Fun Fact: The Electoral

The first time the Democrats brought up removing the Electoral College and use popular vote instead was when Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was elected with only 39% of the popular vote. The ultimate response back then was the Confederacy.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

verisimilitude \ver-uh-si-MIL-i-tood, -tyood\, noun:

1. the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability: The play lacked verisimilitude.
2. something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth.

Verisimilitude comes from the Latin roots vērum + similis literally meaning "likeness to truth."

 

vsre

• very short reply expected, ie you can answer this with "yes", "no", "sounds good" etc.

We on for tonight?

VSRE

"Yes"

History

• Battle of Dunbar: Scots were massacred by the English as the Wars of Scottish Independence began (1296)
• Ferdinand Magellan: the leader of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe was killed by Philippine natives in the Battle of Mactan (1521)
• Paradise Lost: John Milton, blind and impoverished, sold the copyright for his epic poem for £10 (1667)
• SS Sultana: the worst maritime disaster in US history occurred when the wooden steamboat exploded and sank on the Mississippi near Memphis, killing up to 1,800 former Union POWs recently released from Confederate prison camps (1865)

Birthdays

• Edward Gibbon 1737 - Historian, author
• Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin 1759 - Author
• Samuel F.B. (Finley Breese) Morse 1791 - Inventor (electromagnetic telegraph)
• Ulysses S. Grant 1822 - 18th U.S. President, Lt. General in command of all Union armies during the U.S. Civil War, nickname: Hero of Appomattox
• Edward Whymper 1840 - Climber, explorer, illlustrator
• Wallace Hume 1896 - Chemist, inventor, credited with invention of nylon
• Rogers "Rajah" Hornsby 1896 - Baseball player
• Walter Lantz 1900 - Animator, creator of Woody Woodpecker
• Enos (Bradsher) "Country" Slaughter 1916 - Baseball player
• Jack Klugman 1922 - Actor ("The Odd Couple", "Quincy, M.E.")
• Coretta Scott King 1927 - Wife of Dr. Martin Luther King
• Chuck Knox 1932 - Football coach
• Casey Kasem (Kemal Amin Kasem) 1932 - Radio announcer, DJ, host ("American Top 40), character voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, actor ("Hawaii Five-O")
• Maxine Brown 1932 - Musician (The Browns)
• Calvin Newborn 1933 - Jazz/blues guitarist, brother of pianist Phineas Newborn Jr.
• Anouk Aimee (Françoise Sorya Dreyfus) 1934 - Actress ("La Dolce Vita", "Dr. Bethune")
• Phil Jones 1937 - Newsman
• Sandy Dennis 1937 - Actress ("Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff [1966]", "Splendor in the Grass")
• Judy Carne 1939 - Actress, comedienne
• Judith Blegen 1941 - Opera singer
• Lee Roy Jordan 1941 - Football player
• Bob Foster 1942 - Boxer
• Cuba Gooding 1944 - Singer
• Doug Buffone 1944 - Football player
• Ann Peebles 1947 - Singer
• Mack Alston 1947 - Football player
• Keith Magnuson 1947 - Hockey player
• Pete Ham 1947 - Musician (Badfinger)
• Dave Peel 1947 - Musician (The Lower East Side)
• Kate Pierson 1948 - Musician (B-52's)
• Herbie Murrell 1949 - Singer (The Stylistics)
• Douglas Sheehan 1949 - Actor
• Clive Taylor 1949 - Musician (Amen Corner)

  
• Paul Daniel "Ace" Frehley 1951 - Musician (KISS, Frehley's Comet)
• Gary Huff 1951 - Football player
• George Gervin 1952 - Basketball player
• Sheena Easton 1959 - Singer
• Marco Pirroni 1959 - Musician (Siouxsie & the Banshees, Adam & the Ants)
• James Le Gros 1962 - Actor
• Rob Squires 1965 - Musician (Big Head Todd & the Monsters)
• Mica Paris 1969 - Singer
• Chris Carpenter 1975 - Baseball player
• Travis Meeks 1979 - Musician (Days of the New)
• Patrick Stump 1984 - Musician (Fall out Boy)
   

  

Rock out with your cock out! KILL. YOUR. IDOLS.

Kill Your Idols
Static-X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMgkWy1UfSM

Cosmetic photogenic
This pain is fleeting, ring out
Mechanical the passion
Your head is bleeding, slow down

Can't keep doing this
What you want me to
Marching sheep herd said
See my broken head

Live your own life
I got myself
Out of my sight
Kill your idols

It's ugly, you see
I don't care what you think now
Forgive, forget
Don't take the easy way out

Can't keep doing this
What you want me to
Marching sheep herd said
See my broken head

Live your own life
I got myself
Out of my sight
Kill your idols

WTF Friday - Pure Evil

I hope your weekend works out better than this did!

Friday, April 26, 2019

quell \kwel\, verb:

1. to suppress; put an end to; extinguish: The troops quelled the rebellion quickly.
2. to vanquish; subdue.
3. to quiet or allay (emotions, anxieties, etc.): The child's mother quelled his fears of the thunder.

From the Old English cwellan, quell has been spelled with a "q" since the late 1200s. The Old English was a cognate for the Middle Dutch quellen meaning "to torture."

 

Reviral

• When this generation later tells their teenage kids about the youtube videos you watched back in the day and those children subsequently rapidly share said videos with their generation.

The year, 2030 - "hey Dad, listen to this, I learned to play Mozart today". "who cares Billy, this cat had that figured out twenty years ago. Wipe away your tears and check this out".

Billy shares with friends. Video goes viral...again. Reviral.

 

Trivia
What did rebellious Boston colonists do to British customs commissioner John Malcolm in 1775 when he attempted to collect the tax on tea?

• They forced him to drink large quantities of hot tea after stripping him, tar-and-feathering him, and parading him through the streets of Boston. The attack took place four weeks after the Boston Tea Party.

Holiday

• Alien Day - first contact according to the movie ALIEN was on a planet referred to as LV426. 426. 4/26. April 26.

History

• Cape Henry: Jamestown settlers made landfall on this Virginia promontory (1607)
• Marshall Henri Pétain: the leader of France's Vichy government was arrested (1945); he died in prison in 1951
• Tanzania: African republic was formed by the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (1964)
• Chernobyl disaster: worst-ever nuclear reactor accident occurred near the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl; the resulting radioactive cloud covered much of Europe (1986)

Birthdays

• John James Audubon 1785 - Ornithologist, naturalist, painter
• Frederick Olmsted 1822 - Journalist, landscape designer
• Jessie Redmon Fauset 1882 - Poet, essayist, novelist
• Anita Loos 1893 - Screenwriter, playwright, author
• Rudolf Hess 1895 - Adolf Hitler's Deputy in the Nazi Party
• Charles Richter 1900 - Seismologist, creator of the Richter magnitude scale used to quantify earthquakes
• Teddy Edwards 1924 - Jazz musician
• Jorgen Ingmann 1925 - Musician
• Bernard Malamud 1914 - Author of novels and short stories
• Bambi Linn 1926 - Dancer
• Carol Burnett 1933 - Actress, comedian 
• Duane Eddy 1938 - Musician
• Maurice Williams 1938 - Musician (Zodiacs)
• Claudine Clark 1941 - Musician
• Bobby Rydell 1942 - Singer
• Claudine Auger 1942 - Actress ("Thunderball")
• Gary Wright 1943 - Musician
• Giorgio Moroder 1944 - Record producer, songwriter, performer
• Boyd Matson 1947 - Television anchor (National Geographic Explorer, NBC's Weekend Today)
• Donna De Varona 1947 - Swimmer
• Giancarlo Esposito 1958 - Actor, director
• Roger Taylor 1960 - Musician (Duran Duran)
• Chris Mars 1961 - Artist, musician

  
• Joan Chen 1961 - Actress
• Michael Damian 1962 - Actor, singer, producer
• Jet Li 1963 - Actor ("War", "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor")
• Kevin James 1965 - Actor ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry", "The King of Queens")
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste 1967 - Actress ("Without a Trace")
  Melania Trump 1970 - model / First Lady 
• T-Boz (Tionne Tenese Watkins) 1970 - Songwriter (TLC)
• Jordana Brewster 1980 - Actress (and Mrs. Bax0jayz doppleganger)
• Marnette Patterson 1980 - Actress
• Jessica Lynch 1983

 

 

    

   

Turtle Thursday: Spirit Animal

Thursday, April 25, 2019

chuffed \chuhft\, adjective:

1. annoyed; displeased; disgruntled.

2. delighted; pleased; satisfied.

This British term comes from the obsolete chuff meaning "chubby," used in the seventieth to nineteenth centuries. In the 1800s, chuff took on the sense of "pleased." Since the mid-1900s, chuffed has been used to mean both "pleased" or "displeased," depending upon the context.

 

urine echo

• The sound created from urine slashing against the urinal walls

"Ahh this is the best piss of my life, check out the sound of this urine echo" - said Mike

 

 

Holiday

• World Penguin Day

History

• guillotine: highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier was beheaded in France's first public execution-by-guillotine (1792)
• Suez Canal: ground was broken on the waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea (1859)
• license plates: were required on cars in New York State — the first time in the US (1901)
• United Nations: delegates met in San Francisco to organize the international body (1945)
• double helix: in the magazine Nature, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid," which described the structure of DNA (1953)

Birthdays

• Oliver Cromwell 1599 - English military and political leader
• Guglielmo Marconi 1874 - Italian inventor (radio telegraph system)
• Edward R. Murrow 1908 - American broadcast journalist
• Earl Bostic 1913 - Musician
• Sal Franzella 1915 - Musician
• Jerry Barber 1916 - Golfer
• Ella Fitzgerald 1918 - Vocalist, known as "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella"
• Robert Q. Lewis 1920 - Radio and television personality, game show host, actor
• Albert King 1923 - Musician
• Anita Bjorak 1923 - Actress
• Melissa Hayden 1923 - Dancer
• Vassar Clements 1928 - Musician
• Paul Mazursky 1930 - Actor, director
• Willis "Gator" Jackson 1932 - Saxaphonist
• Meadowlark Lemon 1932 - Basketball player, Harlem Globetrotters
• Jerry Leiber 1933 - Songwriter
• Anthony Lukas 1933 - Journalist, author
• Al Pacino 1940 - Actor
• Stu Cook 1945 - Musician (CCR)
• Bjorn Ulvaeus 1945 - Musician (Abba)
• Talia Shire 1946 - Actress ("The Godfather", "Rocky" film series)
• Jeffrey De Munn 1947 - Actor ("The Green Mile", "The Shawshank Redemption")
• Michael Brown 1949 - Musician (The Left Banke)
• Hank Azaria 1964 - Actor
• Andy Bell 1964 - Musician (Erasure)
• James Barbour 1965 - Actor, singer ("A Tale of Two Cities")
• Eric Avery 1965 - Musician (Jane's Addiction)
• Jane Clayson 1967 - Television host, journalist, author
• Renée Zellweger 1969 - Actress
• Jason Lee 1970 - Actor ("My Name is Earl")
• Emily Bergl 1975 - Actress ("The Rage: Carrie 2")
• Tim Duncan 1976 - Basketball player
• Sara Paxton 1988 - Actress

 

 

 

Hasselhoff Wednesday: Outlook

Now Obsolete

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

imprest \IM-prest\, noun:

• an advance of money; loan.

Imprest entered English in the late 1500s from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French prest, which described the action of lending.

 

Meateatiation

• The process of solving a conflict, or a number of conflicts between two or more parties through eating copious amounts of meat in front of the conflicting parties until an amicable agreement is reached.

1. "Me and my husbands marriage was on the rocks, until we had a few sessions of Meateatiation.......now the only problem I have to worry about is taking a stool at regular intervals."

2. "Do we really need to get the lawyers involved, can't we just settle this through the civilised means of Meateatiation?"

3. "Can't this dispute be resolved through mediation?"

"I'm afraid not Ma'am, this is far too serious, I think the only way we are going to settle this is through five two hour sessions of Meateatiation.

4. "If you two cunts can't get your fucken shit together and resolve this conflict, I'm going to be forced to eat copious amounts of meat to solve this."

"What?!?!....surely we don't need to get a Meateatiator involved?"

History

• Trojan horse: traditional date of the ancient Greeks' ruse to gain entry into Troy (1184 BCE)

  
• "La Marseillaise": France's national anthem was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1792)
• Library of Congress: was established with $5,000; today it has 18 million books and 100 million other items in 470 languages (1800)
• Hersheypark: amusement park opened in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the exclusive use of Hershey Chocolate Company's employees; it was later opened to the public (1907)
• Easter Uprising: unsuccessful Irish rebellion against British rule began (1916)

Birthdays

• John Graunt 1620
• Edmund Cartwright 1743
• Robert Bailey Thomas 1766
• George Bascom 1836
• Henri Philippe Petain 1856
• Robert Penn Warren 1905
• Jack E. Leonard 1911
• Aaron Bell 1922
• J.D. Cannon 1922
• John Griffin 1928
• Freddy Scott 1933
• Shirley Boone 1934
• Shirley MacLaine 1934 - Actress
• Jill Ireland 1936
• Joe Henderson 1937
• Sue Grafton 1940 - Author
• Barbra Streisand 1942 - Singer

  
• Richard Sterban 1943 - Singer (The Oak Ridge Boys)
• Bob Lunn 1945
• Robert Knight 1945
• Doug Clifford 1945 - Musician (Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR))
• Glenn Cornick 1947
• Eric Bogosian 1953 - Actor
• Vince Ferragamo 1954
• Michael O'Keefe 1955
• David J. 1957 - Musician (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets)
• Boris Williams 1958 - Musician (Cure)
• Glenn Morshower 1959 - Actor ("24")
• Billy Gould 1963 - Musician (Faith No More)
• Paul Ryder 1964 - Musician (Happy Mondays)
• Djimon Hounsou 1964 - Actor
• Cedric the Entertainer 1964 - Actor, comedian
• Patty Schemel 1967 - Musician (Hole)
• Omar Vizquel 1967 - Baseball player
• Aaron Comess 1968 - Musician (Spin Doctors)
• Chipper Jones 1972 - Baseball player
• Brian Aubrey Marshall 1973 - Musician (Creed)
• Eric Balfour 1977 - Actor
• Carlos Beltran 1977 - Baseball player
• Kelly Clarkson (Kelly Brianne Clarkson) 1983 - Singer, first "American Idol" participant to win a Grammy Award, Who's High Pitch?
  

Review Tuesday: Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2

STAR TREK

DISCOVERY

Season 2

Captain Pike from the Enterprise takes command of the Discovery as the crew goes on another adventure with Michael Burnham in the middle of it all. 

With people cutting the cable and only buying services that they actually need, you find all sorts of new pay services popping up online. CBS might have been the first network to offer up an online paid option to compete with Amazon and Netflicks. Their first draw was the new Star Trek franchise, DISCOVERY. Apparently season one went along well enough that they were cleared for a season TWO. 

This is a very involved season. If you don't pay attention for the wrong minute you could end up lost. It starts up with Spock (?!?!) being on the run because he was accused of murdering three people. In tracking Spock down the Discovery, currently under the leadership of Captain Pike. From there it's a mission of wonder, knowledge, might, and perfidy. Characters get developed only to be killed off in the next scene. There were TWO things you could count on:

1. Burham being dramatic.
2. Pike being AWESOME. 

I have to say, the shining star of Season 2 was Captain Pike by a long shot. Fans adored him so much that I have already seen petitions asking for a new Star Trek series around Captain Pike. Besides that aspect, I'd say that the show moved pretty well. The fact that it's a paid-premium show, you do have a little more edge than you'd have on television.

I liked this season way more than the first season. And they cleared a season three already. 

Get it on CBS all access.