Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Kathmandu Post

The Kathmandu Post is a major daily newspaper published in Nepal. Centred in the capital Kathmandu, it is one of the largest English-language newspapers in the country. The Kathmandu Post is independently owned, and is published by Kantipur Publications, the owners of Nepal's largest selling newspaper, the Nepali-language Kantipur. It is a member of the Asia News Network, an alliance of nineteen Asian newspapers.

In October 2007, the offices of The Kathmandu Post were attacked by the All Nepal Printing and Publication Workers' Union, a group connected to the former Maoist rebels. The printing press was vandalised, stopping the paper from being published. Two hundred journalists and legal professionals marched in Kathmandu in protest at the attacks.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Slate Industry

The slate industry is the industry related to the extraction and processing of slate. Slate is either quarried from a slate quarry or reached by tunneling in a slate mine. Common uses for slate include as a roofing material, a flooring material, gravestones and memorial tablets, and for electrical insulation. Slate mines are found around the world and the major slate mining region in the United Kingdom is Wales: in Cornwall there are a number of slate quarries (famously the village of Delabole) and in the Lake District there are numerous slate mines and quarries.

90% of Europe's natural slate used for roofing originates from the Slate Industry in Spain.

In the remainder of Continental Europe and the Americas Portugal, Italy, Germany, Brazil, the east coast of Newfoundland, the Slate Valley of Vermont and New York, and Virginia are important producing regions. The Slate Valley area, centering on a town called Granville in the state of New York is one of the places in the world where colored slate (i.e. slate which is not grey or blue) is obtained.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Gleek

Gleek is a fictional character appearing in the animated series Super Friends and its related spinoffs. He debuted in The All New Superfriends Hour, which first aired September 10, 1977. Gleek's vocalizations were provided by Michael Bell.

Gleek is a blue "space monkey" and the pet of Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins. Gleek is often used as comic relief for the series, as the character often gets into mischief. A joke involving Gleek often ends episodes of the Super Friends in which he appears. Gleek has a stretchable, prehensile tail which can be quite useful. Gleek is also highly intelligent, as he clearly understands spoken English, even somewhat complicated concepts such as the various stages of simple strategic planning.

He communicates through the use of sign language, acting out scenes, and chattering in an unintelligible alien tongue. Gleek also helps the Twins when they need to travel: Jayna becomes an eagle, Zan becomes water, and Gleek produces a bucket to hold Zan while Jayna carries them both. A joke observation about this is that Gleek's other power is to materialize a bucket out of nowhere on demand. Possibly unrelated, the verb "to gleek" is the projection or "spitting" of saliva from the submandibular gland underneath the tongue.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Eupeodes Corollae

Eupeodes corollae is a very common European species of hoverfly. Adults are 6–11 millimetres (0.24–0.43 in) in body length. Males and females have different marking on the abdomen; males have square commas on tergites 3 and 4, whereas females have narrow commas. Larvae feed on aphids. This species has been used experimentally in glasshouses as a method of aphid control, and to control scale insects and aphids in fruit plantations. They were found to be partial to the fruit, eating more fruit than aphids.

E. corollae is found across Europe, North Africa and Asia. Adults are often migratory.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Luna Park

Luna Park is a name shared by dozens of currently operating and defunct amusement parks that have opened on almost every continent except Antarctica since 1903. The first to use the name was the second major amusement park at Coney Island, designed by Charles I.D. Looff, who subsequently designed Seattle, Washington's Luna Park, which opened in 1907. The spaceship in the Pan-American Exposition ride "A Trip to the Moon" gave its name to these parks... and to dozens that followed over the next century.

In 1905, Frederick Ingersoll was already making a reputation for his pioneering work in roller coaster construction and design (he also designed scenic railroad rides) when he opened Luna Parks in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the first two amusement parks to be covered with electric lighting (the former was adorned with 67,000 light bulbs; the Cleveland park had 50,000). Ultimately he opened 44 Luna Parks around the world, the first chain of amusement parks.

Despite the death of Ingersoll in 1927 and the closing of most of his Luna Parks, the name's popularity continued with newer parks with the name opening with regularity. As a result, "Lunapark" now translates into "amusement park" in Bulgarian, Croatian, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, and Turkish.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Castelmagno

Castelmagno is a cheese with Protected designation of origin status from the north-west Italian region Piedmont. It is a cheese which has been made for many centuries: the earliest known mention of it dates to 1277, but in all likelihood its origins are much earlier.

The cheese has traditionally been made in the Valle Grana in the south-west of the Province of Cuneo, where production is permitted today within the boundaries of the communes of Castelmagno, Pradleves and Monterosso Grana.

Castelmagno is a semi-hard, half-fat cheese produced from whole cows milk, obtained from cattle of the Piedmontese breed fed on fresh forage or hay from mixed meadows or pasture. On occasion some milk from sheep or goats may may be added to the cows’ milk. Aside from being eaten on its own Castelmagno can be part of countless recipes, such as in fondue or veloutees and can be eaten along with rice, pasta, polenta, thinly sliced raw beef meat (carpaccio) or grilled vegetables.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Thiol

In organic chemistry, a thiol is a organosulfur compound that contains a carbon-bonded sulfhydryl (-C-SH or R-SH) group (where R represents an alkane, alkene, or other carbon-containing moiety). Thiols are the sulfur analogue of alcohols.

Many thiols have strong odours resembling that of garlic. The odours of thiols are often strong and repulsive, particularly for those of low molecular weight. Skunk spray is composed mainly of low molecular weight thiol compounds. These compounds are detectable by the human nose at concentrations of only 10 parts per billion.

Thiols are also responsible for a class of wine faults caused by an unintended reaction between sulfur and yeast and the "skunky" odour of beer that has been exposed to ultraviolet light.

However, not all thiols have unpleasant odours. For example, grapefruit mercaptan, a monoterpenoid thiol, is responsible for the characteristic scent of grapefruit. This effect is present only at low concentrations. The pure mercaptan has an unpleasant odour.

Natural gas distributors began adding thiols, originally ethanethiol, to natural gas, which is naturally odourless, after the deadly 1937 New London School explosion in New London, Texas. Most gas odourants utilized currently contain mixtures of mercaptans and sulfides, with t-butyl mercaptan as the main odour constituent. In situations where thiols are used in commercial industry, such as liquid petroleum gas tankers and bulk handling systems, the use of an oxidizing catalyst is used to destroy the odour. A copper-based oxidation catalyst neutralizes the volatile thiols and transforms them into inert products.

Thiols are often referred to as mercaptans. The term mercaptan is derived from the Latin mercurium captans (capturing mercury) because the thiolate group bonds so strongly with mercury compounds.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Francis E. Dec

Francis E. Dec (January 6, 1926 – January 21, 1996) was a U.S. lawyer from Hempstead Village, New York, disbarred for fraud in 1959, and later known for the bizarre socio-political tracts of conspiracy theories he mass-mailed to the media. Often denouncing a "Worldwide Mad Deadly Communist Gangster Computer God" mind-controlling mankind, Dec is considered to have been a paranoid schizophrenic of the influencing-machine delusion kind, and is often referred to as a "kook".

Not unlike Ed Wood, Dec later became a cult figure referenced in underground culture. He was the subject of a 1994 book chapter, a 1998 comics, and a 1999 stage play; he also made his way into the folklores of the Discordians and the Church of the SubGenius. His rants have been reprinted in a 1983 issue of Robert Crumb's magazine Weirdo and circulated since 1986 from recordings by KROQ-FM host Doc Britton; they have been sampled in 1991 and 2004 by Psychic TV, in 2004 by Venetian Snares, and inspired a Coldcut album in 2005; they have been archived as outsider art by UbuWeb and WFMU; they spawned a fanclub and website; they have also been used as a gauge in 1994 for "kook typography" and in 1998 for the entropy of the undeciphered Voynich manuscript.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Murex

Murex is a genus of medium to large sized predatory tropical sea snails. These are carnivorous marine gastropod molluscs in the family Muricidae, the murexes or rock snails.

The common name "murex" is also used for a large number of species in the family Muricidae, most of which in the past were originally given the Latin generic name Murex, but most of which have now been grouped in other newer genera.

The word murex was used by Aristotle in reference to these kinds of snails, thus Murex is arguably one of the oldest classical shell names still in use by the scientific community.

This genus includes many showy members, their elongate shells highly sculptured with spines or fronds. The inner surfaces of their ornate shells are often brightly colored.

Costly and labor-intensive dyes Tyrian purple (or royal purple) and Tekhelet were historically made by the ancient Phoenicians using mucus from the hypobranchial gland of two species commonly referred to as "murex", Murex brandaris and Murex trunculus, which are the older names for Haustellum brandaris and the Hexaplex trunculus.

This dye was used in royal robes, other kinds of special ceremonial or ritual garments, or garments indicating high rank. It is theorized that the dye was the same dye as that which featured prominently in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, the clothing of the High Priest (or Kohen Gadol) officiating there; it is sometimes still used by Jews today in the ritual fringes (tzitzit) on four-cornered garments. A consensus has yet to be achieved regarding the Biblical source of the "blue" dye.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

¡Ay, caramba!

¡Ay, caramba! comes from the Spanish interjection ¡ay! (denoting surprise or pain) and caramba (a minced oath, a euphemism for carajo, an interjection expressing pain or surprise similar to "ouch" or "gee"), which is an exclamation used today in surprise (usually positive) in Spanish. The term caramba is also used in Portuguese, where it used to be a minced oath for caralho, the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish carajo (a vulgar word for penis), both of which descend from the Latin "caraculus"

The exclamation was the signature nickname of the flamenco dancer and singer, La Caramba, in the 1780s in Madrid. Her head-dress of brightly coloured ribbons became known as a caramba too.

The phrase is regularly used by stereotyped Mexicans in (especially Wild West) fiction, for example the adventures of Zagor, Tex Willer or Lucky Luke and select Warner Brothers cartoons, such as the bull Daffy Duck encounters in the 1947 cartoon Mexican Joyride.[citation needed]

Also often used in frustration by the character General Alcazar in The Adventures of Tintin comic books by Hergé.

Ay Caramba! was the name of a 1998–2006 Spanish-language television series featuring funny home videos. It was broadcast on Mexico's TV Azteca network.

The fictional character Bart Simpson from the American animated sitcom The Simpsons further popularized the phrase in modern pop culture. It became one of his most notable catchphrases. Bart said the line not always in positive surprise, but in negative/general surprise as well.