th Academy Awards: was the first televised Oscar ceremony (1953)
• invasion of Iraq: began (on March 20 local time in Iraq, 2003)

Today's Birthdays:

• David Livingstone (1813-1873): missionary and explorer; another explorer born on this date was Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890)
• Wyatt Earp (1848-1929): frontier lawman and gambler
• Earl Warren (1891-1974): 14th Chief Justice of the US; jurist John Sirica (1904-1992) was also born on this date
• Philip Roth (76): Pulitzer Prize winner for American Pastoral
• Harvey Weinstein (56): producer and co-founder of Miramax
• Bruce Willis (54): actor, Die Hard; actors Patrick McGoohan (1928-2008), Glenn Close (62) and Craig Lamar Traylor (20) also share a birthday today