Saturday, February 19, 2011

lucubration \loo-kyoo-BRAY-shun; loo-kuh-\, noun:

1. The act of studying by candlelight; nocturnal study; meditation.

2. That which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition.

Lucubration comes from Latin lucubratus, past participle of lucubrare, "to work by night, composed at night (as by candlelight)," ultimately connected with lux, "light." Hence it is related to lucent, "shining, bright," and lucid, "clear." The verb form is lucubrate.

bowl noob

• Someone who puts a bowl in the dishwasher facing down with a less than 45 degree angle of attack. Hence the dishwasher can not wash the inners on the bowl.

Who's the bowl noob? CBA coming home to sh*t.

Trivia

Who was the subject of the 2006 documentary film An Unreasonable Man?

• Crusading consumer advocate and repeat third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

History

• Treaty of Westminster: ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War; New Amsterdam was subsequently ceded to England (1674)
• Aaron Burr: the former US vice president was arrested for treason; he was acquitted (1807)
• Edict of Emancipation: serfs were liberated by Czar Alexander II (1861 OS)
• internment: FDR signed an order confining thousands of West Coast Japanese-Americans to relocation centers (1942); they were released three years later
• Eastenders: top-rated British soap first aired (1985)
• Mir: Soviet/Russian space station was launched; it remained in orbit for 15 years and was occupied for 12.5 of those (1986)
• Fidel Castro: after nearly 50 years in power, Cuba's charismatic president resigned his post; his younger brother Raúl took over (2008)

Birthdays

• Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543): astronomer
• Carson McCullers (1917-1967): Southern-gothic novelist, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; and, authors Amy Tan (59), Helen Fielding (53) and Jonathan Lethem (47)
• Smokey Robinson (71): R&B singer/songwriter; also, musicians Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), Stan Kenton (1912-1979) and Lou Christie (68)
• Jeff Daniels (56): stage and screen actor, Dumb and Dumber, The Squid and the Whale; plus, actors David Garrick (1717-1779), Lee Marvin (1924-1987), Carlin Glynn (71), Stephen Nichols (60), Ray Winstone (54), Justine Bateman (45), Benicio Del Toro (44) and Haylie Duff (26)
• Prince Andrew (51): Queen Elizabeth II's second son