Today, March 13th, marks a unique anniversary in astronomy: this was the date in 1781 when German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovered Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun.
In 1930, the planet Pluto, which had been spotted, but not proven, one month earlier, was officially announced to the world on March 13th.
What astrology expert from a few hundred years ago would have divined and forecasted that two new planets would be aligned just right with the stars to become discovered in the same month and date?
While astronomy and astrology were once considered one and the same, science during the 17th and 18th centuries determined this distinction: astronomy, the study of objects and phenomena originating beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, is a science and is a widely-studied academic discipline. Astrology, which uses the apparent positions of celestial objects as the basis for psychology, prediction of future events, and other esoteric knowledge, is not a science and is typically defined as a form of divination.
So, when you wish upon a star, or read your daily astrological horoscope, be careful what you wish for…and, no, the planet Pluto (Greek god of the Underworld) was not coined by Walt Disney, but more likely that his cartoon dog was named in honor of the planet’s discovery.
Who knew that each year 600 people from 26 nations compete in sheer madness to shear sheep in a New Zealand championship? The competitors are now advocating that the skill should even be turned into an Olympic sport, at least as a demonstration event initially.
While the top experts can remove the fleece with electric tools in under a minute, the real skill is doing so with hand shears. By the way, sheer danger exists for sheep who are not shorn once, or even twice a year. Otherwise, they risk a number of ills, including ticks, worms, matted fleece, skin diseases, even difficult births.
According to Merriam-Webster, the skin from a recently sheared sheep or lamb that has been tanned and dressed with the wool left on is called a shearling. From there, the process to turn the wool into yarn for knitting includes cleaning, combing, spinning and several other steps.
P.S. Did you know that sheep outnumber the human population in New Zealand by a ratio of 13:1? Sheesh…
On this date, March 8, 1917, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) began. A week later, centuries of czarist rule in Russia ended when Nicholas II abdicated, and led to the Russia communist state.
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Russia. They inhabited sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don river basins.
During the Russian Civil War, Cossack regions became centers for the Anti-Bolshevik White movement. With the victory of the Red Army, however, the Cossack lands were subjected to famine and suffered extensive repressions. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cossack lifestyle and its ideas returned and its ethnicity have been recognized.
The cassock, an item of clerical clothing that goes back to Roman times, is an ankle-length robe worn by clerics of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as by those of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the inner cassock is worn by all major and minor clergy, monastics, and often by male seminarians. It “is double-breasted, closely fitted through the torso and flaring out to the skirt, with a high collar buttoned off-center, and may be cinctured with either a leather or wide cloth belt. The outer cassock is a voluminous garment worn over the inner cassock by bishops, priests, deacons, and monastics as their regular outer wear.”
“Cassock” comes from Middle French “casaque”, meaning a long coat. In turn, the old French word may come ultimately from Turkish “quzzak” (nomad, adventurer – the source of the word Cossack), an allusion to their typical riding coat.
Watch this video of Cossack dancing to see how the cassock traces its meaning back to the Cossack robes.
As surmised in yesterday’s blog post on the Russian elections, Vladimir Putin has been elected (again) in a rout as President of Russia. Despite Putin’s exhortations of an honest voting process, the election was marred by claims of fraud and voting violations. In particular, according to a Canadian Press article, ”Golos, Russia’s leading independent elections watchdog, said it received numerous reports of ‘carousel voting, in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times.”
At the end of the same article was a bizarre report that “police arrested three young women who stripped to the waist at the polling station where Putin cast his ballot; one of them had the word “thief” written on her bare body.” This voting tactic might be better termed as carousal, which is defined as ”a noisy or drunken feast or social gathering.”
Putin’s election puts him back once again on the merry-go-round for his third term as President of Russia.
This weekend Muscovites and millions of other Russians go to the polls to elect a president. Most likely they will choose former President Vladimir Putin (2000-2008). Putin has been serving as Prime Minister since then, and is considered as the putative, i.e., acknowledged, commonly accepted, real leader behind the scenes of current President Dmitry Medvedev’s administration.
Large protests of up to 50,000 people agains Putin’s campaign, including a 10-mile human ring around Moscow, reflect the public’s dissastifaction with Putin as well as with alleged fraud claims surrounding the recent parliamentary elections in December 2011.
Nevertheless, Putin is expected to win handily. The fear exists, however, concerning already-planned post-election protests, and 6,000 riot police have been brought to Moscow should the need for punitive (punishment) measures to be taken.
With religion and politics in the news so much lately, I noticed that a reporter in an article for the local paper described (incorrectly) a person as being a devoted Catholic, meaning to imply that she was especially religious and pious.
When people are enthusiastically dedicated to any activity they devote their time, energy or money to such effort, cause or hobby. Therefore, being devoted refers to their actions, not who they are.
If you want to talk about people who are devoted to, that is, actively involved with, a religious cause, remember to differentiate that their personal allegiance, strength and intensity of belief is defined as being devout. That’s the gospel truth!
Friday marked the debut of Act of Valor, a movie about Navy SEALs, portrayed by real Navy SEALs. Attracting a 71% male audience, it achieved the ranking of the No. 1 movie this past weekend.
As in real life, the SEAL Team members’ acting performance was quite admirable, even if they did not have to practice playing a role they do so well naturally. For a critique of the movie from a military point of view, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral, George Worthington, offers insight and perspective as only a former Navy SEAL can do.
To me, going to see this movie is a tribute to those SEALs, present, past and future, who risk their lives for our freedom, which is quite an admirable trait, to say the least.
Did you hear the one about the guy in Sweden who survived two months “hibernating like a bear” in his snowbound car under sub-zero conditions near the Arctic Circle? True story!
What’s not exactly true is the reporter’s writing that the man was found “emancipated and barely speaking.” While he was, in a manner of speaking, freed from his bondage, the article should have stated that, since he lost 44 pounds during the ordeal, he was “emaciated and barely speaking.”
Such an error is termed a malapropism, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.”
Today, February 16th, is the date when my wife gave birth to our younger son. Happy Birthday, Justin!
He shares his day of birth, unfortunately, with several infamous personalities such as tennis bad boy, John McEnroe, gangsta rapper Ice-T and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.
Some fatherly advice given over the years has been: keep a wide berth (an amount of distance maintained for safety) from some of those who share your birthday. A few names with better reputations on the other side of the birthday ledger today include Hugh Beaumont, LaVar Burton and Sonny Bono.
Some of the best fatherly advice I know:
If–
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
- Rudyard Kipling
Happy Valentine’s Day! It seems only natural that February, the month the wraps Valentine’s Day in the very middle of it like a shawl, should be declared American Heart Month.
In a similar vein, the Hartford Financial Services Group, also known as The Hartford, uses a hart as its logo and symbol of strength. A hart is a “red deer stag more than five years old…or its fully mature state,” and the Connecticut state capital of Hartford, therefore, ”is thought to be named after a place where deer forded a watercourse.”
Interestingly, my alma mater, Fairfield University, situated off the historic Old Post Road in Fairfield, Connecticut, has the Stag as its mascot. On the other had, the University of Hartford, where I earned my graduate degree, somehow missed the antler connection and chose a Hawk instead of the more logical…hart.