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Inga

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Inga is a woman from Somehow In, Russia

I'm NOBODY. Who are you?

The Hunger Site

fighting compulsive blogging with infrequent posting
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  • Hanging by =optimisticxpessimist on deviantART

    Rated 11:50am 1 review photography deviantart.com


    Persimmons, harbingers of winter in Russia. They always remind me of the sight of chubby bullfinches on snow-covered branches of winter trees. Or of oranges, themselves harbingers of New Year festivities in Russia's Soviet past, when (as a special treat from the government) they all of a sudden became available for a week or two before the New Year even in
    places smaller than Moscow or Leningrad.


  • Access : Linguistics: An invisible hand : Nature

    Rated Nov 12 1 review linguistics nature.com


    for Janine

    Applying quantitative methods to linguistics does not necessarily generate boring statistics hiding the dynamic nature of

    language behind mathematical symbols. W. Tecumseh Fitch's article (its full version is here) confirms the thesis.


    From the page:


      "...Lieberman et al. ... consider the cultural evolution of the English past-tense marker '-ed'. In

      Old English, this was just one of many different rules used to indicate times gone by. Today,

      the other once widespread rules remain only as irregular residues, such as 'fly/flew/flown'.

      By tracing their disappearance, the authors derive an exact quantitative relationship between

      the frequency of verb use and the speed of this pruning process: a verb used 100 times more

      often than another will regularise 10 times more slowly...


      ... frequently used words are resistant to change. Relatively infrequent inflections such as

      'help/holp' became regularised, whereas high-frequency English verbs retained their

      ancestral irregular state ('go/went' or 'be/was'). More generally, terms that occur with high

      frequency in Indo-European languages (such as 'one', 'night' or 'tongue') are resistant to

      substitution by new phonological forms..."






    I used to look on the list of irregular verbs provided by any English textbook as on yet another list of exceptions to the rule. Now I look on them as museum pieces, language artefacts reflecting the picture of the world of those who actually created the English language: to begin, to buy, to give, to eat, to find, to hide, to sell, to take - are we really very different? :)



    ~♥~
  • &Locked In,& a poem by Ingemar Gustafson

    Rated Oct 07 3 reviews poetry uuasheville.org


    Locked In




    by Ingemar Gustafson

    All my life I lived in a coconut.
    It was cramped and dark.
    Especially in the morning when I had to shave.
    But what pained me most was that I had no way
    to get into touch with the outside world.
    If no one out there happened to find the coconut,
    If no one cracked it, then I was doomed
    to live all my life in the nut, ad maybe even die there.
    I died in the coconut.
    A couple of years later they found the coconut,
    cracked it, and found me shrunk and crumpled inside.
    "What an accident!"
    "If only we had found it earlier..."
    "Then maybe we could have saved him."
    "Maybe there are more of them locked in like that."
    "Whom we might be able to save,"
    they said, and started knocking to pieces every coconut
    within reach.
    No use! Meaningless! A waste of time!
    A person who chooses to live in a coconut!
    Such a nut is one in a million!
    But I have a brother-in-law who
    lives in an
    acorn.


    ~♦~
  • artgalleryarthur

    Rated Sep 03 2 reviews arts, arthurian legend richmond.edu

    September Blues


    A good Arthurian art gallery. Blues of the month: "'I'm Half-Sick of Shadows', said the lady of Shalott" by Sidney Harold Meteyard (1913).

    Lady of Shalott - a character of Arthurian legend - spends her life weaving and viewing 'shadows' of the real world through a mirror. "A curse is on her if she stay /To look down to Camelot" (A.Tennyson, 'The Lady of Shalott'). But her fragile world is broken into pieces one day when she sees Sir Lancelot riding by. Her reality "twice removed" (firstly by living in a tower on an island, away from civilisation and secondly by perceiving actuality through the mirror) crashes within seconds, which is symbolised by a crack in the mirror. "Tirra lirra", sings Sir Lancelot and makes Lady of Shalott turn her attention to reality. And the reality she faces is that Sir Lancelot will never share her love.

    The image of the maiden who dies for love of Lancelot and whose dead body arrives in a boat at Camelot was very popular during the Victorian age, that's why the painting is on this web page - it mostly presents artwork by Victorian artists.

    In this painting, the Lady of Shalott is unaware of what is in store for her. She's weaving and only at times - when she sees "two young lovers lately wed", for example - does she feel that she's "half-sick of shadows". But only half. What lovely undertones :)






  • Avocado on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

    Rated Aug 11 1 review photography, avocado flickr.com


    Ode to the Avocado





    Emotions:
    Ripe, luscious, velvety, slippery, yielding, soft, seductive, delicious, voluptuously rubensian, just my favourite!

    Facts:
    The avocado (Persea gratissima or P. americana) gets its name from the Latin American Nahuatl word ahuacatl meaning "testicle," an obvious reference to the shape of the fruit. It was discovered in Mexico approximately 291 B.C. The more easily-pronouced name of avocado is attributed to Sir Henry Sloane, who coined it in 1669. The word itself first appeared in American print in 1697.

    Early Spanish explorers discovered the Aztecs enjoying avocados, but it was long considered a tasteless food. The Aztecs also used avocados as a sexual stimulant. It was the Spanish explorers who brought the avocado to the English.

    The fruit is loaded with many important nutrients such as protein, potassium, vitamins E and A, B. It also neutralizes excess body acids resulting in weight loss; boosts satiety (feeling of fullness); lowers bad and raises good cholesterol levels; aids in digestion and helps flush toxins; offers significant protection against cancer; strengthens the immune system.


    Sources:
    *, **
  • Heart, we will forget him! - by Emily Dickinson

    Rated Jul 30 3 reviews poetry poetry-archive.com


    HEART, we will forget him!
    You and I, to-night!
    You may forget the warmth he gave,
    I will forget the light.

    When you have done, pray tell me,
    That I my thoughts may dim;
    Haste! lest while you're lagging,
    I may remember him!


  • pachelbel - pachelbel - Free MP3 Stream on IMEEM Music

    Rated Jul 18 1 review classical music imeem.com


    Moment Musical №2


    Moment Musical №1

      Johann Pachelbel is not so much an icon of Baroque music as, say, Bach or Händel, yet it is his

      (only) canon (the famous Canon in D) that became exactly an icon of Baroque music nearly three centuries after it was created.


      A canon is a musical form where the melody or tune is imitated by individual parts at regular

      intervals. Originally composed for three violins and basso continuo, Pachelbel's canon comes in

      a great variety of arrangements for stringed, woodwind and keyboard instruments.





      I had a hard time selecting a version of the Canon for the posting, torn between a desire for

      authentic sound and a wish to find an interpretation that would bring out the beauty of the

      piece. The more versions I listened to, the more facets of the canon I became aware of. The

      flute, for example, makes it sound ethereal. The violin turns it into a sublime song, the deep

      warm sound of the cello adds to its profundity, whereas the piano (even though making it a bit

      kitschy) perfectly adapts the composition for the modern ear.


      In the end I chose a version that may not reveal the elegance of the theme (1:50) as fully as

      more drawn-out interpretations of the Canon
      do, yet the grace and virtuosity with which the

      orchestra performs it, doing it justice as a truly Baroque piece of music, overcame my doubts.








  • Delusions &Grandeur, Dr. William Minors contribution to...

    Rated Jul 12 1 review history trutv.com



    "On February 17, 1872, at about 2 a.m., George Merrett, 34, left his home on Cornwall Road in Lambeth, London, and headed off in the dark toward the Red Lion Brewery... That cold morning, George walked his usual route to work... As he made his way to the wall that encircled the brewery, he heard piercing shouts that cut through the dark silence of the winter morning...
    When he looked back to locate the source of the noise, he realised they were coming from a man running toward him...

    Within seconds, two bullets ripped through George's neck. Several officers on duty overheard the gunshots and ran to the scene, where they found George lying in a pool of blood.

    One of the officers at the scene saw a suspicious man nearby and asked him where
    the shots had originated. According to a South London Chronicle article from 1872, the stranger exclaimed that he had shot him. The man was immediately taken to the Tower Street police station. During questioning, police learned that the assailant was unlike any criminal they had ever dealt with. The murderer, 37-year-old William Chester Minor, was an American who had recently moved to Lambeth several months earlier. To their surprise, they also learned that he was an army surgeon of considerable means with a record of mental instability..."

    On that day, George Merrett lost his life and the Oxford English Dictionary got one of its major contributors - William Chester Minor. More dramatic details concerning his life and cooperation with James A.H. Murray, the chief editor of the OED, can be found here.