My Anthem

Thursday, June 10, 2010

TAXIS with an aSs, did you know te real meaning?

I fell for Jodie Foster when she fell for the taxi driver...Who wouldn't, I mean, if you were a girl, and the taxi driver, was Robert de Nero. He did not hail from Rio de Janeiro, I hear from good sources; and also from histroy lessons I learnt, ain't no relative of emperor Nero, who strummed his guitar while Rome burnt. Ooops, the guitar wasn'tinvented yet -- nyet! -- so it would be the ancient equivalent -- was it a madnolin or a harp, you check, OK! "madnolin" was a typo, and Desi lets it stand 'cos Nero was oft referred to a that "mad" emperor, and many modern prime minsiters should join the company, IMHO. That "H" is not humble, it's for humour if like YL, you do have a humerus bone in thee!:(

Now after a cheong hei intro (I used this Kantonese word because RPK had just used it in his not so long post I read lust night, and "lust" is apt here, not "last" if you knew where Desi was and up to, or down to,or in-between, and don'tyou be a wet blanket sperring it ooouch!:) -- my ER would ask: what's the connection wit' a pros and a cab and its dreber? Here/hear, I command ye, my slaves who must just sit back, down or up or in-between, you think I care?:(


Wordsmith.org The Magic of Words

Jun 7, 2010
This week's theme
Words that appear plural but aren't

This week's words
taxis

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

A recent newspaper report about a baseball player read: "Swisher is against resting his injured left bicep." It's not unusual to find constructions such as this in the sports pages of the dailies.

Of course, the word is "biceps" (plural is biceps or bicepes), but the writer of the above sentence can be forgiven for assuming the word biceps to be a plural and forming the word "bicep". It happens all the time in the evolution of a language.

That's how we got the word pea from the former singular pease ("Pease porridge hot..."), sherry from sherris, and cherry from cherise, for example. This week we'll feature five more words that appear plural, but aren't.

taxis

PRONUNCIATION:
(TAK-sis) plural taxes (TAK-seez)

MEANING:
noun:
1. Movement of an organism towards or away from a stimulus.
2. Order, arrangement, or classification.
3. The manual repositioning of a displaced body part to its normal position, in a case of hernia, for example.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek taxis (arrangement, order), from tassein (to arrange).

NOTES:
1. The word tropism is usually applied to plants. 2. The word for a public vehicle, taxi, is unrelated. A taxi is one which taxes, etymologically speaking. It's short for taximeter, the name of the device that calculates the fare. 3. Also see parataxis.

USAGE:
"I believe every action an insect makes is due to a reflex, a taxis or a tropism."
Poppy Adams; The Sister; Anchor; 2009.

"Dionysius wanted to see the entire cosmos as a taxis, in the sense of a hierarchy."
James H. Charlesworth; Jesus and Archaeology; Wm. B. Eerdmans; 2006.

Explore "taxis" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

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DESIDERATA: offers some somethin' xxtra because he's in the modd, 4L'VE!:)
Those of you who hail from Rasah NV, or wit' some media background,know it's prettyNimportant you arrest the attention of your readers with a attractive HEADline, and hear/here it iswan:)...



Features

I would die for you[r sex]

June 10, 2010
A researcher claims that men die younger than women because of the pursuit of sex. — Monkey Business Images

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Well, they used to before their ladies started banking big checks and monogamy took hold, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Evolutionary Psychology.

On June 8, Daniel Kruger, PhD, assistant research professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health told LiveScience, a science news site, “The name of the game in evolution is to get your genes in the next generation.”

Kruger analysed why men die first and found it has everything to do with sex.

Since, “mating competition is responsible for excess male mortality, then the more mating competition there is, the higher excess male mortality will be,” he said in a release.

To win the favour of ladies and get the sex, money comes into play and Kruger suggests “The wider the gap between rich and poor, the more likely men are to die young.”

Alpha males may continue to pass their seed driven by sex on, but it is likely that it is lessening as “the more egalitarian a society, and the more devoted to monogamy, the less extreme the risk taking. But no human culture, is perfectly free of such competition.” — AFP/Relaxnews

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