GRE Words ₁

Disemboweling is evidently the theme du jour. As the political wars rage in this amazingly acrimonious primary season, the skin has been ripped off the establishment in both parties, and their guts have been exposed. We're seeing the pulsing inner workings of partisan ideology as never before.

The plot concerns Justine, a twelve-year-old maiden who sets off, impecunious, to make her way in France.

Prior to winning the Nobel Prize, her work was largely unknown outside the German-speaking world and was said to resemble that of acclaimed Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard, with its pathology of destruction and its concomitant comedic abrogation.

The highlighting faces are my own choices, because I felt it was important for me to foist my personal style choices on the general public.

In the bet Winer asserts, “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 02007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times's Web site”. The premise of this bet is excellent, but unfortunately the arguments were quite vague on how to adjudicate the bet. Long Bets encourages bettors to construct arguments that involve the least amount of interpretation possible. Once this bet came up for adjudication we urged both parties to come to their own decision, but they asked Long Bets to be the final arbiter. We have done our best with the information and resources available to us, but this process should be a good instructor both to future bettors and ourselves…

SG: What was your favorite scripting environment/language before you decided to create Monad? Why?

JS: Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with the existing tools. I love the interactivity and composability of KSH/utilities but I hate their inconsistency and the need to do text parsing. I love the power and programmability of PERL and TCL but I hate their idiosyncrasies and their lack of a good interactive experience. I love the consistency and production-orientation of VMS DCL and AS400's CL but I hate their composability model. I love the UNIX model of surfacing everything through the filesystem but I hate the anemic semantics of the filesystem.

Xah, I can't think of anyone who can bandy such terms as "pussy flood" and sundry over-the-top rants and still keep a mien of erudition and venerability. Yet, YOU pull it off with aplomb.

The number of recalcitrant donkeys online are amazing. Even after showing them proof, they insist to the contrary.

Again, the revelations “should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch” (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.

this is a testament to extremely penurious friends. keep-inacentaurdump-public

I propose a moratorium on language changes. This would be a period of several years during which no changes to Python's grammar or language semantics will be accepted. The reason is that frequent changes to the language cause pain for implementors of alternate implementations (Jython, IronPython, PyPy, and others probably already in the wings) at little or no benefit to the average user (who won't see the changes for years to come and might not be in a position to upgrade to the latest version for years after).

Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn't that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.

“… the fawning, greased, obsequious leer …”

Jimmy Bulger was arrested in 1943 at the age of 14 and charged with larceny. He by then had joined a juvenile gang known as the “Shamrocks” and would eventually be arrested for assault, battery and armed robbery and was sentenced to a juvenile reformatory.

Colbert then segued into a segment poking fun at Bush's sinking approval ratings: «Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in “reality”. And reality has a well-known liberal bias … Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty,[…] because 32 percent means it's two-thirds empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.»

The twisted appeal, of course, was the incongruity of seeing a racist, anti-Semitic polemic — complete with smiley-face Hitler T-shirts and onstage Sieg Heil-ing — articulated by these cherubic little girls.

Now, the Gaede twins say they have changed their views and attribute their earlier political pronouncements to youthful naivete. “My sister and I were home-schooled,” Lynx pointed out. “We were these country bumpkins. We spent most of our days up on the hill playing with our goats.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, alleged, “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.

In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning, that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and of judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king need not necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position itself has a religious significance.

HISTORY: The notion has prehistoric roots and is found worldwide, on Java as in sub-Saharan Africa, with shaman-kings credited with rain-making and assuring fertility and good fortune. On the other hand, the king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim of a human sacrifice, either regularly killed at the end of his term in the position, or sacrificed in times of crisis (e.g. Domalde). …

In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger (German “double walker”) (pronounced [ˈdɔpəlˌɡɛŋɐ]) is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune. In modern vernacular it is simply any double or look-alike of a person. It also describes the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers often are perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and are regarded by some to be harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death.

On Thursday, May 10, 2007, Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking on National Public Radio, proposed impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Here's the audio.

… After an interruption, Wilkerson continued: “The language in that article, the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance.”

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 full details leaked, 720p camera and new flight modes?

It was hard to miss the “2.0” branding over at Parrot's little aerodrome here at CES [Consumer Electronics Show], but with nary a detail we were left speculation what the new major version number means. Now, though, we have some more details. A lot more details, actually. Over at AR Drone Flyers we've spotted what looks to be an official press release detailing everything about the new UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle], most notable being an improved 720p camera. You can apparently use this to record footage from the drone and even program it to fly in any direction automatically. In other words, this could be the low-cost aerial camera DIY extreme sports filmmakers have waited for. And, at $299 when it ships in Q2, it'll be quite close to affordable. You can check out a picture of the new drone above and read the full details in the seemingly official press release below.

Perfume (English: /ˈpɝː.fjuːm/, French parfum pronounced: [paʁ.fœ̃]) is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and/or aroma compounds, fixatives [A liquid mixed with perfume to prevent rapid evaporation.], and solvents [Chemistry. A substance in which another substance is dissolved, forming a solution.] used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces “a pleasant scent”. The odoriferous compounds that make up a perfume can be manufactured synthetically or extracted from plant or animal sources.

Piquance (pronounced /ˈpɪkəns/) is a sensation associated with the sense of taste. (colloquially called “hot” or “spicy”.).

The English word piquant comes from the Old French present participle of the verb piquer, meaning to prick; it is Cognate with the Spanish and Portuguese word “picante”, which carries the same meaning, and also with the English word pique. Common synonyms for piquance include hotness, pungence, raciness, spiciness, or the condition of something being spicy hot.

Ship grounding is a type of marine accident that involves the impact of a ship on the seabed, resulting in damage of the submerged part of her hull and particularly the bottom structure, potentially leading to water ingress and compromise of the ship's structural integrity and stability.

Sebastopol is a bucolic little hamlet seated in the western portion of Sonoma County, California. Formerly known for its Gravenstein apples, most orchards have long been planted with vineyards, or converted into the corporate grounds of the tech publishing firm O'Reilly Media. But several years ago a heated battle served to overturn the relative serenity of this community. The conflict erupted over the town's implementation of a contract for a public Wi-Fi network in its main plaza.

Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. …

While the term was initially self-applied by a small coterie of groups and individuals associated with Industrial Records in the 1970s, it broadened to include artists influenced by the original movement or using an “industrial” aesthetic. These artists expanded the genre by pushing it into noisier and more electronic directions.

The domestic goat (Capra aegagrus hircus) is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the family Bovidae and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of goat.

Goats are one of the oldest domesticated species. Goats have been used for their milk, meat, hair, and skins over much of the world. In the twentieth century they also gained in popularity as pets.

Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males as bucks or billies; their offspring are kids. Castrated males are wethers. Goat meat from younger animals is called kid or cabrito, and from older animals is simply known as goat or sometimes called chevon, or in some areas mutton (which more often refers to adult sheep meat).

“If it's the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Japanese dragons are diverse legendary creatures in Japanese mythology and folklore. Japanese dragon myths amalgamate native legends with imported stories about dragons from China, Korea and India. The style of the dragon was heavily influenced by the Chinese dragon. Like these other Asian dragons, most Japanese ones are water deities associated with rainfall and bodies of water, and are typically depicted as large, wingless, serpentine creatures with clawed feet.

Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and folklore …. In Chinese art, dragons are typically portrayed as long, scaled, serpentine creatures with four legs. In yin and yang terminology, a dragon is yang and complements a yin fenghuang (“Chinese phoenix”).

In contrast to European dragons, which are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck. With this, the Emperor of China usually uses the dragon as a symbol of his imperial power.

In Chinese daily language, excellent and outstanding people are compared to the dragon while incapable people with no achievements are compared with other, disesteemed creatures, such as the worm. A number of Chinese proverbs and idioms feature references to the dragon, for example: “Hoping one's son will become a dragon” (望子成龍, i.e. be as a dragon).

Ossicones are horn-like protuberances on the heads of giraffes, male okapi, and their extinct relatives, ….

Ossicones are similar to the horns of antelopes and cattle, except that they are derived from ossified cartilage [connective tissue], and that the ossicones remain covered in skin and fur…. Antlers (such as on deer) are derived from bone tissue: when mature, the skin and fur covering of the antlers, termed “velvet,” is sloughed and scraped off to expose the bone of the antlers.

As we drive the Google car — or are driven by it [a autonomous (self-driving) car] — I watch the action unfold on the computer monitor mounted on the passenger side of the dashboard. It shows how the car is interpreting the world: lanes, signs, cars, speeds, distances, vectors. The rendering is nothing special — a lot of blocky wireframe that puts me in mind of Atari's classic Battlezone. (The display is just one of a host of geeky details — to change lanes, for instance, the driver presses buttons marked Shift and Left on a keyboard near the monitor.) Yet it is absolutely fascinating, almost illicitly thrilling, to watch as the car not only plots and calculates the myriad movements of neighboring vehicles in the moment but also predicts where they will be in the future, like high-speed, mobile chess. Onscreen, the car is constantly “acquiring” targets, surrounding them in red boxes, tracing raster lines to and fro, a freeway version of John Madden's Telestrator. “We're analyzing and predicting the world 20 times a second,” Levandowski says.

[on Google's self-driving car] I was briefly nervous when Urmson first took his hands off the wheel and a synthy woman's voice announced coolly, “Autodrive.” But after a few minutes, the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting, and other vagaries of the humans around us — including the weaving driver who struggles to film us as he passes.

After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Meh­dizadeh, who graduated from York this past spring, discovered narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour a day on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos (striking a pose or using Photoshop, for example). Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates (using phrases like “I'm so glamorous I bleed glitter”) and wall activity (posting self-serving links like “My Celebrity Look-alikes”).

… then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

It has long been believed that New Yorkers could thank God for their unusual agglomeration of buildings (or, for those on the Upper West Side not believing in His good work, eons of geological development). It turns out that Manhattan has a bedrock unusually suited to the construction of very tall buildings, in many cases just a few meters below the surface. But that solid land drops away in the gooey middle of the island, long limiting the heights of buildings in the city.

Or so the aphocraphists [aphoristists; Aphorism] have been passing down for decades, at least since noted geologist Christopher J. Schuberth released his seminal The Geology of New York City and Environs amazon in 1968. Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building, it has stood the test of time. But like a bad retaining wall, it all came tumbling down last month.

Once, literary criticism was an elite vocation. Now, writes Martin Amis, we are all critics and in this new democracy, talent and integrity are the losers.

… That time now seems unrecognisably remote. I had a day job at the Times Literary Supplement. Even then I sensed discrepancy, as I joined an editorial conference (to help prepare, perhaps, a special number on Literature and Society), wearing shoulder-length hair, a flowered shirt, and knee-high tricoloured boots (well concealed, it is true, by the twin tepees of my flared trousers). My private life was middle-bohemian — hippyish and hedonistic, if not candidly debauched; but I was very moral when it came to literary criticism. I read it all the time, in the tub, on the tube; I always had about me my Edmund Wilson — or my William Empson. I took it seriously.

At the time of Moberly and Jourdain's excursion to Versailles, Montesquiou lived nearby, and reportedly gave parties in the grounds where his friends dressed in period costume and performed tableaux vivants as part of the party entertainments. Moberly and Jourdain may have inadvertently stumbled into a rehearsal for one of these performances. The Marie-Antoinette figure could have been a society lady or a cross-dresser, the pockmarked man Montesquiou himself. It was suggested that a gathering of the French decadent avant-garde of the time could have made a sinister impression on the two middle-class Edwardian spinsters who would have been little used to such company.

Avant-garde (French pronunciation: [avɑ̃ɡaʁd]) means “advance guard” or “vanguard”. The term is used in English as a noun or adjective to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981.

Unfortunately, RMS made an early decision to frame his advocacy as a moral crusade rather than a pragmatic argument about engineering practices and outcomes. … There are some advantages to this strategy. It taps into old, powerful emotional responses in human beings – the same responses that give messianic religions their power. As a way of recruiting a small hard core of dedicated followers it's tough to beat, and sometimes – if you're, say, the Gautama Buddha or Jesus or Mahavira – you can make it scale up. But I described it as a trap for a reason – most such attempts do not scale, remaining tiny marginal cults.

By the late 1990s, after having observed RMS's behavior for more than a decade, I had long since concluded that the Free Software Foundation's moralistic rhetoric was serving us badly. The problem with it is the same problem with messianic religions in general; for people who are not flipped into true-believer mode by any given one, it will come off as at best creepy and insular, at worst nutty and potentially dangerous (and this remains true even for people attached to a different messianic religion).

For many years, Penthouse fell between Playboy and Hustler in its explicitness and general attitude toward sexual depictions, with Playboy being visually softer and less focused on female genitals and with Hustler going for a raunchier look and content often consisting of toilet humor. Almost from the start, Penthouse pictorials showed female genitalia and pubic hair when this was considered by many to be obscene.

Up until 1973, the depiction of female genitalia offered fuzzy portrayals of the pudenda, without the inner labia parted, after which sharper views of the vulva were shown.

Simulated sex, but not penetration or male genitalia, followed; then, several years later, male genitalia, including erections, could be seen. In addition, Penthouse attempted to maintain some level of reading content, although usually of a more sexually oriented nature than Playboy.

Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum or The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, is an English charter, originally issued in Latin in the year 1215, and translated into vernacular-French as early as 1219, and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions. The later versions excluded the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority that had been present in the 1215 charter. The charter first passed into law in 1225; the 1297 version, with the long title (originally in Latin) “The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest,” still remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

Ruth Handler believed that it was important for Barbie to have an adult appearance, and early market research showed that some parents were unhappy about the doll's chest, which had distinct breasts. Barbie's appearance has been changed many times, most notably in 1971 when the doll's eyes were adjusted to look forwards rather than having the demure sideways glance of the original model.

The Mattel Barbie doll — more familiar to us as Barbie — has, in the last four decades, taken on a life and persona of her own. In 1994, an unofficial biography revealed that Barbie was modeled on a German cartoon character, an ambitious hooker named Lilli. At a 1995 exhibit, “Art, Design and Barbie: The Evolution of a Cultural Icon” at New York's Liberty Street Gallery, Lilli's role in Barbie's evolution was heavily underplayed. This subterfuge was part of a larger controversy, in which columnists and curators accused Mattel Inc., the sponsor, of being excessively meddlesome. While Mattel purged the exhibit of certain works of art inspired by Barbie, the company also did its best to camouflage the doll who had inspired the creators of Barbie. To understand why this was inevitable, we must put ourselves in Barbie's shoes, and follow the progress of a very hard-working plaything.

The Maya civilization shares many features with other Mesoamerican civilizations due to the high degree of interaction and cultural diffusion that characterized the region. Advances such as writing, epigraphy, and the calendar did not originate with the Maya; however, their civilization fully developed them. Maya influence can be detected from Honduras, Guatemala, and western El Salvador to as far away as central Mexico, more than 1,000 km (620 mi) from the Maya area. Many outside influences are found in Maya art and architecture, which are thought to result from trade and cultural exchange rather than direct external conquest.

Nonsectarian, in its most literal sense, refers to a lack of sectarianism. The term is also more narrowly used to describe secular private educational institutions or other organizations either not affiliated with or not restricted to a particular religious group.

Design guru Stephen Bayley condemned the London 2012 Olympic Games logo as “a puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal”.

A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the recipient admits a limited (or inferior) status within the relationship, and it is within that sense that charters were historically granted, and that sense is retained in modern usage of the term. Also, charter can simply be a document giving royal permission to start a colony.

In an article to mark the 100th anniversary of Turing's birth, the BBC aired the contrary views of Professor of Philosophy Jack Copeland. While questioning various aspects of the coroner's historical verdict, Copeland identified accidental inhalation of cyanide fumes from an apparatus for gold electroplating spoons, which Turing had set up in his tiny spare room (using potassium cyanide to dissolve the gold), as a plausible alternative explanation, noting that the autopsy findings were more consistent with inhalation than with ingestion of the poison. In addition, Turing had reportedly borne his legal setbacks and hormone treatment (which had been discontinued a year previously) “with good humour” and had shown no sign of despondency prior to his death, in fact, setting down a list of tasks he intended to complete upon return to his office after the holiday weekend.

The social contract or political contract is an intellectual construct that typically addresses two questions, first, that of the origin of society, and second, the question of the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their natural rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory.

Obscurantism (French: obscurantisme, from the Latin obscurans, “darkening”) is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge — opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the public, and, 2) deliberate obscurity — an abstruse style (as in literature and art) characterized by deliberate vagueness.

Millenarianism (also millenarism) is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000-year intervals. Millenarianism is a concept or theme that exists in many cultures and religions.

Similar to outrigger canoe (va'a) racing but unlike competitive rowing and canoe racing, dragon boating has a rich fabric of ancient ceremonial, ritualistic and religious traditions.

…

This hot season is also associated with pestilence and disease, so is considered as a period of evil due to the high summer temperatures which can lead to rot and putrification in primitive societies lacking modern refrigeration and sanitation facilities. One custom involves cutting shapes of the five poisonous or venomous animals out of red paper, so as to ward off these evils. The paper snakes, centipedes, scorpions, lizards and toads - those that supposedly lured “evil spirits” - where sometimes placed in the mouths of the carved wooden dragons.

His performance commenced with Händel's Fugue in E minor, which was played by Liszt with an avoidance of everything approaching to meretricious ornament, and indeed scarcely any additions, except a multitude of ingeniously contrived and appropriate harmonies, casting a glow of colour over the beauties of the composition, and infusing into it a spirit which from no other hand it ever received.

the mob were sold by the politician's specious arguments.

…experiments done at the behest of IBM.

a performance routine

renounced smoking