The spelling of Frankfurt in English has undergone a slight evolution from `Frankfort' to `Frankfurt,' principally in the 1980's or 1990's. For more detail, see the Frankfort entry.

The largest book fair in the world is the annual one-week Frankfurt Buchmesse, held during October (occasionally during or starting in September), with many thousands of exhibitors and a few hundred thousand visitors.

The Coptic calendar year has 13 months, 12 of 30 days and one of 5 days (6 in leap years). The French revolutionary calendar was similar, but the five or six intercalary days, which also came consecutively, were not designated a month. The traditional ``Egyptian year'' used for certain astronomical calculations in antiquity was exactly 360 days long, although the length of a real year was much more accurately known.

Note on the Latin: annus is the nominative form of the Latin word for year -- the form used when year is the subject of its clause. English is rather uninflected, and in particular, nouns are only inflected to indicate number and to distinguish the possessive case -- e.g., year becomes year's. (The possessive case corresponds roughly to the genitive case in European languages that have more extensive noun inflection, most prominently the Slavic languages.) The standard ``articulation'' of the cases for simple nouns that are borrowed from well-known languages like Latin is to use the nominative form for all cases in English. Thus, for example, we write not only

This is my vita. [predicate nominative]

I lived my vita. [oblique case]

When a Latin noun phrase is imported, it is normally in the nominative case as well. That means that the base noun is in the nominative, but if other nouns occur they generally are not. An example is curriculum vitae (`course of life' or `life's course,' more at CV), which is used synonymously with vita in English. Here curriculum (`running' or `course,' as in a race) is a nominative form, but vita appears in its genitive form vitae (`life's' or `of life'). The genitive form is very common in these situations. English now most commonly creates compound nouns by using nouns as adjectives (called ``attributive noun'' in this function), rather than with possessive constructions: life history rather than life's history. The possessive form and related constructions used to be more common in English and continue to be more common in continental languages. In Latin and other highly inflected languages, the attributive noun has to be in some case, and that case is often the genitive, so the distinction sort of disappears.

In Latin as in English, inflections appear mostly as modified endings. Thus, the genitive forms of nouns and pronouns in English usually require the word to end in an ess (with some complications involving apostrophes, etc.) and present-participle verbs are the infinitive forms inflected with the suffix -ing. [German uses a -d added to the infinitive ending -en, so present participles end in -end (you could think of that as a mnemonic). At the time that the Scottish and English crowns were united, Scottish present participles ended in -and. The conversion of -and to -ing, along with various other systematic changes, took about a century.]

Latin inflections are about as systematic as those of English, but they are complicated by the fact that different classes of words are inflected differently. For example, Latin has four classes of verbs. These are inflected by rules that depend slightly on the verb class. Verb inflection is called conjugation; to ``give the conjugation'' of a verb is to give its various forms. (In Spanish, the four classes collapsed into three. All present participles in Spanish end in -iendo or -ando. The occurrence of -nd- in both Germanic and Romance (and Latin) present participles is probably not a coincidence, but I haven't checked. Scottish used to form present participles with an -and ending. In English, use of the nominalizing ending -ing (cognate with the German nominalizing ending -ung) expanded and replaced the native -nd present-participial ending. It took about a century for the -and form to disappear in Scottish after the political (and substantially linguistic) union with England and Wales.

There are classes of nouns in Latin just as there are classes of verbs. These classes are called declensions. There are five declensions, and each has a unique genitive ending for singular nouns. The other endings (for nominative, dative, accusative, and ablative cases) are more complicated, in that they also depend on grammatical gender. By convention, Latin dictionaries list the nominative form of a noun as headword, followed by its genitive ending and its gender, which is just enough information to indicate which set of inflections should be used. Thus, for example, the entry for vita begins "vita, -ae, f." Thus, the nominative and genitive singular forms are vita and vitae, as indicated above. The -ae singular genitive ending indicates that vita is a first-declension noun, and as it happens almost all first declension nouns are feminine ("f.").

The word for world (or universe) in Latin is mundus, and its entry begins "mundus, -i, m." We know immediately that the genitive singular form (`world's' or `of the world') is mundi, as in the phrases anno mundi and annus mundi, nominal subject of this wildly distended entry. Most second-declension nouns are masculine (m.) like mundus or neuter (n.) like curriculum ("curriculum, -i, n.").

The word annus means circuit, and very commonly the circuit of the sun, or year. Like mundus, it is a second-declension masculine noun (dictionary entry begins "annus, -i, m."). Thus, according to the rule stated above for noun phrases, the phrase `year of the world' comes over from Latin as annus mundi with nominative annus and genitive mundi. Not every unnaturalized Latin phrase in English is a noun phrase, however. Anno mundi is an adverbial of time. It originally occurred in medieval Latin sentences as ``... anno mundi MMMM,'' where anno is the ablative form of annus. This meant `... in the four-thousandth year of the world' [the last year of the fourth millennium]. It might be abbreviated ``A.M. MMMM'' (or ``MMMM A.M.''; word order is looser in Latin than in English, because inflections indicate syntactical relations). In translation of the text, the abbreviation was typically left in its original form: ``... 4000 A.M.''

You know, we're just about getting to the interesting part, but I'm running out of steam. Briefly: the precise date and even moment of the creation of the world was extremely important in Christian eschatology, because of the theory that world history was divided into thousand-year periods paralleling the seven days of creation. Hence the term ``millenarianism.'' At the end of six thousand years, there would begin a thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth. These would correspond to the first six days of creation and the Lord's resting on the seventh day. There were hundreds of well-known attempts to compute the A.M. on the basis of history as recorded in the Bible. These exact calculations disagreed somewhat -- by over a thousand years -- in part because the task is impossible: there isn't enough detailed information in the Bible.

Or so it seems to me. The eyes of faith, however, have seen -- or imagined they've seen -- things I have not. Those other things were auxiliary assumptions in which there seemed to be good reason to believe -- at the time. Over the course of a few hundred years these pious scholars tended to discover that the apocalypse was nigh. Repent! When the world failed to end at the appointed time, wiser scholarly chronologists went back to work and soon determined that the end was again nigh. The pattern continues to this day, and when hundreds of people die as a result (as happened in Uganda in March 2000), it's not very funny.

In addition to the exact calculations that had the world ending tomorrow repeatedly over the past few hundred years, there were also exact calculations based on the fact that the birth of Jesus marked the beginning of the last -- no wait, the second-to-last -- millennium before the apocalypse. There are some, ah, difficulties with the gospel stories that make it hard to establish a precise date, and anyway the historical record is a bit sparse, so obviously the way to get things exact is to use the standard methods of Biblical exegesis to determine the exact A.M., and work from there. Somehow, those who believed correctly that Jesus's birth marked the beginning of a millennium were enabled to make the correct auxiliary assumptions, and corroborated with miraculous accuracy that Jesus was born in 5001 A.M. (these calculations were correct as recently as 1400) and later corroborated with miraculous accuracy that Jesus was born in 4001 A.M. Those who believed the original calculations of Dennis the Short, who defined the A.D. era, determined that 4001 A.M. coincided with 1 A.D.; others found somewhat different correspondences. Apparently 1 A.D. = 4001 A.M. is popular with some Masons, who denote A.M. by A.L. In the English-speaking world today, the best known of those estimates is that of Bishop Ussher, who computed that 1 A.M. began in 4004 B.C., so the world ended in 1998 (around Thanksgiving, I think it was).

The Jewish calendar also assigns the year one to the creation of the world, although without assigning any special significance to the millennial years (and without using the notation ``A.M.''). The first day of year one, the first of Tishri, began on sunset of September 6, 3761 BCE by Julian calendar reckoning, although the concept of sunset before the creation of the sun is a bit deep for me. (Extrapolating back before 1582 according to the current Gregorian calendar rules, that would have been October 6.)

Interestingly, in that year Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, came out with The Description of the New World Called the Blazing World. (It's an antiscientific parody.)

See also the 1963 entry.

Actually, the 12 AM convention is not universally accepted. Using a convenience sample of about five people in FitzPatrick Hall, I determined conclusively that there are two sharply defined groups of people:

1. Those who consider 12 AM to be midnight by convention.
2. Those who don't think there's a convention, but who if they see ``12:00 AM'' guess -- considering context'n'all -- that it probably means midnight.

In 1999, http://www.webmasters.am/ held a contest for the best websites in Armenia. Probably an interesting place to look for Armenian stuff. There's an Armenian Freenet, which ``provides free Internet access and training services for non-profit, governmental and educational organizations of Armenia, as well as individuals.'' Both the contest and the freenet are sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) country office in Armenia.

AM radio stations just don't seem to get as much respect nowadays as FM radio stations. Perhaps that explains why the Federated States of Micronesia, with the .fm is beginning to cash in, but Armenia is not. Then again, maybe Armenia actually wants to use its national top-level domain.

FWIW, there's two-tier pricing for domains under the .am TLD:

Registration and first two years fees USD 250 for non-residents, USD 60 for residents (including VAT) and annual fee USD 50 for non-residents, USD 24 for residents (including VAT) thereafter payable in advance.

For now, I have a somewhat precise-sounding figure of (``about 17 percent of physicians belong to the AMA'') from an October 2009 article by the columnist Jack Kelly. It sounds precise; it would be more precise if one knew, say, whether retired physicians were included in the denominator. It's kind of a precise upper or lower bound, depending on what quantity you're interested in.

The table below is based on a May 2010 article by Andis Robeznieks in Modern Healthcare (``More AMA money, but ...; ... membership declines, margin lags '07: report''; ellipses in the original). Much of the information evidently came from the AMA's 2009 annual report, released ahead of the annual meeting in Chicago in June.

Year   Membership  Change from previous year
2006   239,000       
2007   241,000       +1%
2008   236,000       -2%
2009   228,000       -3%

The 2007 membership increase was the first in seven years, but it was achieved by giving 8,577 free memberships to first-year residents who had been student members the previous year.

The stereotype used to be that physicians worked until they dropped, and that they had no interests outside medicine anyway, so they would die of boredom if they retired. That's not consistent with my personal experience, however, and medicine is changing so fast now that one needs the energy of youth (or a rousing chemical simulacrum of it) to keep up with developments in many of the specialties. A couple of my relatives who were the first two women to graduate from the medical school in Breslau (around 1930) did volunteer work related to medicine after they retired, but a cardiologist we knew simply sold her practice and went skiing.

There's a putative muckraking book advertised by Putnam Berkley [sic] Group; the bulletized list of putative revelations is pretty reassuring. Less ``praising by faint damns'' than ``we didn't find anything interesting that you didn't already know about.'' Putnam Berkley Group belongs to MCA/Universal, the information conglomerate that gave us ``Waterworld.'' Sadly, Putnam Berkley appears to be a successor of that fine old house G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Cf. this other AMA acronym.

Straight College in New Orleans was founded by the AMA on June 12, 1869, as Straight University, offering instruction at the elementary level, then at secondary, collegiate, and professional levels. (Yes, I double-checked that sentence.) Less than one month later that 1869, on July 8, the Freedman's Aid Society (of the Methodist Episcopal Church) established the Union Normal School, which eventually became New Orleans University. On June 6, 1930, the two institutions merged to form Dillard University. Be it noted, since Dillard is an HBCU, that it and its predecessors accepted students and faculty of any race.

The following might not be worth its own glossary entry, but I have to say it somewhere: I have trouble keeping my Amandas and Ambers straight, but ``Am'' just doesn't sound like a natural-enough nickname. I think I would remember if anyone ever introduced herself with ``I'm Am.'' (But see the I-M-A-L entry.)

it is the oldest librarians' group of Mexico. Founded in 1924 with the name Asociación de Bibliotecarios Mexicanos [`Association of Mexican Librarians'], it acquired its current name and the status of a civil association in 1965. It has a presence throughout the nation and serves the following objectives: professional development of its members, and promotion and fostering of libraries, library service, and librarianship. The AMBAC maintains relations with numerous professional associations, and many of its members belong to one or more of them.

Ninety percent of the world's commercial amber comes from just one site, the open-pit amber quarry at Yantarny on Kaliningrad's Baltic coast. Amber is the principal natural substance exhibiting triboelectricity, q.v.

Ontario has an Amber Alert system. Aww, it's so hard to prove a negative.... Well, according to a report received at SBF, the National Center's expansion (above) is not used in Ontario.

``Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.''

To be more precise, Adorno worked in Frankfurt aM, and was part of the Frankfurt school.

As of 2013, the title is apparently officially in mixed case (Ambix), but it is in all-caps on the cover, and in the past, the webpages of the society that published it (see below) consistently wrote it in all-caps, somewhat as the Time magazine website treats its title. I have seen it printed in all-caps in many other places as well. I haven't seen the practice explained, but I can think of one reason for it: the majuscule forms of the letters a, m, b, i, and x are the same as the corresponding Greek letters, so the Greek original and the Latin transliteration have an identical appearance. (In contrast, the minuscule forms are all different.)

There is an important limitation on the preceding statement about letter correspondence: it is true for all times and places for the first four letters, but for the last letter it is only true for the majority of the Greek-speaking world during the archaic period (i.e., the pre-classical period) and into the classical period. The reason is that the symbol that we call xi (following nu in the alphabet and in the Greek numerals, with a value of 60) was not widely used for spelling in archaic Greece. Instead, the letter we call chi, near the end of the alphabet (600 as a numeral), was used with different sound values. In Ionia in this period, the chi was evidently sounded like an aspirated version (/k^h/) of the letter kappa, and xi represented a sibilated stop (/ks/). In most other places that used the Eastern Greek alphabet, including Euboea and much of the Greek mainland including Attica (the region around Athens), chi represented the ks sound. In the Western Greek alphabet, chi also had the ks sound. (Of course, the name of the letter was chi-iota no matter how you pronounced it.) The letter retained that sound in the Etruscan alphabet (a version of the Western Greek alphabet, and the name ``ex'' when it was adopted by the Romans.)

If I were a dialectologist of archaic Greek, I might be able to say how or whether the /k^h/ sound was represented where chi was already taken for /ks/. They might have used a rough breathing mark (spiritus asper is the standard Latin name) as is done to indicate aspiration of the rho (hence all the rh's in the English spellings of many Greek-origin words), just as the Romans used ch to represent that sound in transliteration in borrowed words from classical Greek or from Koine, but maybe they simply didn't bother to indicate breathing for that point (velar) of articulation. Eventually, during the classical period, at least Attica adopted the xi and respelled words that had used the chi.

Members of SHAC receive Ambix as a benefit of membership. Ambix is currently published in March, July, and November. If anyone had asked me, I would have said that I heartily approve of this publication schedule.

Ambix is put out by Maney Publishing, which is celebrating Ambix as its Journal of the Month for March 2013. From today (March 2) until April 15, 2013, some of its content is available free. [The last three years, a historical post bella mundi special issue, and ``20 high-quality articles'' from the archives. That nicely infelicitous wording excites hope that other celebratory features will be unintentionally interesting.]

Set in the fictional East Coast suburb of Pine Valley, AMC story lines revolve around attractive young Erica Kane (played by attractive young Susan Lucci from 1970 to 2011) and her succession of husbands.

Palmer Cortlandt, a longtime character on AMC, owned a company called Cortlandt Electronics. He was played by James Mitchell, who died in January 2010. Kelly Ripa (a blonde sidekick like Vanna White, but she doesn't have to walk around so much) is an AMC alumna, and she was devastated when the show was canceled in April 2011. ``All My Children was more than a job,'' she said. ``It was my family. It was there that I met my husband; it was there when my first two children were born.'' But not all her children.

You know how, when you visit a foreign country, a lot of the TV programming seems, like, ``foreign''? There are all these locally famous stars you've never heard of or seen before, and their body language and facial expressions are hard to parse. Their smoldering stares must seem portentous to some, but you kind of look over your shoulder to see whom the look might be meant for. I always used to get that feeling when I traveled abroad, but now I can have the same feeling on the cheap by visiting places like the IFC website. To tell the truth, nowadays I get that where-am-I?-who-are-these-people? feeling all the time.

The service is offered by the Association of American Medical Colleges [AAMC]. The words ``non-profit'' and ``service'' do not, individually or in concert, imply ``free'' (in the sense of gratis).

It's a popular Jesuit (SJ) motto. Someone posted to the Classics list that he once heard a Dominican (OP) say ``I'll do it, but I won't do it ad majorem Dei gloriam because that's a Jesuit motto.

   AMERICA.  (from Americus Vespucius, falsely said to be the first discoverer of this continent.)  One of the four parts of the world, and by much the largest.  [See our antarctick and Australia entries.]  It is bounded on all sides by the ocean, as appears from the latest discoveries; it being formerly supposed to join to the north-east part of Asia.  Americus Vespucius, from whom it took its name, was a Florentine, who having accompanied Ojeda, an enterprising Spanish adventurer, to America, and drawn up an amusing history of his voyage, published it, and it was read with admiration.  In his narrative, he had insinuated, that the glory of having first discovered the continent belonged to him.  This was in part believed; the country began to be called after the name of its supposed first discoverer; and the unaccountable caprice of mankind has perpetuated the error; though there is no doubt that not merely Columbus, but Behaim, and Cabot, had visited America many years before Vespucius.  (See BEHAIM, &c.) 

Many are the conjectures about the peopling of this vast continent; but we cannot relate them here; nor indeed is it greatly to be wished.  America is so long, that it takes in not only all the Torrid, but also the Temperate and part of the Frigid zones.  It is hard to say how many languages there are in America, a vast number being spoken by the different people in different parts; and as to religion, there is no giving any tolerable account of it in general, though some of the most civilized of the aborigines seem to have worshipped the sun.  [This (``the most civilized...'') probably refers to the Aztecs, who sacrificed as many as a thousand people a day to their sun god.]  The principal motive of the Spaniards in sending so many colonies there was the thirst for gold; and indeed they and the Portuguese are possessed of all those parts where it is found in the greatest plenty. 

This vast continent is divided into N. and S. America, which are joined by the isthmus of Darien. It has the loftiest mountains in the world, such as those that form the immense chain called the Andes; and the most stupendous river [sic], such as the river Amazon (``the mighty Orellana''), the ``sea-like Plata,'' the Oronoko, the Mississippi, the Illinois, the Misaures [presumably a French spelling for the Missouri; see the Mo. entry], the Ohio, the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehannah, the Potomac, &c. 

Besides the aborigines, who inhabit the interior parts, and the United States of America, who possess some of the finest provinces that formerly belonged to Great Britain, the various European powers have rich and flourishing colonies here.  The American states are fifteen in number, each having a separate local government; but they are formed into one federal republic.  These states long flourished as provinces of Great Britain; but parliament attempting to tax them by its sole authority, without the intervention of their assemblies, a civil war ensued; a congress was formed, which, in 1776, disclaimed all dependence on the mother country; the French king entered into an alliance with them in 1778; the colonies, powerfully assisted by France, were successful; and Great Britain, in 1782, acknowledged their independence in preliminary articles of peace, finally ratified by the definitive treaty in 1783.  The Americans have since formed a new federal constitution.  [Although the preface of Pantologia is dated June 1813, it is well possible that this entry was written before the War of 1812.]

Between America (the New World) and the Old World, are several striking differences; the most remarkable of which is, the general predominance of cold throughout the whole extent of this vast country.  Here the rigour of the Frigid Zone extends over half that which should be temperate by its position, with regard to the same parallels of lattitude in the Old World: and even in those lattitudes where winter is scarcely felt on the Old Continent, it reigns with great severity in America, though but for a short period.  Nor does this cold, so prevalent in the New World, confine itself to the Temperate Zones, but extends its influence likewise to the Torrid Zone, considerably mitigating the excess of its heat. The natives of this vast country are in some respects different from those of the Old World; for the skins of all the men, except the Eskimaux, are of a red copper-colour; and they have no beards, or hair on any part of their bodies, except the head, where it is black, straight, and coarse.

In a country of such vast extent there are, no doubt, as great a variety of soils as there are of climates. In short, America may be called an immense treasure of nature, producing most, if not all, of the plants, grains, fruits, trees, woods, metals, minerals, &c. to be met with in the other parts of the world; and that not only in great, if not in greater quantities, but many of these in greater perfection. By the discovery of this country, the Europeans have derived many real and solid advantages.  Gold and silver have been more plentiful in the countries of Europe, since their connection with America, and the Materia Medica hath derived no small assistance from the productions of this continent.  The various districts which compose this vast country shall be treated of in their respective places: and the reader may farther consult the interesting works of Morse, Winterbotham, &c.

If the above has not distracted you and you're still wondering about the number of American continents, you may find enlightening the following excerpts from the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1842) America article:

    According to the geographical system adopted in the old world, America ought to be considered as two distinct continents, connected by the isthmus of Darien. Its two great divisions have evidently more of a defined and separate character than Africa and Asia, or than Asia and Europe; but though this arrangement may be very properly adopted for the purpose of description, it is too late now to think of assigning separate names to regions which have so long been known by a common appellation. ...

    The American continent, therefore, with its dependent islands [incl. Greenland], is fully four times as large as Europe, about one third larger than Africa, and almost one half less than Asia, if we include with the latter Australia and Polynesia.

In addition to correcting the erroneous area comparison of Pantologia, this later encyclopedia also avoids the incorrect claim that the highest summits are found in the Americas.

The song is evidently a ballad telling a history of rock'n'roll, with numerous readily identified references to Buddy Holly. When it appeared, the song was subjected to repeated amateur analysis on the radio. In the years since, it has achieved FAQ status on rock newsgroups. In any given week, it is being discussed on at least one newsgroup. For example, sampling ( on AltaVista and DejaNews) at a randomly chosen moment (just now, in another window) I found that in the past seven days the discussion, or at least a cultural reference, has been visited upon

1. alt.basement.graveyard,
2. alt.books.stephen-king,
3. alt.music.lyrics,
4. alt.music.yes,
5. misc.forsale.computers.pc-specific.software,
6. rec.arts.tv.soaps.misc,
7. rec.music.dylan,
8. rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature,
9. rec.music.marketplace.vinyl,
10. rec.music.misc,
11. soc.culture.singapore,
and
12. tw.bbs.rec.guitar,

1. news:de.alt.comics,
2. de.rec.sf.perry-rhodan,
3. news:fr.rec.arts.sf,
4. rec.arts.movies.lists%2bsurveys,
5. rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc,
and
6. soc.culture.italian,

Lori Lieberman saw Don McLean perform ``American Pie'' in a nightclub and was inspired to write a poem on the back of a napkin, which became the lyrics for the song ``Killing Me Softly'' by Norman Gimbel & Charles Fox, featured on Ms. Lieberman's first album. (The poem became the lyrics! I don't know what became of the napkin.) Later, Roberta Flack did a very successful cover of the song.

Bob Garfield, in one of the essays in his Waking Up Screaming From the American Dream: NPR's Roving Correspondent Reports From the Bumpy Road to Success (Scribner, 1997), tells the story of a man who believes that the lyrics to ``American Pie'' are a prophecy of Armageddon.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

Attributed to Gamal Abdel Nasser:

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.

I dunno, this sounds like coincident foolishness to me, but could there be something to it?

AmeriCorps ``volunteers'' receive an average of over $15,000 a year in pay and benefits, and almost 90 percent go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups. So it's basically an internship in sanctimonious dogooding (which isn't to say that the targets of the dogooding don't need help, or that the programs don't actually do some good, though these things are rarely very well quantified).

Apparently amethyst color develops when irradiation knocks Fe³⁺ ions into a configuration where they are stably Fe⁴⁺.