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Planets, Stars, and Galaxies: a visual encyclopedia of our Universe by David A. Aguilar, National Geographic, 2007

David Aguilar describes the planets of our solar system as well as dark matter, neutron stars, nebula, and many other phenomena of space in this book.

What makes this book different from others on the subject, are the glowing illustrations that Aguilar created from NASA and telescope photographs . The photos are enhanced and photoshopped to offer a "you are there" presence to the reader. What would it feel like to be in the middle of the Kuiper Belt? Well, pages 62 and 63 give us an idea. Imaginative space ships tour planets and space suited explorers stand on the surface of one of Jupiter's moons.

Aguilar fills the text with factual information. He explains how a star burns in a graphic that depicts the collision of two protons and the release of energy that is starlight. The location of supernova, nebula and other objects are marked in constellation maps when they are visible through binoculars.

The author has projected reader into the galaxy, traveling exploring and experiencing the wonders of the universe. We live in a time when the Space Shuttle program seems routine and low Earth orbit is the best we can do. The book could fire the imagination of kids who have seen the spectacular images of the space telescopes and now think, "been there-done that." Chapters, "Are we Alone?" and "Dreams of Tomorrow" ponder what is "alien life" and ideas for the future of space engineering.

If you believe the program How William Shatner changed the world, (and I do) my generation was inspired to "make it so" by Star Trek. This book fires the imagination and could also inspire a young person today to look skyward.

By Anatoly Liberman

This is a story of the naked but not necessarily the dead. Traveling through time, we notice the same grim custom: a defeated enemy or a prisoner of war may be killed or stripped of everything he wears before (and sometimes instead of) being murdered. Reports gloat over the details. Marauders search for good clothes and valuables on the battlefield and care little for the indignity with which they are treating corpses, but it was the ability to humiliate the survivors that gave the greatest joy to the winning party. The shame of being left naked clung to the victim forever, and it was worse than death. With amazing regularity the languages of the world show that the similarity between robber and robe is not fortuitous, that those words are indeed related. (more…)

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Now that U.S. voters are deeply enmeshed in the presidential primary season, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word primary. (Or maybe it was last week’s column on subprime that primed the pump.) Primary and its colleague caucus are distinctly American political terms for the processes by which a party’s candidates are selected, and tracing the usage of these words offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of the nation’s electoral process.
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The American Dialect Society has announced that the Word of the Year for 2007, as voted by members at its annual meeting, is subprime. It’s a sturdy choice, given how much media attention has circulated this past year about the financial crisis in the housing sector blamed on mortgage loans made to high-risk borrowers with credit ratings that are less than prime. Subprime (sometimes hyphenated as sub-prime) might not be as flashy as some previous selections by the ADS, such as truthiness in 2005 (comedian Stephen Colbert’s term for “truth from the gut” unencumbered by facts) or plutoed in 2006 (’demoted or devalued in the manner of Pluto losing planet status’). Nonetheless, the word has an intriguing history, even for people like me who aren’t terribly fascinated by the lending practices of banks.

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For the past few decades, Lake Superior State University has issued an annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.” Candidates for “banished words” are nominated by the public at large, and then a committee decides on the final selection, which is released every year on New Year’s Day. The 2008 list is a typical mix of terms deemed by the committee to be clichéd, improperly used, or objectionable in some other way, with a particular emphasis on management-speak, Internet lingo, and youth slang. Of course, the LSSU list is never effective in actually banning words — in fact, some words from years past have flourished quite successfully (“online” in 1996, “9-11” in 2002, “blog” in 2005). In general, the list is most informative as a barometer of pet peeves about language: what is it that gets under people’s skin, so much so that they think words (or particularly disliked senses of words) should be removed from the lexicon forthwith?

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By Anatoly Liberman

Every now and then, some words arouse public curiosity and produce a torrent of correspondence: people write letters to the editors, argue with one another, and offer etymological conjectures. In the past, Notes and Queries on both sides of the Atlantic, The Athenaeum, and The Nation regularly served as an outlet for this type of exchange. It is hard to believe how much ink (yes, in the past writers used ink: look it up in some good dictionary) was wasted on the history of theodolite “an instrument for measuring angles; level, bubble,” a word that hardly anyone remembers today (my spell-check suggested that I replace it with theologize, but I refused). A similar case is blizzard. (more…)

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When we think about new additions to the English lexicon such as locavore or tase (or other candidates for the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year), it’s easy to forget that some of our most common vocabulary items were once awkward newcomers, like transfer students desperately trying to fit in with the other kids in class. A good reminder of that is John Ayto’s A Century of New Words. Looking through this “chronology of words that shaped our age,” one is struck again and again how so many of our old lexical friends are really not so old after all. Have we really only been talking about plastics since 1909, when Leo Baekeland invented bakelite? And who would have guessed the T-shirt has only been around since 1920, and the zipper since 1925? All of these words must have sounded downright peculiar when they first came on the scene, and yet now they’re unremarkable elements of the linguistic landscape.

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Jessica Prentice coined the word “locavore” which was chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year! We asked her how the word came about. Her answer is below.

There’s only one word for it: giddy. That’s how I’ve been feeling since reading the first email informing me that “locavore” was voted 2007’s “Word of the Year” by Oxford University Press. It’s the same feeling you have when you’re twelve years old and the guy you have a crush on gives you a valentine, and doesn’t give one to anyone else. You blush, you jump up and down in your seat, and you send excited text messages to the people you know will understand.

And how exciting to be asked to blog about it and be able to tell the story from my point of view! From the very beginning, the word “locavore” had legs. It’s actually been a fascinating phenomenon to watch: to see something that never existed before take on meaning and gather momentum. It’s also a phenomenon that would have been impossible before the internet. So, how did the word “locavore” come about? (more…)

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It’s always an exciting time at OUP when the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year is selected. As announced here on Monday, this year’s choice is locavore, meaning “a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced foods.” The word may very well strike a resonant chord for anyone who has mulled over how many miles a bunch of bananas has logged before it gets to the local grocery store. But unlike some of our previous Words of the Year — most recently, podcast in 2005 and carbon neutral in 2006 — locavore is very much “on the cusp,” not yet firmly established in widespread usage, despite its great potential. That means Oxford lexicographers will continue to monitor its progress to see if it eventually warrants inclusion in the next edition of NOAD.

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It’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold (if you are worried about the global warming maybe you should become carbon-neutral) and the New Oxford American Dictionary is preparing for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation. (more…)

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PROBLEM SOLVED!!! (Boy, sometimes it is the simplest things that escape me.)

Thank you! :-) :-)

I've been using the various versions of Word for years and can usually troubleshot my way out of most things but this one has me stumped.  At home it works fine but at work something is wonky. all I can figure is I must of accidently done something and since I don't know what it is, I can't undo it. 

It's the page numbers and number of pages thing that shows up at the bottom of a page. NOT in a footer, that's not what I mean.

See this pic?
 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  This no long appears on my Word at work. 

Normally I can hit print preview and then I can see that it will print x of x number of pages. But not anymore. I don't see the page numbers in normal layout, print layout, print preview. Nothing.

Anyone have any idea/

By Kirsty OUP-UK

Susie Dent, author of OUP’s annual Language Report, has told us that the word of the year for 2007 is “footprint”, but can any one word sum up the 21st century so far?

We are conducting a poll over at the AskOxford website, and would love you to take part. You can either choose from one of the selection that Susie has put together from her five years of monitoring the language for her books, or if you don’t agree with any of them, you can nominate your own.

To get you thinking, here are a few of the words you can choose from: (more…)

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