The Kuwait Times crime editor has come across a new term, and now he is using it every chance he gets. It is driving me crazy.
See if you can pick it out:
Policeman Injured
A policeman was injured after his patrol vehicle jackknifed when he lost control of the steering with the car coming to a rest upside down in the road. The officer managed to use the car’s radio to call for assistance and emergency services were quickly rushed to the scene, rushing the injured policeman to hospital.
Unless the police officer was driving a sectioned vehical; a car towing a trailer, a truck carrying a connected load – something that can be BENT, FOLDED, like a jackknife –
– then it is NOT a jackknifed vehicle. Most police vehicles are sedans. A sedan cannot jackknife.
This is the explanation from Wikipedia:
Jackknifing means the accidental folding of an articulated vehicle (i.e. one towing a trailer) such that it resembles the acute angle of a folding pocket knife. If a vehicle towing a trailer skids, the trailer can push it from behind until it spins round and faces backwards. This may be caused by equipment failure, improper braking, or adverse road conditions such as an icy road surface.
Jackknifing is not very common and usually only happens to an empty vehicle. Most truck drivers are skillful enough to correct a skid before it becomes a jackknife. It would be an exaggeration to claim that jackknifing accounts for a large number of tractor-semitrailer accidents since in many cases it is the collision that would have caused the vehicle to jackknife and not vice versa. Radio stations often report jackknifed trucks because people phone to tell them, but more often than not, the truck has not technically jackknifed; it may be stuck in the snow or damaged in a crash.
This article from The Washington Post caught my eye for a couple of reasons. While I like Harry Potter, and am delighted to see children reading just about anything, I wondered if some of the oldies but goodies were still being read – and this study says that they are.
What is the number one factor that encourages children to read? Living in a family where books and magazines are everywhere, where parents take their kids to libraries and bookstores. Computer use also encourages good reading – and writing – skills.
What Do Children Read? Hint: Harry Potter’s Not No. 1
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008; 2:32 PM
Children have welcomed the Harry Potter books in recent years like free ice cream in the cafeteria, but the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the United States revealed today that none of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and Harper Lee as the most read.
Books by the five well-known U.S. authors, plus lesser-known Laura Numeroff, Katherine Paterson and Gary Paulsen, drew the most readers at every grade level in a study of 78.5 million books read by more than 3 million children who logged on to the Renaissance Learning Web site to take quizzes on books they read last year. Many works from Rowling’s Potter series turned up in the top 20, but other authors also ranked high and are likely to get more attention as a result.
“I find it reassuring . . . that students are still reading the classics I read as a child,” said Roy Truby, a senior vice president for Wisconsin-based Renaissance Learning. But Truby said he would have preferred to see more meaty and varied fare, such as “historical novels and biographical works so integral to understanding our past and contemporary books that help us understand our world.”
Michelle F. Bayuk, marketing director for the New York-based Children’s Book Council, agreed. “What’s missing from the list are all the wonderful nonfiction, informational, humorous and novelty books as well as graphic novels that kids read and enjoy both inside and outside the classroom.”
Renaissance Learning’s Accelerated Reader software for monitoring reading progress online was the source of the survey. Twenty-two years ago, Judi Paul invented on her kitchen table a quizzing system to motivate her children to read. With her husband, Terry Paul, she turned it into a big business. Truby, a former executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the leading federal reading test, said the company’s learning programs are used in more than 63,000 U.S. schools.
Students read books, some assigned but many chosen on their own, and then take computer quizzes, either online or with company software, to see whether they understood what they read. Students compile points based on the average sentence length, average word length, word difficulty level and total words in each book, and they sometimes get prizes from their schools. Some critics have questioned giving many more points for a sprawling Tom Clancy thriller than a tightly written classic such as Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage,” but many educators and parents have praised the system for motivating children to read.
In response to the survey data, some Washington area English teachers said they were bothered by the relatively few books read by each student, particularly in the upper grades. Seventh-graders averaged 7.1 books in 2007, which steadily declined to 4.5 books for 12th-graders. “I wish more schools did what we do and treated independent reading as vital to the curriculum, especially for boys, who seem to be sharing very few books,” said Lelac Almagor, a seventh-grade teacher at the KIPP DC: AIM Academy, a public charter school in Southeast Washington.
Although some experts thought children needed more reality, the fifth-most-popular book among high school students, “A Child Called ‘It’ ” by Dave Pelzer, was too real for Rachel Sadauskas, who teaches English at Yorktown High School in Arlington County. “The true story is based on a brutal case of child abuse,” she said. “A friend who is a social worker recommended it to me, but I could not finish it because it was so emotionally difficult to read.”
Teachers and book editors were pleased at the resilience of Lee’s 48-year-old novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” No. 1 for ninth- through 12th-graders, although Mary Lee Donovan, an executive editor at Candlewick Press in Somerville, Mass., said she thought it owed much of its success to the fact that “teachers make it part of the curriculum.” Rafe Esquith, teacher and author of best-selling books about teaching, makes it required reading in his Los Angeles fifth-grade class. He said he thought older students preferred it to Harry Potter because it fits with their growing realization that “life is not a fairy tale” and because of the moral fiber of its hero, lawyer Atticus Finch.
Yorktown High 11th-grader Ashley Samay said the Lee book “taught me to see things from others’ points of view.” Yorktown 12th-grader Matthew Bloch said, “It speaks to small-town ideals and racism, which are very important topics.”
The survey, at http://www.renlearn.com/whatkidsarereading, breaks down results by gender and section of the country. Overall, Dr. Seuss’s madly rhyming “Green Eggs and Ham” was the most popular first-grade book. Second-graders preferred Numeroff’s “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” which Donovan praised for its humorous take on cause and effect. White’s timeless tale of a girl, a pig and a spider, “Charlotte’s Web,” was the third-grade favorite. Blume, not surprisingly, won over fourth-graders with her “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” the first of several books about Peter Warren Hatcher and his younger brother, Farley, who prefers to be called “Fudge.”
Fifth-graders read most often Paterson’s story of two children and a magical forest kingdom, “Bridge to Terabithia.” Sixth-graders preferred “Hatchet,” about a boy stranded in the wilderness, by Paulsen, whom Donovan called “Jack London for kids.” The most-read book among seventh- and eighth-graders was “The Outsiders,” a story of rival gangs in Tulsa published in 1967 when its author, Hinton, was 18 years old.
Today on Good Morning America, they hit the 3rd of America’s Seven Natural Wonders. It is the Grand Canyon, and they broadcast from the new skywalk that they built cantilevered out over the Canyon. It has a glass floor, and you walk out 4,000 feet above the bottom of the canyon.
I almost threw up.
Just looking at it makes my blood pressure jump; my heart is beating fast and my palms start to sweat.
I have a mild case of fear-of-heights. (Acrophobia) I feel unbalanced looking down, I feel like I could fall right over.
AdventureMan, thank God, has the same sensitivity, so he doesn’t tease me. I know we will visit this skywalk one day, and I wonder if he will be able to force himself to walk out on it. I already know I won’t be doing it. It’s just too stressful for me. . . . Even watching it on Good Morning America, I feel all stressed out!
SAN FRANCISCO — The Olympic torch arrived at the airport here from Paris in the wee hours Tuesday morning, exited out a side door and was escorted by motorcade to a downtown hotel. There it took a well-deserved break in a room complete with cable TV, room service and views of the city’s popular Union Square shopping district.
“It has very comfortable accommodations,” said Mike McCarron, an airport spokesman, who said the flame — ensconced in a handsome brass lantern and accompanied by several backup flames — was “treated similar to a head of state.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the flame will be under no such bushel as it makes its only appearance in the United States on an increasingly tense international tour en route to Beijing. It will star in a two-and-a-half-hour relay along this city’s waterfront, involving six miles of pavement, 79 runners and untold scores of law enforcement officials.
The precise route remained in flux on Tuesday as the torch extravaganza threatened to become more civic migraine than celebration in the face of potential protests by those upset with China’s human rights record and recent crackdown in Tibet. Mayor Gavin Newsom met with police and relay officials amid concerns that disruptions in London and Paris this week not be repeated here.
“I can only confirm that the route is dynamic,” said Nathan Ballard, a city spokesman.
I wish he wouldn’t say things like that. Robert Mueller told BBC News that he thinks we will see the end of Al Qaeda in three years.
To me, that is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It’s a dare. I wish he would just go about defeating Al Qaeda in three years, and not talk about it until it’s done. Maybe it is superstitious; I prefer action to talk. When you talk about defeating someone, you might just be setting yourself up to eat humble pie.
The head of the FBI has said he believes the West can achieve victory over al-Qaeda within three-and-a-half years.
Robert Mueller described how his organisation is working closely with British intelligence to confront ever-more-complex plots.
Flanked by broad-shouldered security men with tell-tale bulges beneath their suits, the director of the FBI gave a rare public address in London.
As head of one of 16 US intelligence agencies, Mr Mueller is at the forefront of preventing a repeat of the September 11 attacks.
It was a task, he said, which could not be done without strategic partnerships with allies like Britain.
You can read the entire article HERE.
Amethyst:
Main Entry:
am·e·thyst
Pronunciation:
\ˈa-mə-thəst, -(ˌ)thist\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English amatiste, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin amethystus, from Greek amethystos, literally, remedy against drunkenness, from a- + methyein to be drunk, from methy wine — more at mead
Date:
13th century
1 a: a clear purple or bluish-violet variety of crystallized quartz that is often used as a jeweler’s stone b: a deep purple variety of corundum
2: a moderate purple
— am·e·thys·tine \ˌa-mə-ˈthis-tən\ adjective
Argent
argent
Main Entry:
ar·gent
Pronunciation:
\ˈär-jənt\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin argentum; akin to Greek argyros silver, argos white, Sanskrit rajata whitish, silvery
Date:
15th century
1archaic : the metal silver; also : whiteness
2: the heraldic color silver or white
— argent adjective
Azure
azure
Main Entry:
azure
Pronunciation:
\ˈa-zhər\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English asur, from Anglo-French azeure, probably from Old Spanish, modification of Arabic lāzaward, from Persian lāzhuward
Date:
14th century
1archaic : lapis lazuli
2 a: the blue color of the clear sky b: the heraldic color blue
3: the unclouded sky
— azure adjective
Celadon
celadon
Main Entry:
cel·a·don
Pronunciation:
\ˈse-lə-ˌdän, -lə-dən\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French céladon
Date:
circa 1768
1: a grayish-yellow green
2: a ceramic glaze originated in China that is greenish in color; also : an article with a celadon glaze
Cerise
cerise
Main Entry:
ce·rise
Pronunciation:
\sə-ˈrēs, -ˈrēz\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French, literally, cherry, from Late Latin ceresia — more at cherry
Date:
1844
: a moderate red
Chartreuse
Main Entry:
char·treuse
Pronunciation:
\shär-ˈtrüz, -ˈtrüs\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Chartreuse
Date:
1884
: a variable color averaging a brilliant yellow green
Dun
in Entry:
1dun
Pronunciation:
\ˈdən\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Old English dunn — more at dusk
Date:
before 12th century
1 a: having the color dun bof a horse : having a grayish-yellow coat with black mane and tail
2: marked by dullness and drabness
— dun·ness \ˈdən-nəs\ noun
Magenta
Main Entry:
ma·gen·ta
Pronunciation:
\mə-ˈjen-tə\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Magenta, Italy
Date:
1860
1 : fuchsin
2 : a deep purplish red
Puce
puce
Main Entry:
puce
Pronunciation:
\ˈpyüs\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French, literally, flea, from Old French pulce, from Latin pulic-, pulex — more at psylla
Date:
1833
: a dark red
Smalt
smalt
Main Entry:
smalt
Pronunciation:
\ˈsmȯlt\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle French, from Old Italian smalto, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German smelzan to melt — more at smelt
Date:
1558
: a deep blue pigment consisting of a powdered glass that contains oxide of cobalt
Smaragd:
Main Entry:
sma·ragd
Pronunciation:
\smə-ˈragd, ˈsma-ˌragd\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English smaragde, from Latin smaragdus, from Greek smaragdos, of Semitic origin; akin to Akkadian barraqtu gemstone
Date:
13th century
: emerald
— sma·rag·dine \smə-ˈrag-dən, ˈsma-rəg-ˌdīn\ adjective
Terra Cotta
terra-cotta
Main Entry:
ter·ra–cot·ta
Pronunciation:
\ˌter-ə-ˈkä-tə\
Function:
noun
Usage:
often attributive
Etymology:
Italian terra cotta, literally, baked earth
Date:
1722
1: a glazed or unglazed fired clay used especially for statuettes and vases and architectural purposes (as roofing, facing, and relief ornamentation); also : something made of this material
2: a brownish orange
Turmeric
turmeric
Main Entry:
tur·mer·ic
Pronunciation:
\ˈtər-mə-rik also ˈtü-mə- or ˈtyü-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English turmeryte
Date:
15th century
1 : an Indian perennial herb (Curcuma longa syn. C. domestica) of the ginger family with a large aromatic yellow rhizome
2 : the boiled, dried, and usually ground rhizome of the turmeric plant used as a coloring agent, a flavoring, or a stimulant
3 : a yellow to reddish-brown dyestuff obtained from turmeric
Turnsole
The dyestuff folium or turnsole, prepared from the annual plant Crozophora tinctoria (“dyers’ crook carrier”, from its use and the curved tip of its spike of florets), was a mainstay of medieval manuscript illuminators from the development of the technique for extracting it in the thirteenth century (Thompson and Hamilton 1933:41). It joined the vegetal-based woad and indigo in the illuminator’s repertory, but the queen of blue colorants was always the expensive lapis lazuli or its substitute azurite, ground to the finest powders. According to its method of preparation, turnsole produced a range of translucent colors from blue, through purple to red, according to its reaction to the acidity or alkalinity of its environment, in the chemical reaction, not understood in the Middle Ages, that is most familiar in the Litmus test.
Folium (“leaf”), was actually derived from the three-lobed fruit, not the leaves. in the early fifteenth century, Cennino Cennini, in his Libro dell’ Arte gives a recipe “IXVIII: How you should tint paper turnsole color” and “ILXXVI To paint a purple or turnsole drapery in fresco.” Textiles soaked in the dye vat would be left in a close damp cellar in an atmosphere produced by pans of urine. It was not realized that the oxidizing urine was producing ammonia, but the technique reminds us how foul-smelling was the dyer’s art.
The colorant was downgraded to a shading glaze and fell out of use in the illuminator’s palette by the turn of the seventeenth century, with the easier availability of less fugitive mineral-derived blue pigments.
Turnsole was used as a food colorant, mentioned in Du Fait de Cuisine which suggests steeping it in milk. The French Cook by François Pierre La Varenne (London 653) mentions turnsole grated in water with a little powder of Iris.
Herbals indicated that the plant grows on sunny, well-drained Mediterranean slopes and called it solsequium from its sunflower-habit of turning its flowers to face the sun, or “Greater Verucaria”;[1] early botanical works gave it synonyms of Morella, Heliotropium tricoccum and Croton tinctorium. (from Wikipedia)
Verdigris
Main Entry:
ver·di·gris
Pronunciation:
\ˈvər-də-ˌgrēs, -ˌgris, -grəs also -ˌgrē\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English vertegrese, from Anglo-French verdegrece, vert de Grece, literally, green of Greece
Date:
14th century
1 a: a green or greenish-blue poisonous pigment resulting from the action of acetic acid on copper and consisting of one or more basic copper acetates b: normal copper acetate Cu(C2H3O2)2·H2O
2: a green or bluish deposit especially of copper carbonates formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces
Except for turnsole, all the definitions above came from Merriam-Webster.com
I especially loved looking on Wikipedia. They always tell you more than you need to know, and I can get lost learning new things about a word I don’t know.
A friend who shares a love of both colors and words sent this quiz to me this morning, challenging me to match them up WITHOUT using a dictionary to see how many I got right. I thought I only missed two, but I missed four. This is challenging even for native English speakers. I know some of you will know at least one, because when I looked it up, it was a Persian word! Have fun, and let us know how you did. And which work do you like best?
I love A.Word.A.Day. You will see it down there at the very top of my blogroll. They send me an e-mail every day with a new word, where it came from and how it is pronounced and used. I’m pretty good with words, and AWAD challenges me to keep growing. Love it. You can subscribe by clicking the blue words above or clicking on A.Word.A.Day in the Blogroll. Today’s word:
karuna (KUH-roo-na) noun
Loving compassion.
[From Sanskrit karuna (compassion).]
“Once we experience and feel this inter-dependence of all living beings,
we will cease to hurt, humiliate, exploit and kill another. We will want
to free all sentient beings from suffering. This is karuna, compassion,
which in turn gives rise to the responsibility to create happiness and
its causes for all.”
Suresh Jindal; Interdependence of All Living Beings; The Times of India
(New Delhi); Nov 13, 2003.
“Ummm, errrr. . . .is her campaign foundering or floundering?” I asked my very-intelligent-almost-a-doctor friend and she matter of factly and crisply said that it could be either, her campaign may be gasping and dying like a fish out of water, or approaching failure.
Don’t you wish you knew all those things? I do. I have to look them up all the time.
Founder has a lot of meanings. The one I was looking for is in bold type:
founder
n 1: inflammation of the laminated tissue that attaches the hoof
to the foot of a horse [syn: {laminitis}]
2: a person who founds or establishes some institution; “George
Washington is the father of his country” [syn: {beginner},
{founding father}, {father}]
3: a worker who makes metal castings
v 1: fail utterly; collapse; “The project foundered” [syn: {fall through}, {fall flat}, {flop}]
2: sink below the surface
3: break down, literally or metaphorically; “The wall
collapsed”; “The business collapsed”; “The dam broke”;
“The roof collapsed”; “The wall gave in”; “The roof
finally gave under the weight of the ice” [syn: {collapse},
{fall in}, {cave in}, {give}, {give way}, {break}]
4: stumble and nearly fall; “the horses foundered”
Flounder also has a lot of meanings:
A fish with a flattened body adapted for life on the seafloor.
http://www.reefed.edu.au/glossary/f.html
i) A small edible flatfish, ii)any small flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae or Bothidaes.
http://www.mi.mun.ca/mi-net/terms/nautical.htm
from flounce and founder
encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/li/List_of_portmanteaus
a flat, bony saltwater fish which lives in bays and coastal waters. They are carnivores eating shrimp, small fish and crabs and are eaten by larger fish. Flounder is considered a popular food fish for people. …
http://www.lakeland.k12.in.us/limabrighton/nctrip07/glossary.html
stagger: walk with great difficulty; “He staggered along in the heavy snow”
any of various European and non-European marine flatfish
behave awkwardly; have difficulties; “She is floundering in college”
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Flounder are flatfish that live in ocean waters ie., Northern Atlantic and waters along the east coast of the United States and Canada, and the Pacific Ocean, as well. The name “flounder” refers to several geographically and taxonomically distinct species. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder
Flounder is an Disney character that appeared in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. He is Ariel’s best friend. Ironically, he is not a flounder, but is more similar in appearance to a Regal Tang or similar fish.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder (The Little Mermaid)
I guess I can use either floundering or foundering, but now that I think of it, floundering will always remind me of a big flat fish, so I think I will try to think of founder.
As you all have seen from US Crime tapes, this news story could happen anywhere, but it happened in Kuwait. I would love to see a video of this!
Kuwait Times, 21 Feb 2008
Drunken Man
The operations room received an anonymous call reporting that a drunken man had been dancing in the streets of Fehaheel and terrifying passersby. A police patrol rushed to the scene and managed to arrest the suspect, who initially resisted arrest.
However, after being cuffed and forced into the patrol vehicle for just a couple of seconds, he managed to step out and ran for dear life while police were busy putting some gear into the vehicle’s trunk. A wild goose chase ensued with police hot on his trail, while the man returned to the spot where the vehicle was parked, got in, stepped on the gas and sped to his freedom again. Police later tracked the vehicle that was dumped in a deserted area in Jleeb. A manhunt has been launched to arrest this man.
I commend the writer on the correct use of the plural “passersby.” Bravo.
Your challenge: how many cliche’s did this staff writer use to write this article?
 | intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow |
| intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow |
 | Abou Tabblouleh on t… on Waiting for Snow |
 | Abou Tabbouleh on in… on Waiting for Snow |
| intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow |
Here There and Everywhere 