Tuesday 29 January 2013

Honeycombing at Mount Rushmore

Dynamite was used until only three to six inches of rock was left to remove to get to the final carving surface. At this point, the drillers and assistant carvers would drill holes into the granite very close together. This was called honeycombing. The closely drilled holes would weaken the granite so it could be removed often by hand

See full article at http://web.archive.org/web/20080801031839/http://www.nps.gov/archive/moru/park_history/carving_hist/workers.htm

Sunday 27 January 2013

Elizabethan Manners – Eating Food

Keep your hands and nails clean.

Keep your knife clean and sharp.

Cut your meat into small pieces and don't hack it into great gobbets.

Cut your bread with your knife, and don't tear it in great hunks.

Never put the meat into the salt cellar. Keeping the salt cellar clean was very important. You should take a little salt on the tip of clean knife and put it on your food. Never put spilled, dirty salt back in the cellar.

Don't leave your spoon in the dish when you are done with your pottage. Don't overfill the spoon and definitely don't spill it on the cloth! Don't slurp your soup.

Keep the cloth as clean as possible.

The French sources recommend that when you are given a drink, either drink it all or throw it away. English sources seem to indicate that it is rude to drink the whole thing.

Empty and wipe your mouth before drinking.

Don't throw your bones on the floor, but put them in a voiding bowl (so much for the Charles Laughton version of Henry VIII).

If food is dropped on the floor pick it up but don't eat it.

Don't stroke cats and dogs at the table.

Don't stuff your mouth, pick your teeth, make rude noises, scratch yourself, blow on your food, spit in the washing basin or across the table, spit up food into your dish, talk with your mouth full, or fall asleep at the table.

Don't put your elbows on the table. Considering that the table is typically a board laid on top of trestles, this could cause an unfortunate accident.

Extracted from http://www.latourdulac.com/manners/Elizabethan.htm

Thursday 24 January 2013

French Republican Calendar

The French Republican Calendar or French Revolutionary Calendar was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871.

There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year.

Each day in the Republican Calendar was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

Saturday 19 January 2013

Types of Wallets


Bifold Wallets

Trifold Wallets

Coat Wallets or Breast Pocket Wallets

Credit Card Wallets or Credit Card Holders

Checkbook Wallets

Money Clip Wallets

Clutch Wallets

Front Pocket Wallets

Travel Wallets

See full article at http://blog.ebags.com/post/types-of-wallets/

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Deaver on fingerprints

The 3d swirls of fingerprints evolved not to help forensic scientists identify and convict criminals but simply to give our digits sure purchase, so that whatever we were holding that was precious or necessary or unrecognized wouldn't slip from our frail human grasp.

The official title of the patterns on the fingers (feet too) is, in fact, friction ridge, revealing their true purpose.

From - The Burning Wire, by Jeffery Deaver

Sunday 13 January 2013

Paraprosdokian Fun

PARAPROSDOKIAN - A paraprosdokian ( /pærəprɒsˈdoʊkiən/) is wordplay where the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret an earlier part. A really good example where the word "right" changes meaning as the sentence is completed;

    *  War doesn't determine who is right only who is left.

Now in common use the word is from an unknown author possibly 19th century, who mashed up the Greek for παρά (para, “against”) and προσδοκία (prosdokia, “expectation”). There is a lot of criticism of the words origins by purists and despite being in common use, it has not yet been added to a paper dictionary.

    *  If I agreed with them we'd all be wrong!

It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists such as Groucho Marx;

    *  Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

See more at http://www.paraprosdokianfun.com/

Friday 11 January 2013

Yes, wonderful things

In November 1922, when Howard Carter looked into the tomb of Tutankhamun, his backer, Lord Carnarvon, asked 'Can you see anything'.

Carter replied 'Yes, wonderful things'

More at http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tut.htm

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Number Types

Cardinal numbers: one, 7, forty-one, one hundred nine, 852, three thousand sixty-one

Ordinal numbers: 1st, seventh, 41st, 109th, eight hundred fifty-second, 3,061st

Arabic numerals: 1, 7, 41, 109, 852, 3,061

Roman numerals: I, VII, XLI, CIX, DCCCLII, MMMLXI

From http://feeds.feedburner.com/APvsChicago

Tuesday 8 January 2013

BUT and other words not to use in the workplace

But = 'That’s great, now this is what I think'
Discredits everything said before it and gives the user the chance to railroad them with their own ideas. Always replace with the word 'and' however uncomfortable that may seem.

 

e.g. "You have clearly put a lot of work into this project and I am very grateful but we have decided to drop it for another initiative".
... he was saying 'you have put a lot of work into this' - which on the face of it sounds like setting a good leadership example. Then the word 'but' arrives, essentially allowing the speaker to wipe away everything that they have said before and steamrolling it with their own approach, ...


See full list at http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/soft-skills/8-words-not-use-workplace/179806

Friday 4 January 2013

Seven Sales that Sorta Stink

#1. The sale with an enormous list of exclusions..

#2. Outrageously high minimum spend sales.

#3. The “save up to” sale… with hardly any goods reaching that highest %.

#4. The “Select Items” sale

#5 …

See full list and article at http://dappered.com/2012/11/seven-sales-that-sorta-stink/

Wednesday 2 January 2013

British Food

Good food is served in London and at least a dozen other places in Britain. That is, unless you prefer Indian food, which you can get on every street corner. English breakfast is egg and bacon. Lunch is a packet of crisps and a soft drink. Dinner is unspecified meat, boiled a few hours, with boiled cabbage without herbs or spices. A tasteless, brown goo-like substance called gravy covers up any trace of taste accidentally left in the meat. It doesn't matter what sort of meat was used to begin with, because it all tastes the same when the dinner is ready. Note that the difference between sauce and gravy is that sauce has a taste, while gravy simply covers the food in an unspecified, brown substance.

See full article at http://skovgaard.org/europe/britain.htm