USO Canteen FReeper Style ~ Pancakes on Wednesday ~ 10 September 2003

Canteen FRiends ~ Radix

[Radix]

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Pancakes on Wednesdays

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Welcome to Pancakes on Wednesdays.

Wednesday September 10, 2003

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Here is an amalgamation of trivial facts and seemingly useless data.

Do not forget to hit the hyperlinks.

We have links, lots of them.

ULTRACREPIDARIAN

Of somebody who gives opinions on matters beyond his knowledge.

Thursday 10 April 2003 was the 225th anniversary of the birth of the essayist William Hazlitt (a date commemorated by the unveiling of his restored memorial in St Anne’s churchyard, Soho). This week’s Weird Word is one he is first recorded as using.

He did so in a famous letter of 1819 to William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, a letter which has been described as “one of the finest works of invective in the language”. In one of his more moderate castigations, Hazlitt wrote: “You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic”. What Hazlitt thought of Gifford’s journal may be deduced from this passage in The Spirit of the Age (1825):

His Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a Jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious.

You can see why Hazlitt described himself as “a good hater”.

Ultracrepidarian comes from a classical allusion. The Latin writer Pliny recorded that Apelles, the famous Greek painter who was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, would put his pictures where the public could see them and then stand out of sight so he could listen to their comments. A shoemaker once faulted the painter for a sandal with one loop too few, which Apelles corrected. The shoemaker, emboldened by this acceptance of his views, then criticised the subject’s leg. To this Apelles is reported as replying (no doubt with expletives deleted) that the shoemaker should not judge beyond his sandals, in other words that critics should only comment on matters they know something about. In modern English, we might say “the cobbler should stick to his last”, a proverb that comes from the same incident. (A last is a shoemaker’s pattern, ultimately from a Germanic root meaning to follow a track, hence footstep.)

What Pliny actually wrote was ne supra crepidam judicaret, where crepidam is a sandal or the sole of a shoe, but the idea has been expressed in several ways in Latin tags, such as Ne sutor ultra crepidam (sutor means “cobbler”, a word still known in Scotland in the spelling souter). The best-known version is the abbreviated tag ultra crepidam, “beyond the sole”, from which Hazlitt formed ultracrepidarian.

Crepidam derives from Greek krepis, a shoe; it has no link with words like decrepit or crepitation (which are from Latin crepare, to creak, rattle, or make a noise) or crepuscular (from the Latin word for twilight), though crepidarian is a very rare adjective meaning “pertaining to a shoemaker”.

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Happy Birthday

Ian Fleming 1888

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Happy Birthday

Fay Wray 1907

One of the films she did in those years( 1920's-1930's) assured her place as a screen icon and made her a figure in folklore and myth. King Kong, among the half-dozen most famous films ever produced.

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Happy Birthday

Arnold Daniel Palmer 1929

I am an excellent driver!

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Happy Birthday

Charles Kuralt 1934

Charles Osgood Memory 3: I remember eating a stack of 100 pancakes at an IHOP outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, with syrup made from clover and sausages made of moose. At least that's what the waitress, a cute little number with buck teeth and no hair, told me.

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There will be a full moon tonight 10 September 2003

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Happy Birthday

Roger Maris 1934

We are counting cards!

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Would you like some Geometry with your pancakes?

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Happy Birthday

Jose Feliciano 1945

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Happy Birthday

Amy Irving 1953

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Todays Wednesday field trip takes us to the lunar surface

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On this day...

1608 - John Smith was elected president of the Jamestown, VA. colony council.

When the first 104 English colonists landed on Jamestown Island on May 14th, 1607, they imagined themselves the first civilized men in a wild and savage environment. In truth, the region of present-day Virginia in which the settlers arrived had long been home to some thirty Native American tribes, organized into what is known as the Powhatan Confederacy. The English traded with, learned from and waged war with the Powhatan. With the legendary Pocahontas as ambassador, these people played perhaps the most pivotal role in the fate of the first English settlement in America.

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1862 - Rabbi Jacob Frankel became the first Jewish Army chaplain.

CARDINAL NUMBERS

A cardinal number is one way to measure the size of a set. Here is the definition used in Zermelo Fraenkel set theory.

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1913 - The Lincoln Highway opened. It was the first paved coast-to-coast highway in the U.S.

I am an excellent driver.

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1935 - "Popeye" was heard on NBC radio for the first time.

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Spinach Pancakes

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The area of a triangle is calculated using the formula:

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Pancakes Wednesdays

Definitely

 

[SouthernHawk]

Back at you!

[Soaring Feather]

LOL

[TexasCowboy]

"Do they still have jukeboxes ~"

I don't know, blackie.
It's been over twenty years for me, too.
How could it be a bar without a jukebox?
That would be like a bar that didn't serve drinks.

[Brad’s Gramma]

You have EEEEEEEE mail!

:-)

[Fawnn]

A kitty cat even you will love ... You can make her purr and everything. ;)

(Link set to open a new window.)

[Fawnn]

With all you people "talking behind my back," I could start to get paranoid! ;)

[Brad’s Gramma]

Oh good grief.

You Have Email!

Hardeeeee har har!!!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Did you remember to eat?

[Kathy in Alaska]

ROTFLMAO!! I knew Lyle reminded me of someone!

[Fawnn]

I feel sooooooooo much better now. Thank you. ;)

(I still may have to go curl up with my pillow and blankie soon though. HAVE THAT ON YOUR CONSCIENCE!) ;)

[Kathy in Alaska]

[Kathy in Alaska]

Bring your dog to the ballpark. Hmmmmmmmmm.... Thanks, CW, for the picture. I'm not sure about 240 dogs at the park, altho I don't see very many folks in the stands.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Perfect for you Kids! Good job!!

[Fawnn]

LOL!!! I'm hoping that means you didn't swallow it. (If otherwise, it cleaned up nicely.) ;)

[TexasCowboy]

Darn!
I'd have to use my night scope to even be able to get a sight picture on that cat!
That's not a purr! That's a growl!
I did find that if you twirl the mouse pointer around and around his head real fast, his head falls off!
I liked that!

[TexasCowboy]

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Good grief, BG!!
You want the whole world to know??!

[Fawnn]

I did find that if you twirl the mouse pointer around and around his head real fast, his head falls off!

Yes, there IS one born every minute. And this one is now dizzy. (But the cat's fine.) ;)

[Kathy in Alaska]

You got it! I'd forgotten how may others of his songs I like. Thanks, TC. Are you off the roof yet?

[Fawnn]

what?

[Fawnn]

when?