Monday, March 22, 2010

cacophony \kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\, noun:

1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.
2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.

Cacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.

Myth-information

1. To intentionally misinform using myths and other popular misconceptions.
2. Widely held and promoted but false information that has taken on a mythic quality. Misinformation.

Health Care Reform is being shot down by myth-information.Creationism is myth-information rather than science.

9-11 conspiracy theories are based on myth-information.

Trivia
What funnyman named his firstborn son after Dracula’s dog?

• Comedian-illusionist Penn Jillette. He named his son, born in 2006, Zolten, noting that “it’s my wife [Emily’s] maiden name and most importantly, it’s the name of Dracula’s dog.” Their first child, a daughter, was named Moxie CrimeFighter.

History

• Stamp Act: tax was imposed by Britain on the American colonies; it raised intense opposition (1765)
• Equal Rights Amendment: was approved by US Congress; it was never ratified by requisite majority of states (1972)
• Flying Wallendas: patriarch Karl Wallenda fell to his death from a tightrope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1978)
• Hale-Bopp: comet passed the closest to Earth till the year 4397 at a distance of 1.315 AU (1997)

Berfdays

• Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886): artist and illustrator who inspired the Caldecott Medal; and, artists Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) and Thomas Crawford (1814-1857)
• Louis L'Amour (1908-1988): author of more than 100 novels, most of them westerns; plus, novelists Bienvenido Santos (1911-1996) and James Patterson (63), and poet Billy Collins (69)
• William Shatner (79): Captain Kirk on Star Trek andDenny Crane on Boston Legal; also, performers Chico Marx (1887-1961), Karl Malden (1912-2009), M. Emmet Walsh (75), Lena Olin (55), Matthew Modine (51) and Reese Witherspoon (34)
• Andrew Lloyd Webber (62): composer, Phantom of the Opera, Cats ; also, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (80), "On Broadway" singer George Benson (67) and Broadway star Stephanie Mills (53)
• Wolf Blitzer (62): journalist, reporter for CNN; plus, sportscaster Bob Costas (58)