Sunday, April 22, 2007

Stevi / Solomodels Stevi (#18252). [Solomodels Showcase Photos] 9:52:42 PM

work / space On Words. Obscure but, if you're word person, fascinating trivia:A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia. Here's a tiny clip: Wilfred Funk's list of the most beautiful words in English: ASPHODEL, FAWN, DAWN, CHALICE, ANEMONE, TRANQUIL, HUSH, GOLDEN, HALCYON, CAMELLIA, BOBOLINK, THRUSH, CHIMES, MURMURING, LULLABY, LUMINOUS, DAMASK, CERULEAN, MELODY, MARIGOLD, JONQUIL, ORIOLE, TENDRIL, MYRRH, MIGNONETTE, GOSSAMER, ALYSSEUM, MIST, OLEANDER, AMARYLLIS, ROSEMARY. [Alysseum may be a misspelling of alyssum, but this is how the word appears in Paul Dickson's Words.] In the same poll, other American writers, poets, and critics responded with these selections: HOME (Lowell Thomas), CHATTANOOGA (Irvin S. Cobb), MELODY (Charles Swain Thomas), NOBILITY (Stephen D. Wise), VERMILION (Lew Sarett), GRACIOUS (Bess Streeter Aldrich), PAVEMENT (Arnold Bennett), LOVELY (George Balch Nevin), HARBORS OF MEMORY (William McFee), and NEVERMORE (Elias Lieberman). Louis Untermeyer responded, "The most musical words seem to be those containing the letter 'l'. I think, offhand, of such words as VIOLET, LAKE, LAUGHTER, WILLOW, LOVELY, and other such limpid and liquid syllables" [Charles Turner]. According to James Joyce, CUSPIDOR is the most beautiful word in English [Dickson]. In A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (page 86), Annie Dillard writes: "My friend Rosanne Coggeshall, the poet, says that 'sycamore' is the most intrinsically beautiful word in English" [Sarah Gossett]. A survey conducted in 2004 by the British Council which asked more than 40,000 people around the world to rank the most beautiful words among a list of 70 words found MOTHER first, followed by PASSION, SMILE, LOVE, and ETERNITY [Charles Turner]. The ten worst-sounding words in English, according to a poll by the National Association of Teachers of Speech in August, 1946: CACOPHONY, CRUNCH, FLATULENT, GRIPE, JAZZ, PHLEGMATIC, PLUMP, PLUTOCRAT, SAP, and TREACHERY. [via Fimoculous.com] [work/space] 9:30:13 PM

Perestroika, It's a Long Way to Tipperary The Edge's biggest solo gig?. As some of you may remember, The Edge visited Russia on behalf of Greenpeace back in March of 1989. This was chronicled by Bill Graham in Propaganda issue number 11. What that story didn't reveal was the following happening that we recently found in our u2log vault. "We come to the studio, with all these musicians, and we're hustled into a little room, down the hall, and we're all cramped in, and there's wires knocking over coffee cups, and I think that the result of it all was the fact that it put everyone very much at ease. "It was very informal, but very sincere. The production level was not what you would find in the States for example. We didn't have cue cards. We didn't overproduce. People didn't get pancake makeup. We were just there. "And they're asking questions and having people sing songs, and the tea cups were flying all over the place, and out there somewhere were 150 million viewers watching this whole thing happen, with the wires flying and the microphones in the way and everything else, and there's a sincerity in all that. It's not overproduced. "All of this is new for people in the Soviet Union and I think it's like the cork coming off a bottle of champagne; there has been a big release. Sure, let's do a television show with these musicians. Let's all get them in a room. Hey, here's a camera, you know. Let's take their photos and put it up and see what happens. It's great. It's all very experimental. "At one point the interviewer asked The Edge from U2 to sing a song from U2's album, of course, just sitting here on a couch with a cup of coffee in front of him was just mind boggling. It was... it'd never been done before and could never be done in the west I don't think. The result of that was that he actually sat for a minute, I think stunned a bit. And then he said 'Well, do you know the song "It's a long way to Tipperary"?' And he actually, on television, in front of 150 million people started singing the song." - Peter Bahout, describing a live performance that will never see the light of day on a U2 album Download the audio [U2log.com // Weblog and Magazine] 9:25:40 PM

- Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13 EARTH DAY "It's hard to appreciate the Earth when you're down right upon it because it's so huge. "It gives you in an instant, just at a position 240,000 miles away from it, (an idea of) how insignificant we are, how fragile we are, and how fortunate we are to have a body that will allow us to enjoy the sky and the trees and the water ... It's something that many people take for granted when they're born and they grow up within the environment. But they don't realize what they have. And I didn't till I left it." -Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13. - Bill [Gibson Blog] 5:21:38 PM

Anthony Cramer Solomodels Showcase ANTHONY (#19152). [Solomodels Showcase Photos] 11:46:54 AM

perreoradio.com reggaeton DJ Prez: Activando El Genero - 4/19/07. DJ Prez never fails to bring you the best Reggaeton. Be on the lookout for DJ Prez every Thursday on PerreoRadio.com. By The Best in Reggaeton y Perreo!!!. [Perreo Radio Podcast] 11:41:31 AM

Timewatch: The Wave that Destroyed Atlantis Minoa destroyed by tidal wave 1500 BC. Recent scientific evidence suggests the Minoa civilization on Crete was wiped out by a massive tidal wave around 1,500 BC, the same time the Santorini volcano erupted, 70 km north of Crete, up to ten times more powerful than the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. "Perhaps we now have an explanation of [the Atlantis myth] - a folk memory of a real ancient civilisation swallowed by the sea." [MetaFilter] 11:22:23 AM