25 June 2007
Study: 'Gay-friendly' cities enjoy more economic prosperity
Richard Florida, a professor from George Mason University and author of the book The Rise of the Creative Class argued that the more "gay-friendly" a city is, the more economically prosperous it will be.
In his March 2007 paper "There Goes the Neighborhood," Florida uses something he calls the "Bohemian-Gay Index" to demonstrate that "artistic, bohemian, and gay populations" have a "substantial effects on housing values across all permutations of the model and across all region sizes." He also found that more open and "gay-friendly" areas generally support higher income levels.
(A PDF of the paper can be read at this link.)
This morning on CNN's In the Money, Florida argued that educated kids are generally moving to the most "gay-friendly" cities after graduating from college because those cities tend to have the best job markets.
After realizing that the top 5 "gay-friendly" cities in the US -- San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Portland (Oregon), and Tampa -- are also prosperous centers of technological innovation, Florida decided to do a more thorough study. The results, he said, held up for other cities as well.
"Places that were open to gay and lesbian people were also the kind of places that could attract not only smart young people, but also Indian and Chinese immigrants who come here and start a lot of high tech companies," he said. "They were attracting people across the board, building up a talent base, and then innovating and starting these new enterprises."
Florida said he thinks it is the open mindedness of these cities that has allowed economically successful communities to emerge, rather than prior economic success attracting open minded people.
"Places that a large gay and lesbian community gravitated to, a large group of musicians and other open minded people gravitated to. When these kind of geeky entrepreneurs became important economic growth, those were the places that accepted them, too," he told CNN.
The following video is from CNN's In the Money, broadcast on June 23.
The Word of the Day
fuliginous \fyoo-LIJ-uh-nus\ adjective
1*a : sooty b: obscure, murky
2 : having a dark or dusky color
Example sentence: London was a fuliginous city during the Industrial Revolution.
Did you know? "Fuliginous" is a word with a dark and dirty past -- it derives from "fuligo," the Latin word for "soot." In an early sense (now obsolete), "fuliginous" was used to describe noxious bodily vapors once thought to be produced by organic processes. The "sooty" sense, which English speakers have been using since the early 1620s, can be used to describe everything from dense fogs and malevolent clouds to overworked chimney sweeps. "Fuliginous" can also be used to refer to something dark or dusky, as in Henry James' novel _The Ambassadors_, in which the character Waymarsh is described as having "dark fuliginous eyes."
1*a : sooty b: obscure, murky
2 : having a dark or dusky color
Example sentence: London was a fuliginous city during the Industrial Revolution.
Did you know? "Fuliginous" is a word with a dark and dirty past -- it derives from "fuligo," the Latin word for "soot." In an early sense (now obsolete), "fuliginous" was used to describe noxious bodily vapors once thought to be produced by organic processes. The "sooty" sense, which English speakers have been using since the early 1620s, can be used to describe everything from dense fogs and malevolent clouds to overworked chimney sweeps. "Fuliginous" can also be used to refer to something dark or dusky, as in Henry James' novel _The Ambassadors_, in which the character Waymarsh is described as having "dark fuliginous eyes."
21 June 2007
The Word of the Day
estival \ESS-tuh-vul\ adjective : of or relating to the summer
Example sentence: On summer evenings, Carl would sit for hours on the porch enjoying the warmth of the estival breezes.
Did you know? "Estival" and "festival" look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. "Estival" traces back to "aestas," which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us "estivate," a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state -- a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation). "Festival" also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from "festivus," a term that means "festive" or "merry." "Festivus" is also the ancestor of "festive" and "festivity" as well as the much rarer "festivous" (which also means "festive") and "infestive," meaning "not merry, mirthless."
Example sentence: On summer evenings, Carl would sit for hours on the porch enjoying the warmth of the estival breezes.
Did you know? "Estival" and "festival" look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. "Estival" traces back to "aestas," which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us "estivate," a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state -- a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation). "Festival" also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from "festivus," a term that means "festive" or "merry." "Festivus" is also the ancestor of "festive" and "festivity" as well as the much rarer "festivous" (which also means "festive") and "infestive," meaning "not merry, mirthless."
20 June 2007
Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.
Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.
The word “extinct” somehow brings to mind the birds that seem like special cases to us, the dodo or the great auk or the passenger pigeon. Most people would never have had a chance to see dodos and great auks on their remote islands before they were decimated in the 17th and 19th centuries. What is hard to remember about passenger pigeons isn’t merely their once enormous numbers. It’s the enormous numbers of humans to whom their comings and goings were a common sight and who supposed, erroneously, that such unending clouds of birds were indestructible. We recognize the extraordinary distinctness of the passenger pigeon now because we know its fate, killed off largely by humans. But we have moralized it thoroughly without ever really taking it to heart.
The question is whether we will see the distinctness of the field sparrow — its number is down from 18 million 40 years ago to 5.8 million — only when the last pair is being kept alive in a zoo somewhere. We love to finally care when the death watch is on. It makes us feel so very human.
Like you, I’ve been reading dire reports of declining species for many years now. They have the value of causing us to pay attention to species in trouble, and the sad fact is that the only species likely to endure are the ones we humans manage to pay attention to. There was a time when it was better, if you were a nonhuman species, to be ignored by humans because we trapped, shot or otherwise exploited all of the ones that got our attention. But in the past 40 years, we have killed all those millions of birds or, let us say, unintentionally caused a dramatic population loss, simply by going about business as usual.
Agriculture has intensified. So has development. Open space has been sharply reduced. We have simply pursued our livelihoods. We knew it was inimical to wolves and mountain lions. But we somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.
The Audubon Society portrait of common bird species in decline is really a report on who humans are. Let me offer a proposition about Homo sapiens. We are the only species on earth capable of an ethical awareness of other species and, thus, the only species capable of happily ignoring that awareness. So far, our economic interests have proved to be completely incompatible with all but a very few forms of life. It’s not that we believe that other species don’t matter. It’s that, historically speaking, it hasn’t been worth believing one way or another. I don’t suppose that most Americans would actively kill a whippoorwill if they had the chance. Yet in the past 40 years its number has dropped by 1.6 million.
In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth. E.O. Wilson has argued eloquently and persuasively that we cannot, that who we are depends as much on the richness and diversity of the biological life around us as it does on any inherent quality in our genes. Environmentalists of every stripe argue that we must somehow begin to correlate our economic behavior — by which I mean every aspect of it: production, consumption, habitation — with the welfare of other species.
This is the premise of sustainability. But the very foundation of our economic interests is self-interest, and in the survival of other species we see way too little self to care.
The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself.
We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.
19 June 2007
17 June 2007
10 well-known eight letter words
Below you will find 10 well-known eight letter words, with only their endings remaining. Can you determine the words?
.....yee
.....egy
.....igm
.....lse
.....paw
.....com
.....bow
.....bet
.....lel
.....dee
16 June 2007
Goldfinch
Breeding male American Goldfinch
I recently saw one of these and was stunned by the bright yellow. They are brown when not breeding and they don't breed where I'm from. Beautiful little bird.
15 June 2007
Brer Rabbit Quote
Do what'nsoever you want to do with me, Brer Fox, but please, please, please! Don't throw me in that briar patch.
14 June 2007
Geograph British Isles
"The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and you can be part of it." click title
13 June 2007
11 June 2007
The Word of the Day
wimple \WIM-pul\ verb
*1 : to cover with or as if with a wimple : veil
2 : to ripple
3 chiefly Scottish : to follow a winding course : meander
Example sentence: In Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_, the author describes the sun as being "wimpled by ... low, creeping clouds."
Did you know? "Wimple" is the name of the covering worn over the head and around the neck and chin by women in the late medieval period, as well as by some modern nuns. Its name is akin to Old Saxon "wimpal" and Middle Dutch "wimpel," both of which mean "veil" or "banner." Like the word "veil," "wimple" is also used as a verb meaning "cover" and was adopted by literary writers as a substitute for "ripple" and "meander," especially when writing about streams. "Over the little brook which wimpled along below towered an arch," James Russell Lowell once observed.
*1 : to cover with or as if with a wimple : veil
2 : to ripple
3 chiefly Scottish : to follow a winding course : meander
Example sentence: In Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_, the author describes the sun as being "wimpled by ... low, creeping clouds."
Did you know? "Wimple" is the name of the covering worn over the head and around the neck and chin by women in the late medieval period, as well as by some modern nuns. Its name is akin to Old Saxon "wimpal" and Middle Dutch "wimpel," both of which mean "veil" or "banner." Like the word "veil," "wimple" is also used as a verb meaning "cover" and was adopted by literary writers as a substitute for "ripple" and "meander," especially when writing about streams. "Over the little brook which wimpled along below towered an arch," James Russell Lowell once observed.
08 June 2007
The Word of the Day
thimblerig \THIM-bul-rig\ verb
*1 : to cheat by trickery
2 : to swindle by a trick in which a small ball or pea is quickly shifted from under one to another of three small cups to fool the spectator guessing its location
Example sentence: The appraiser looked closely at the painting and then reluctantly told us that we had been thimblerigged into buying a worthless copy.
Did you know? The game of thimblerig seems innocent enough. The thimblerigger places a seed under one of three thimbles. He or she deftly scoots the thimbles around on a table, then asks the player to bet on which one hides the seed. But thimbleriggers are masters of sleight of hand and can move and manipulate the seed unfairly -- so the guileless player doesn't stand a chance of winning. (The poor bettor is probably unaware that "rig" has meant "to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means" since the 1800s.) When the same sham is played with nutshells, it's called a "shell game," and there's a related game played with cards known as "three-card monte."
*1 : to cheat by trickery
2 : to swindle by a trick in which a small ball or pea is quickly shifted from under one to another of three small cups to fool the spectator guessing its location
Example sentence: The appraiser looked closely at the painting and then reluctantly told us that we had been thimblerigged into buying a worthless copy.
Did you know? The game of thimblerig seems innocent enough. The thimblerigger places a seed under one of three thimbles. He or she deftly scoots the thimbles around on a table, then asks the player to bet on which one hides the seed. But thimbleriggers are masters of sleight of hand and can move and manipulate the seed unfairly -- so the guileless player doesn't stand a chance of winning. (The poor bettor is probably unaware that "rig" has meant "to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means" since the 1800s.) When the same sham is played with nutshells, it's called a "shell game," and there's a related game played with cards known as "three-card monte."
07 June 2007
God is in the game
"We've spent most of the past four years wondering what would happen if the warmongering idiots holding office in Iran or the USA shut the Strait of Hormuz. That narrow body of water - only 70m deep in the shipping channel - is the artery for 40 percent of the world's exported oil supply. " click title for article
The Word of the Day
canard \kuh-NARD\ noun
1 a : a false or unfounded report or story; especially : a fabricated report *b : a groundless rumor or belief
2 : an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of supporting surfaces; also : a small airfoil in front of the wing of an aircraft that increases the aircraft's stability
Example sentence: "Last week's storm," Chet declared, "showed us that the claim that lightning cannot strike the same place twice is nothing more than a canard."
Did you know? In 16th-century France "vendre des canards a moitie" was a colorful way of saying "to fool" or "to cheat." The French phrase means, literally, "to half-sell ducks." No one now knows just what was meant by "to half-sell"; the proverb was probably based on some story widely known at the time, but the details have not survived. At any rate, the expression led to the use of "canard," the French word for "duck," with the meaning "a hoax" or "a fabrication." English speakers adopted this "canard" in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of "canard," used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft.
1 a : a false or unfounded report or story; especially : a fabricated report *b : a groundless rumor or belief
2 : an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of supporting surfaces; also : a small airfoil in front of the wing of an aircraft that increases the aircraft's stability
Example sentence: "Last week's storm," Chet declared, "showed us that the claim that lightning cannot strike the same place twice is nothing more than a canard."
Did you know? In 16th-century France "vendre des canards a moitie" was a colorful way of saying "to fool" or "to cheat." The French phrase means, literally, "to half-sell ducks." No one now knows just what was meant by "to half-sell"; the proverb was probably based on some story widely known at the time, but the details have not survived. At any rate, the expression led to the use of "canard," the French word for "duck," with the meaning "a hoax" or "a fabrication." English speakers adopted this "canard" in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of "canard," used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft.
05 June 2007
The Word(s) of the Day
demulcent \dih-MULL-sunt\ adjective : soothing
Example sentence: The lozenges had a demulcent effect, and my sore throat was soon feeling much better.
Did you know? "Demulcent" derives from the Latin verb "demulcere," meaning "to soothe." "Demulcere" in turn comes from a combination of the prefix "de-" and "mulcere," an earlier verb that also means "to soothe." As an adjective, "demulcent" often applies to the soothing nature of some medicines, but you can also use it to describe such things as a soothing voice or a soothing demeanor. The noun "demulcent" is used for a gelatinous or oily substance that is capable of soothing inflamed or abraded mucous membranes and protecting them from further irritation.
jocose \joh-KOHSS\ adjective
*1 : given to joking : merry
2 : characterized by joking : humorous
Example sentence: In the office, Ellie's lively, jocose personality keeps everyone smiling and upbeat.
Did you know? When you need a word to describe something (or someone) that causes or is intended to cause laughter, you might pick "jocose" or a synonym such as "humorous," "witty,"
"facetious," or "jocular." Of those terms, "humorous" is the most generic and can be applied to anything that provokes laughter. "Witty" suggests cleverness and a quick mind, while "facetious" is a word for something that is not meant to be taken seriously. "Jocose" and "jocular" both imply a habitual waggishness and a fondness for joking.
ameliorate \uh-MEE-lee-uh-rayt\ verb : to make better or more tolerable
Example sentence: Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village.
Did you know? "Ameliorate" traces back to "melior," the Latin adjective meaning "better," and is a synonym of the verbs "better" and "improve." When is it better to use "ameliorate"? If a situation is bad, "ameliorate" indicates that the conditions have been made more tolerable. Thus, one might refer to drugs that ameliorate the side effects of chemotherapy; a loss of wages ameliorated by unemployment benefits; or a harsh law ameliorated by special exceptions. "Improve" and "better" apply when what is being made better can be good or bad (as in "the weather improved" and "she bettered her lot in life"), and they should certainly be chosen over "ameliorate" when something good is getting better still ("he improved his successful program"; "she bettered her impressive scores").
multifarious \mul-tuh-FAIR-ee-us\ adjective : having or occurring in great variety : diverse
Example sentence: John listed his multifarious interests and activities on his college application.
Did you know? Dictionary makers have dated the first appearance of "multifarious" in print as 1593 -- and rightly so -- but before that time another word similar in form and meaning was being used: "multifary," meaning "in many ways" and appearing (and disappearing) in the 15th century. Before either of the English words existed, there was the Medieval Latin word "multifarius" (same meaning as "multifarious"), from Latin "multifariam," meaning "in many places" or "on many sides." "Multi-," as you may know, is a combining form meaning "many." A relative of "multifarious" in English is "omnifarious" ("of all varieties, forms, or kinds"), created with "omni-" ("all") rather than "multi-."
louche \LOOSH\ adjective : not reputable or decent
Example sentence: Her novels are populated by louche characters wasting their days in brothels and seedy bars.
Did you know? "Louche" ultimately comes from the Latin word "luscus," meaning "blind in one eye" or "having poor sight." This Latin term gave rise to the French "louche," meaning "squinting" or "cross-eyed." The French gave their term a figurative sense as well, taking that squinty look to mean "shady" or "devious." English speakers didn't see the need for the sight-impaired uses when they borrowed the term in the 19th century, but they kept the figurative one. The word is still quite visible today and is used to describe both people and places of questionable repute.
Example sentence: The lozenges had a demulcent effect, and my sore throat was soon feeling much better.
Did you know? "Demulcent" derives from the Latin verb "demulcere," meaning "to soothe." "Demulcere" in turn comes from a combination of the prefix "de-" and "mulcere," an earlier verb that also means "to soothe." As an adjective, "demulcent" often applies to the soothing nature of some medicines, but you can also use it to describe such things as a soothing voice or a soothing demeanor. The noun "demulcent" is used for a gelatinous or oily substance that is capable of soothing inflamed or abraded mucous membranes and protecting them from further irritation.
jocose \joh-KOHSS\ adjective
*1 : given to joking : merry
2 : characterized by joking : humorous
Example sentence: In the office, Ellie's lively, jocose personality keeps everyone smiling and upbeat.
Did you know? When you need a word to describe something (or someone) that causes or is intended to cause laughter, you might pick "jocose" or a synonym such as "humorous," "witty,"
"facetious," or "jocular." Of those terms, "humorous" is the most generic and can be applied to anything that provokes laughter. "Witty" suggests cleverness and a quick mind, while "facetious" is a word for something that is not meant to be taken seriously. "Jocose" and "jocular" both imply a habitual waggishness and a fondness for joking.
ameliorate \uh-MEE-lee-uh-rayt\ verb : to make better or more tolerable
Example sentence: Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village.
Did you know? "Ameliorate" traces back to "melior," the Latin adjective meaning "better," and is a synonym of the verbs "better" and "improve." When is it better to use "ameliorate"? If a situation is bad, "ameliorate" indicates that the conditions have been made more tolerable. Thus, one might refer to drugs that ameliorate the side effects of chemotherapy; a loss of wages ameliorated by unemployment benefits; or a harsh law ameliorated by special exceptions. "Improve" and "better" apply when what is being made better can be good or bad (as in "the weather improved" and "she bettered her lot in life"), and they should certainly be chosen over "ameliorate" when something good is getting better still ("he improved his successful program"; "she bettered her impressive scores").
multifarious \mul-tuh-FAIR-ee-us\ adjective : having or occurring in great variety : diverse
Example sentence: John listed his multifarious interests and activities on his college application.
Did you know? Dictionary makers have dated the first appearance of "multifarious" in print as 1593 -- and rightly so -- but before that time another word similar in form and meaning was being used: "multifary," meaning "in many ways" and appearing (and disappearing) in the 15th century. Before either of the English words existed, there was the Medieval Latin word "multifarius" (same meaning as "multifarious"), from Latin "multifariam," meaning "in many places" or "on many sides." "Multi-," as you may know, is a combining form meaning "many." A relative of "multifarious" in English is "omnifarious" ("of all varieties, forms, or kinds"), created with "omni-" ("all") rather than "multi-."
louche \LOOSH\ adjective : not reputable or decent
Example sentence: Her novels are populated by louche characters wasting their days in brothels and seedy bars.
Did you know? "Louche" ultimately comes from the Latin word "luscus," meaning "blind in one eye" or "having poor sight." This Latin term gave rise to the French "louche," meaning "squinting" or "cross-eyed." The French gave their term a figurative sense as well, taking that squinty look to mean "shady" or "devious." English speakers didn't see the need for the sight-impaired uses when they borrowed the term in the 19th century, but they kept the figurative one. The word is still quite visible today and is used to describe both people and places of questionable repute.
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