Saturday, August 31, 2013

impolitic \im-POL-i-tik\, adjective:

• not politic, expedient, or judicious.

Impolitic combines the prefix im- meaning "not," with the Greek root politikos meaning "of citizens" or "pertaining to public life." It entered English around 1600.
Speak Truth to Power

• this phrase originated with the Quakers in a 1955 pamphlet (Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence) promoting pacifism, in the belief that love can overcome hatred. It has come to mean "speaking out to those in authority" and is now used in politics and human rights activism.

We must speak truth to power when legislation tramples on our constitutional rights.

Trivia
How many animals were sentenced to death in 1692 at the infamous Salem witch trials?

• Two, both of them dogs. They were hanged from gallows as suspected accomplices of witches, during the trials in the Massachusetts colony at which 20 men and women were sentenced to death.

History

• Malaya: became independent of the United Kingdom (1957); a few years later this federation of states became Malaysia
• Trinidad and Tobago: island nation of the southern Caribbean, birthplace of limbo, became independent of the United Kingdom (1962)
• Jack the Ripper: first victim was found with her throat cut in London's East End (1888)
• Princess Diana: was killed in a car crash along with her companion, Dodi Fayed, and her driver as they attempted to evade paparazzi (1997)
• Baghdad bridge stampede: 1,000 pilgrims were killed when panic over a supposed suicide bomber caused a crush of people on the Al-Aaimmah bridge over the Tigris River (2005)

Birthdays

• Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) 0012
• Maria Montessori 1870
• Wilhelmina (Netherlands) 1880
• Frederic March 1897
• Arthur Godfrey 1903
• William Saroyan 1908
• Sir Benrard Lovell 1914
• Daniel Schorr 1916
• Alan Jay Lerner 1918
• Richard Basehart 1919
• G.D. Spradlin 1920
• Buddy Hackett 1924
• James Coburn 1928
• Frank Robinson 1935
• Eldridge Cleaver 1935
• Warren Berlinger 1937
• Jerry Allison (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) 1939
• Jack Thompson 1940
• Itzhak Perlman 1945
• Van Morrison (Them) 1945
• Richard Gere 1949
• Rudolph Schenker (Scorpions) 1952
• Anthony Thistlewaite (The Waterboys) 1955
• Gina Shock (The Go-Go's) 1957
• Glenn Tillbrook (Squeeze) 1957
• Edwin Moses 1958
• Chris Whitley 1960
• Tony DeFranco (The DeFranco Family) 1960
• Larry Waddell (Mint Condition) 1963
• Jeff Russo (Tonic) 1969
• Debbie Gibson 1970
• Tamara (Trina & Tamara) 1977