buddha

It is sad that people have been confused for so long.  They do not understand that their own minds are Buddha and that their own natures are Dharma.  They look for Dharma by searching for sages for a way.  They look for Buddha but do not observe their own minds.

If they aspire to Buddhahood while clinging to their opinion that Buddha is outside the mind and that Dharma is outside their own nature, then even if they burn their limbs and break their bones for a million kalpas to show their sincerity, even if they sit constantly and never lie down to sleep, write out sutras in their own blood, eat only one meal a day, and practice every austerity—it would be like  trying to cook rice by boiling sand, and in the end they will only wear themselves out.

All the Buddhas of the past were simply ordinary people who understood their minds.  Likewise, all the masters of the present have simply cultivated their own minds.  And all future practitioners will have to depend upon cultivation of mind.  So if you wish to follow the Way, do not seek for it outside yourselfThe Only Thing is Within Us, But We Do Not See It
.--Chinul (1158-1210)

quote

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
           -- Clarence Darrow

Quotes

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
           -- C. P. Snow

The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.
           -- Willie Tyler

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
           -- Howard Aiken
O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
           -- Saint Augustine
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
           -- Larry Gelbart

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
           -- Ogden Nash
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
           -- Robert A. Humphrey

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
           -- Fred Allen

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
           -- Abraham Lincoln

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
           -- Bob Hope


You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
           -- Eric Hoffer

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"
 Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
           -- Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

Sometimes what's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
           -- Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Prehistoric Ice Man, 1999Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
           -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
           -- David Russell
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
           -- Robert Copeland
Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.
           -- William Shakespeare

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
           -- Charles Kuralt

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
           -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
           -- Laurence J. Peter

El nino

El Niño or El Nino

PRONUNCIATION:

(el NEEN-yo)

MEANING:

noun: A weather phenomenon characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Spanish El Niño, literally "The Boy Child", referring to Baby Jesus as El Niño phenomenon is noticed near Christmas.

NOTES:

El Niño, which occurs every three to seven years, is marked by warm sea surface temperature along the coast of Ecuador and Peru in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Its effects on weather are observed around the globe. A counter part is La Niña "The Girl Child" in which unusually cold ocean temperatures are observed in the Equatorial Pacific.

USAGE:

"The Phoenix area had its second coolest May in just over a decade, National Weather Service Meteorologist Craig Ellis said. The cooler temperatures were likely due to El Nino."
Brittany Williams; Phoenix Area May See 110 by Sunday; The Arizona Republic; Jun 1, 2010.

pluvial

pluvial

PRONUNCIATION:

(PLOO-vee-uhl)

MEANING:

adjective: Of or relating to rain, especially much rain.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin pluvia (rain), from pluere (to rain). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pleu- (to flow), that is also the source of flow, float, flit, fly, flutter, pulmonary, and pneumonia.

USAGE:

"The inclement weather was expected to continue throughout the week, and meteorologists predict that the next few days will remain pluvial."
Inclement Weather Sweeps Israel; The Jerusalem Post (Israel); Jan 18, 2010.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction. -Francis Picabia, painter and poet (1879-1953)

nimbus

nimbus

PRONUNCIATION:

(NIM-buhs) plural: nimbi or nimbuses

MEANING:

noun:
1. A rain cloud.
2. A halo or aura around the head of a person depicted in a piece of art.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin nimbus (cloud). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nebh- (cloud) that is also the source of nebula, nephometer (a device used in measuring the amount of cloud cover), and Sanskrit nabh (sky).

USAGE:

"The works take their cue from the perspective view one might see out an airplane window but become a curious exercise in painterly flatness, the white nimbuses butting up along the faint horizon."
Eric Banks; Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction; The Washington Post; Feb 20, 2010.

"He saw that at once; he took that also as the meed due his oil wells and his Yale nimbus, since three years at New Haven, leading no classes and winning no football games, had done nothing to dispossess him of the belief that he was the natural prey of all mothers of daughters."
William Faulkner; Collected Stories of William Faulkner; Vintage Books; 1995.

Explore "nimbus" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926)

a word a day

virga

PRONUNCIATION:

(VUHR-guh)

MEANING:

noun: Rain or snow that evaporates before hitting the ground.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin virga (rod, streak).

USAGE:

"Macduff Everton's images are so physical and tactile, you can nearly feel the moisture in the virga."
Len Jenshel; 25 All-Time Best Photo Books; National Geographic Traveler (Washington, DC); Jan/Feb 2005.

Explore "virga" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

starets

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

starets

PRONUNCIATION:

(STAHR-its, -yits) plural startsy (STAHRT-see)

MEANING:

noun: A religious teacher or adviser.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Russian starets (elder). In the Eastern Orthodox Church a starets is a spiritual adviser who is not necessarily a priest.

USAGE:

"Grigori Rasputin, was neither mad nor a monk, but an unconventional starets."
Cecilia Rasmussen; Shadowed by Rasputin's Evil Reputation; Los Angeles Times; Oct 10, 1999.

Explore "starets" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955)

guillotine

guillotine

PRONUNCIATION:

(GIL-uh-teen, GEE-uh-teen)

MEANING:

noun: A device with a heavy blade that drops between two posts to behead someone.
verb: To execute by guillotine or to cut as if with a guillotine.

ETYMOLOGY:

After French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) who recommended its use. Ironically the instrument designed as a humane device has come to symbolize tyranny. Dr. Guillotin realized that hanging by rope or beheading by a sword were cruel and urged a more humane method of execution, one that was swift and relatively painless. Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the College of Surgeons, designed a device that was called a Louisette or Louison in the beginning, but eventually became known as a guillotine.

USAGE:

"It appears that the magnificent eagle may be making a resurgence in Essex County. Too bad we won't be able to enjoy them for long. Soon we will find them lying guillotined below the myriad wind turbines our illustrious premier and his gang believe are so good for us."
Mary Anne Adam; Turbines Going to Take Out Eagles; The Windsor Star (Canada); May 6, 2010.

Explore "guillotine" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. -Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, Nobel laureate, (1904-1991)

Life

In today's excerpt - 1936, having founded Time magazine and become wealthy and famous
in the process, Henry Luce founded a new magazine based primarily on displaying
photographs which he called Life:
"Even before the first issue appeared, it was becoming clear that Life would be
an enormous popular success - a result of effective advertising, extensive press
coverage, the reputation of the company, and the popular hunger for pictures that
Luce had cited as a reason to create Life. ...
"There were 235,000 subscribers by the time the first issue appeared - almost the
entire guaranteed circulation before any newsstand sales, for which requests were
also growing fast. Shortly before publication, the circulation manager announced
that because of the frenzied, anticipatory interest 'every dealer is to receive
the same number of copies of Life that he receives of Time.' 'One dealer in New
York who sells two copies of Time a week placed an order for 250 copies of Life,'
Pierre Prentice, the circulation manager, wrote. 'All the dealers are ... mad that
we were not able to supply them with more copies of Life. '
"Nothing, however, truly prepared Luce and his colleagues for the public response
to Life when it finally went on sale. Some images collected by the editors at the
time suggest the character of the magazine's first weeks: a used-book shop with
a sign pasted in the window - 'Life Wanted, Good Prices Paid'; a classified ad in
the San Francisco Examiner in December 1936 - 'Life magazine, 1st edition; 2; $3.50
each (they retailed for $0.10 per copy). Phone
VA1 - 5927. Afternoons'; a drugstore in Detroit with a copy of Life in the
window below a sign - 'Sold Out But Read It Here'; heavily marked up distribution
lists from newsstands in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Keyport, New Jersey, from dealers
who were saving copies of Life for regular customers (the Keyport dealer rationed
copies by selling the magazine to each customer only on alternating weeks); and
a cartoon in an advertising magazine showing a group of businessmen around a table,
one of them sputtering, 'W-w-what's that! You say you saw an unsold copy of this
week's 'Life' at a newsstand on 42nd Street?' ...
"All two hundred thousand newsstand copies sold out the first day, some of them
in the first hour. Dealers from around the country wired their distributors that
they could sell five hundred more copies (Cincinnati), one thousand more (Lansing,
Michigan), fifteen hundred more (Worcester, Massachusetts), five thousand more (Cleveland).
'The demand for Life is completely without precedent in publishing history,' the
overwhelmed Prentice wrote. 'If we could supply the copies, the dollar volume of
our newsstand sales of Life this month [December 1936] would be greater than the
dollar volume of sales of any other magazine in the world. There was no way we
could anticipate a bigger newsstand business the first month than magazines like
Collier's and
Saturday Evening Post have built up in thirty years.' ...
"By the end of 1937, a year after Life's birth, circulation had reached I.5 million
- more than triple the first-year circulation of any magazine in American. ...
"Increasing supply to keep up with demand required an almost Herculean effort. The
production of Life was constrained by a serious shortage of paper, an inadequate
number of presses, and serious fire hazards in the gas-heated presses already in
use, which were running dangerously almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week."
Author: Alan Brinkley
Title: The Publisher
Publisher: Knopf
Date: Copyright 2010 by Alan Brinkley
Pages: 219-222

philippic

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

philippic

PRONUNCIATION:

(fi-LIP-ik)

MEANING:

noun: A bitter condemnation, usually in a speech.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek philippikos, the name given to orator Demosthenes's speeches urging Athenians to rise up against Philip II of Macedon.

USAGE:

"John McCain sat in the elegant ballroom of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich and listened politely as President Putin delivered a full-throated rant against America and all that it stood for. Mr McCain has long been one of Mr Putin's most outspoken critics, but it was less a rush of anger that overwhelmed him as he listened to the Russian leader's philippic, and more a mounting sense of irony."
Gerard Baker; Support for War May Yet be the Undoing of John McCain; The Times (London, UK); Feb 15, 2007.

Explore "philippic" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman. -Lord Chesterfield, statesman and writer (1694-1773)

orrery

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

orrery

PRONUNCIATION:

(OR-uh-ree)

MEANING:

noun: A mechanical model of the solar system that represents the relative motions of the planets around the sun.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), who was given one of those models by John Rowley, a London instrument-maker. They were invented by George Graham c. 1700. The device would have been better named either after its inventor, Graham, or its maker, Rowley.

USAGE:

"The lamp at the center of the orrery demonstrates the way the sun lends light to the planets."
James Fenton; Sheridan the Revolutionary; The New York Review of Books; Feb 4, 1999. "Even the nation's attic couldn't contain a 650-yard-long model of the solar system, so the Smithsonian Institution has put it outdoors, on the National Mall. 'Voyage: A Journey Through Our Solar System', a new permanent installation, represents the solar system at one 10-billionth its actual size. ...
"The stations within this giant orrery also feature porcelain information plaques with high-resolution, full-color images of the planets."
Eric P Nash; A Smithsonian Spin Through the Cosmos; The New York Times; Feb 10, 2002.

Explore "orrery" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest", but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)

McKenzie

Give credit where credit is due, goes the expression, but in this week's words the credit is misplaced. Each of these words is coined after the wrong person.
It's not always easy to assign credit, however, as the contention on the naming of diseases shows.
There's even a law about misplaced credits. Stigler's law of eponymy says, "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." Stigler credits this law to sociologist Robert K. Merton (thus making the law self-referential).
Check out this week's five words not named after the person they should be.

McKenzie

PRONUNCIATION:

(muh-KEN-zee)

MEANING:

noun: Someone who attends a court trial as an adviser to one of the parties. This person works not as a legal representative, but as an informal adviser. Also known as a "McKenzie friend".

ETYMOLOGY:

The term arose from the 1970 divorce case McKenzie v. McKenzie in the UK. The man in this case didn't have a lawyer. An Australian barrister, Ian Hanger, wanted to help, but could not as he was not qualified to practise in the UK. The man represented himself; Hanger offered to sit with him and provide advice as a friend, but he was denied this by the court. The man lost the case, and this denial became the basis for appeal which affirmed the position that a litigant can, in fact, have someone attend the trial to help in a non-professional capacity. Given the role of the barrister Hanger, a better choice of coinage for this word would have been Hanger, instead of McKenzie.

USAGE:

"A measure, of benefit to women especially, would be to permit the litigant to have a McKenzie friend in the course of the case."
Chitra Narayan; On An Obstacle Course; Hindu (Chennai, India); Nov 17, 2005.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978)

quotes

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
           -- Groucho Marx
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
           -- Albert Guinon

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
           -- Flannery O'Connor
 
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
           -- W. C. Fields


If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
           -- Abraham Lincoln

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.
           -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

A husband is like a fire, he goes out when unattended.
           -- Evan Esar


I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.
           -- Elayne Boosler

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
           -- Henry David Thoreau
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
           -- Edith Sitwell
I've never been married, but I tell people I'm divorced so they won't think something's wrong with me.
Elayne BooslerI'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
           -- Carl Sandburg, Incidentals (1907)

I'm still an atheist, thank God.
           -- Luis Bunuel

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
           -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Don't accept rides from strange men, and remember that all men are strange.
           -- Robin Morgan

Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have.
           -- Ernest Haskin

Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it's worse when they are wearing dark glasses and have streamers in their antlers because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot.
           -- Ellen DeGeneres
Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.
           -- David Letterman

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
           -- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
           -- Sam Brown, Washington Post, 1977

bagman

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

bagman

PRONUNCIATION:

(BAG-man, BAG-muhn)

MEANING:

noun:
1. One who collects or distributes money from illicit activities, for example, in a protection racket.
2. UK: A traveling salesman.
3. Canada: A political fundraiser.
4. Australia: A tramp; swagman.
5. Golf: A caddie hired to carry a golf player's clubs.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the literal senses of the words bag and man.

USAGE:

"Andres Butron confessed to being a bagman in a drug operation, transporting cash collected in drug sales to Mexico."
William Lee; 3 Men Found Dead; Chicago Tribune; May 19, 2010.

"Here is an account of how the hawker, the street peddler, the lowly bagman, evolved into the mighty selling and marketing gurus of today."
Birth of a Salesman; Financial Times (London, UK); May 22, 2004.

"The party also has turned a fundraising corner with its new and energetic bagman Rocco Rossi."
Barbara Yaffe; Struggling Ignatieff Needs Peter Donolo; The Ottawa Citizen (Canada); Nov 2, 2009.

"Anyone who wants to know just how the lot of the caddie has changed need only look at Steve Williams, Tiger Woods's bagman. He is frequently referred to as the highest-paid sportsman in New Zealand."
Nomadic Life Became Byrne's Bag; Irish Times (Dublin); Nov 21, 2009.

Explore "bagman" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. -John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

quotes

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
           -- Arthur Honegger

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.
           -- Tom Lehrer

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
           -- Claud Cockburn

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
           -- Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
           -- Wilson Mizner

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
           -- Franz Kafka

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
           -- Bertrand Russell
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
           -- John Kenneth Galbraith

All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.
           -- Stanislaw J. Lec, "Unkempt Thoughts"

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
           -- Thomas Hardy
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
           -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I improve on misquotation.
           -- Cary Grant

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
           -- Bill Watterson, cartoonist, "Calvin and Hobbes"

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
           -- George Bernard Shaw
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
           -- Ronald Reagan

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.
           -- Emile Chartier

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
           -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Foreword

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.
           -- Jules Renard
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
           -- Mark Twain, Notebooks (1935)

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
           -- Bill Hoest

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
           -- Josh Billings

No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
           -- Elbert Hubbard

St. Elmo's fire

St. Elmo's fire

PRONUNCIATION:

(saynt EL-mohz fyr)

MEANING:

noun: An electrical discharge visible at the surface of a conductor, as a ship's mast or an airplane's wing.

ETYMOLOGY:

After St. Erasmus (mispronounced as Elmo by sailors) who is regarded as the patron saint of sailors and an electrical discharge on the mast of a ship is believed to be a sign of his protection. This phenomenon of corona discharge is also called St. Elmo's light.

USAGE:

"When Capt Moody opened the door to the cockpit he saw the windscreen ablaze with a St. Elmo's fire -- a discharge of static electricity."
When Volcanic Ash Stopped a Jumbo at 37,000ft; BBC News (London, UK); Apr 15, 2010.

"Donald Holder's lighting design needed more pizzazz, particularly in scenes like the storm that sparks St. Elmo's fire on the ship's masts."
Heidi Waleson; Taming the Whale; The Wall Street Journal (New York); May 4, 2010.

rotation of crops

In today's excerpt - the Dutch invent crop rotation in the late 1500s. For thousands
of years, all societies had been subsistence societies, barely able to feed their
inhabitants since low agricultural productivity meant a permanent scarcity of labor
and land. This left precious few resources available for invention and innovation,
but then came the breakthrough - because of their extreme scarcity of land, the
Dutch were driven to find a better way to use land, freeing resources and setting
the stage for the Industrial Revolution:
"Agriculture throughout the world was woefully unproductive because cropping drained
the land of its fertility. The traditional remedy for soil exhaustion was allowing
land to become fallow to recapture its fertility, but this took a third or a quarter
of acres under tillage out of production. Farmers could also restore fertility by
adding nitrogen to the soil. Their principal source of this came from animals that
unfortunately had to be to stay alive and defecate, taking even more land away from
producing food for the people. Breaking through this bind of declining soil fertility
took a bundle of mutually enhancing practices. Fortunately Dutch farmers had been
experimenting with possible improvements for many decades.
"Some farmers in the Netherlands realized that they could abandon the old medieval
practice of leaving a third of the land to lie fallow each year. This move increased
the number of tilled acres by a third. Instead of the fallow rotation, they divided
land into four parts, rotating fields of grain, turnips, hay, and clover each season.
Not only did this increase the number of tilled acres by a third, but the clover
fed livestock after it had enriched the soil with its nitrogen deposits. The virtuous
circle of growth replaced the vicious circle of decline. When some landlords and
farmers responded to the possibility of becoming more productive, they were taking
the first permanent steps away from the age-old economy of scarcity.
"English farmers copied the Dutch and succeeded in making their agricultural base
feed more and more people with fewer laborers and less investment. Unlike the Dutch,
the English had enough arable land to grow the grains that fed the people as well
as their livestock. The Dutch could not produce what was needed to get their people
through a year. With their profits from trade, they could store grain, but this
lifesaving program got more and more expensive.
"While some English farmers copied the Dutch four-field rotation, others adopted
up-and-down husbandry. In this routine, a farmer would crop his best land for three
or four years and then put it in pasture for another five, during which time the
animal manure and nitrogen-fixing crops would rebuild the fertility necessary for
growing grains again. As in the Dutch system, land was no longer left fallow but
always growing some crop, whether for animals or humans. Every element on the farm
was put to some use; every hand, given new tasks. These innovations made urgent
a farmer's attentiveness because of their interlocking qualities. Both the Dutch
and English began to flood meadows to warm the soil in winter and extend the growing
season. Over the course of the century all these improvements raised the seed to
yield ratio, the labor to yield ratio, and the land to yield ratio. Or more simply,
they led to bigger harvests from fewer acres, less labor, and fewer seeds."
Author: Joyce Appleby
Title: The Relentless Revolution
Publisher: Norton
Date: Copyright 2010 by Joyce Appleby
Pages: 73-74

Achilles' heel

Achilles' heel

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-KIL-eez heel)

MEANING:

noun: A seemingly small but critical weakness in an otherwise strong position.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Achilles, a hero in the Greek mythology. When Achilles was a baby, his mother Thetis dipped him into the magical river Styx to make him immortal. She held him by the heel which remained untouched by the water and became his weak point. He was killed when the Trojan king Paris shot an arrow that pierced his one vulnerable spot: his heel. After him, the tendon in the lower back of the ankle is also known as the Achilles tendon.

USAGE:

"Economics, once the Coalition's strength, is in danger of becoming its achilles heel."
Laurie Oakes; Coalition Weak on Economics; Herald Sun (Melbourne City, Australia); Apr 3, 2010.

Explore "Achilles' heel" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences. -Ulysses S. Grant, military commander, 18th US President (182

Do Medications Really expire?? Worth a read

DO MEDICATIONS REALLY EXPIRE?
By Richard Altschuler

Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything? If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like "Do not use after June 1998," and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have "expired" are still perfectly good?

These are the pressing questions I investigated after my mother-in-law recently said to me, "It doesn't mean anything," when I pointed out that the Tylenol she was about to take had "expired" 4 years and a few months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement -- feeling superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet -- but she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage about medical issues.

So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly "dead" drug, of which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit. I said "You could be having a placebo effect," not wanting to simply concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually knowing what I was talking about. I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased, even before we had our evening cocktails and hot tub dip (we were in "Leisure World," near Laguna Beach , California , where the hot tub is bigger than most Manhattan apartments, and "Heaven," as generally portrayed, would be raucous by comparison).
Upon my return to NYC and high-speed connection, I immediately scoured the medical databases and general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labeling. And voila, no sooner than I could say "Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry," I had my answer. Here are the simple facts:
First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States , beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug -- it does not mean how long the drug is actually "good" or safe to use.
Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date -- no matter how "expired" the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won't get hurt and you certainly won't get killed.
A contested example of a rare exception is a case of renal tubular damage purportedly caused by expired tetracycline (reported by G. W. Frimpter and colleagues in JAMA, 1963;184:111) . This outcome (disputed by other scientists) was supposedly caused by a chemical transformation of the active ingredient.

Third, studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually much less than the latter). Even 10 years after the "expiration date," most drugs have a good deal of their original potency. So wisdom dictates that if your life does depend on an expired drug, and you must have 100% or so of its original strength, you should probably toss it and get a refill, in accordance with the cliché, "better safe than sorry." If your life does not depend on an expired drug -- such as that for headache, hay fever, or menstrual cramps -- take it and see what happens.
One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about "expired drug" labeling was done by the US military 15 years ago, according to a feature story in the Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen. The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years, so it began a testing program to see if it could extend the life of its inventory. The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter. The results showed that about 90% of them were safe and effective as far as 15 years past their original expiration date.

In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."
The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with a handful of exceptions -- notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some liquid antibiotics -- most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. "Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years, especially if it's in the refrigerator."

Consider aspirin. Bayer AG puts 2-year or 3-year dates on aspirin and says that it should be discarded after that. However, Chris Allen, a vice president at the Bayer unit that makes aspirin, said the dating is "pretty conservative"; when Bayer has tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective, he said. So why doesn't Bayer set a 4-year expiration date? Because the company often changes packaging, and it undertakes "continuous improvement programs," Mr. Allen said. Each change triggers a need for more expiration-date testing, and testing each time for a 4-year life would be impractical. Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said. But Jens Carstensen has. Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin 's pharmacy school, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, said, "I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer was still excellent. Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.
Okay, I concede. My mother-in-law was right, once again. And I was wrong, once again, and with a wiseacre attitude to boot. Sorry mom.
Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest -- to ease the nausea I'm feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry's "expiration date labeli