What is the only word in the English language that could be a noun, verb, adj, adv, prep? [via David Adashek]
This two-letter word in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP ." It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends, brighten UP a room, polish UPthe silver, warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and fix UP the old car.
At other times, this little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.
And this Up is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look UP the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it soaks UP the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now. . . my time is UP!
Oh. . . one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?
U
P!
Did that one crack you UP?
Now I'll shut UP!
Neolithic discovery: why Orkney is the centre of ancient Britain [via Nina Reznick]
Long before the Egyptians began the pyramids, Neolithic man built a vast temple complex at the top of what is now Scotland. Robin McKie visits the astonishing Ness of Brodgar
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| Circle of life: the Ring of Brodgar – a stone circle, or henge – is a World Heritage Site. Photograph: Adam Stanford |
Drive west from Orkney's capital, Kirkwall, and then head north on the narrow B9055 and you will reach a single stone monolith that guards the entrance to a spit of land known as the Ness of Brodgar. The promontory separates the island's two largest bodies of freshwater, the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. At their furthest edges, the lochs' peaty brown water laps against fields and hills that form a natural amphitheatre; a landscape peppered with giant rings of stone, chambered cairns, ancient villages and other archaeological riches.
This is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a bleak, mysterious place that has made Orkney a magnet for archaeologists, historians and other researchers. For decades they have tramped the island measuring and ex- cavating its great Stone Age sites. The land was surveyed, mapped and known until a recent chance discovery revealed that for all their attention, scientists had completely overlooked a Neolithic treasure that utterly eclipses all others on Orkney – and in the rest of Europe.
This is the temple complex of the Ness of Brodgar, and its size, complexity and sophistication have left archaeologists desperately struggling to find superlatives to describe the wonders they found there. "We have discovered a Neolithic temple complex that is without parallel in western Europe. Yet for decades we thought it was just a hill made of glacial moraine," says discoverer Nick Card of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology. "In fact the place is entirely manmade, although it covers more than six acres of land."
Once protected by two giant walls, each more than 100m long and 4m high, the complex at Ness contained more than a dozen large temples – one measured almost 25m square – that were linked to outhouses and kitchens by carefully constructed stone pavements. The bones of sacrificed cattle, elegantly made pottery and pieces of painted ceramics lie scattered round the site. The exact purpose of the complex is a mystery, though it is clearly ancient. Some parts were constructed more than 5,000 years ago. Read More
BRAD BENOIT AT MEARS PARK [via Caliann Lum]
Selections from the Minnesota Opera public outreach program at the 2012 Concrete and Grass Lowertown Music Festival in St. Paul Minnesota. Brad Benoit, tenor; Karin Wolverton, soprano; Sheldon Miller, coach/accompanist. Benoit is best known recently for singing the lead role of Nikolaus Sprink for William Burden on opening night of the world premier of Kevin Puts' Pulitzer prize-winning new opera, Silent night, when the senior tenor had laryngitis. Wolverton sang the lead soprano role of Anna Sorensen for the premier run of that same opera. Contact Brad at bradwbenoit@mac.com.
MY KINGDOM FOR A CORPSE! [via Nina Reznick]
By JOHN F. BURNS
LEICESTER, England — For more than 500 years, King Richard III has been the most widely reviled of English monarchs. But a stunning archaeological find this month here in the English Midlands — a skeleton that medieval scholars believe is very likely to be Richard’s — could lead to a reassessment of his brief but violent reign. | |||
| A council worker fixed a camera at the parking lot in Leicester, England, where archaeologists unearthed a skeleton, very likely Richard III’s, amid the remains of an ancient priory. |
The New York Times
It is a debate that has raged with varying intensity since at least the late 18th century. And at its heart is this: Was Richard the villain his detractors expediently made him out to be, or was he, as supporters contend, a goodly king, harsh in ways that were a function of an unforgiving time, but the author of groundbreaking measures to help the poor, extend protections to suspected felons and ease bans on the printing and selling of books?
The version that has prevailed since his death, initially nurtured by the Tudors to entrench their legitimacy, has cast Richard’s 26 months on the throne as one of England’s grimmest periods, its excesses captured in his alleged role in the murder in the Tower of London of two young princes — his own nephews — to rid himself of potential rivals.
In Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” and in movies shaped by it, he is depicted as an evil, scheming hunchback whose death at 32 ended the War of the Roses and more than three centuries of Plantagenet rule, bookended England’s Middle Ages, and proved a prelude to the triumphs of the Tudors and Elizabethans.
Even Richard’s burial place was left uncertain, an ignominy deemed fitting by Tudor successors whose dominion was secured when Richard was killed — poleaxed, according to witnesses — at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, then bound, naked, to a horse for two days of public display in Leicester, about 100 miles north of London.
Over the next century, the foundations of the modern British state were laid by Henry VIII, son of the Bosworth victor Henry VII, and by Henry VIII’s daughter, Elizabeth I, and it was during their reigns that Richard’s wretched place in history was set by chroniclers loyal to the new rulers.
It was there that things stood, more or less, until three weeks ago, when a University of Leicester archaeologist working in a trench cut into a parking lot uncovered what could turn out to be one of the most remarkable finds in modern British archaeology. Judging from the clamor that has met the discovery in Britain, it may lead to demands for Richard to be buried, like other British kings, in a place of honor like Westminster Abbey. Read More
A unique trip around the globe by air
A collection of aerial photography produced by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
SEE MORE HERE: http://justpaste.it/3ky
Cattle, Argentina
Coal mine in South Africa
Sha Kibbutz, Israel
SEE MORE HERE: http://justpaste.it/3ky
FAMOUS WORDS [via Mary Calhoun]
“The enemy came. He was beaten. I am tired. Good night”.
– Vicomte Turenne after the battle of of Dunen in 1658
– Vicomte Turenne after the battle of of Dunen in 1658
BAGEL HEAD TOKYO! [via Nina Reznick]
Bagel Head' Saline Forehead Injections: Japan's Hot New Beauty Trend?
Botox is more ubiquitous than yoga pants in Hollywood. But women (and men) in Asia have been taking part in a different injection "trend" for years: saline bagel-shaped injections on one's forehead.
"National Geographic Taboo" chronicles the bizarre beauty treatment in an upcoming episode set in Tokyo, following three people who opt into the temporary forehead injections which have become a keen part of the Japanese "body modification" art scene.
"National Geographic Taboo" chronicles the bizarre beauty treatment in an upcoming episode set in Tokyo, following three people who opt into the temporary forehead injections which have become a keen part of the Japanese "body modification" art scene.
Creature Love [via Nina Reznick]
Cat On Boat Plays With Dolphins
A dolphin comes out of the water near a boat, and the cat on the boat starts playing with the dolphin by patting it and nuzzling its face against the dolphin
A dolphin comes out of the water near a boat, and the cat on the boat starts playing with the dolphin by patting it and nuzzling its face against the dolphin
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