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ISSN 1084-6654.
The mother of Jane and James Austen was born Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). Her brother James Leigh (1735-1817) changed his name to James Leigh Perrot in 1751 in order to inherit the estate of his maternal great-uncle Thomas Perrot. When Mrs. Leigh Perrot died in 1836, JEAL inherited Scarlets (the Leigh Perrots' Berkshire estate) on the condition that he add the name Leigh to his own. This stuff happened repeatedly. For example, JEAL was originally named after his uncle Edward Austen (1767-1852). However, uncle Edward had been adopted in childhood by his cousin Mr. Knight, and became Edward Knight in 1812. A rose by some other name may smell a lot sweeter with a comfortable legacy. (And on the subject of clichés, see about Bulwer Lytton's name at the entry for ``It was a dark and stormy night.'')
I haven't seen specific instructions on the pronunciation of the Leigh surname. However, a celebrated cousin, Dr. Theophilus Leigh, was master of Balliol College, Oxford for over fifty years. (When elected, he'd been expected to be just a temporary placeholder, as he was thought to be in poor health. He lived to be over 90.) In a letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, local resident Mrs. Thrale wrote his name as ``Dr. Lee,'' so there's a clue.
Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817. Jane Austen's last surviving sibling, Admiral Sir Francis Austen, died in August 1865 at the age of 91. With a consciousness that the last of those who had any personal memory of Jane Austen would soon be passing away, and with some concern about what distant family or non-family might write about her, the family decided that a biographical memoir of Jane Austen should be prepared.
As a schoolboy, JEAL had once -- with Aunt Jane's encouragement -- begun to write a novel, though he never finished it. Late in life, he had published Recollections of the Vine Hunt (1865), and this success probably encouraged him in his efforts toward a biography. As the only son of JA's eldest sibling (this is sounding a little like a mafia story, isn't it?), JEAL took the task as his duty. His A Memoir of Jane Austen was based on his own and two of his sisters' recollections (his sister Caroline and his half-sister Anne), as well as those of some cousins. There were also a few relatives alive who for various reasons did not cooperate, and one consequence of this was that JEAL did not have access to all of JA's surviving correspondence.
JEAL began writing the memoir on 30 March 1869 and was done in early September. According to his daughter's memoir of him [Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh: James Edward Austen-Leigh: A Memoir, privately published in 1911], JEAL's A Memoir was published on 16 December 1869 -- what would have been JA's 94th birthday. The volume contains a postscript dated 17 November 1869, JEAL's own 71st birthday. In any event, the volume, published in a small print run of about 1000, bore the publication year 1870. A revised second edition of the memoir, published or at least printed on JEAL's 72nd birthday, dated 1871. (This sort of forward-dating is common in book-publishing, at least partly because it makes books seem fresher longer. Another book I can think of that was forward-dated was Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams -- it was published on November 4, 1899, but the date in the book is 1900.) Don't tell me you didn't need to read all this -- it's too late.
Two important documents that contributed to JEAL's memoir were written by JA's favorite brother Henry, who had seen her novels through to publication, including Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which were published posthumously. Henry wrote a ``Biographical Notice'' that prefaced the two posthumous novels. (The four previous novels had been published anonymously, though their common authorship was indicated as they appeared successively.) Henry Austen's ``Memoir'' of 1833 was largely a shorter reworking of the 1818 notice, padded back up with quotes of favorable reviews, for inclusion in a new publication of Sense and Sensibility.
Ordained in 1823, JEAL was a clergyman his entire life. Yes, some clergymen hunted. Those who could, I think. Chaplain Groves (US Army), father of General Leslie R. (``Dick'') Groves, of the Manhattan Engineer District, was a severe Presbyterian who considered ``any leisure-time activity other than reading, hunting, and fishing to be a frivolous waste of time if not downright diabolical.'' [I quote William Lawren from p. 45 of a book mentioned at this MED entry.] Interestingly, from 1852 on, JEAL was the vicar of Bray, sir!
[The datum on names in 1750-1799 is lifted from a book by Maggie Lane: Jane Austen and Names (Blaise Books, 2002),]
So Jeb can be an acronym. In the case of John Ellis Bush, better known by his nickname Jeb, it gives rise to ``Jeb Bush,'' an acronym-assisted Aap pleonasm. (Jeb, who served as the 43rd governor of Florida, is brother of dubya, who served as the 43rd president of the US. The number 42 is special, though it is neither perfect nor prime. The father, George H.W., served as the 41st president of the US.)
Jeb also occurs directly as a given name. That's the case with Jeb Stuart Magruder, who achieved notoriety in the Watergate scandal. According to his memoir,
[m]y brother Don, who was named for our father, was born in June of 1930, and I arrived in November of 1934. Since my father was both a Civil War buff and a horseman, he named me for his favorite Confederate general, Jeb Stuart, his ideal of a hard-riding cavalry officer. I can remember seeing my father ride a few time when I was quite young. He was into middle age by then but he rode beautifully, always wearing a treasured pair of riding boots from his days in Squadron A.[An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum, 1974), p. 15. Earlier Jeb Magruder explains that in 1916, Donald Dilworth Magruder had joined the New York National Guard's famous Squadron A, the last cavalry division in the US Army, but that he saw service in WWI as a sergeant in the 27th Infantry Division. I'm not sure what ``last cavalry division'' is supposed to mean; horse-mounted cavalry were used by the US in WWI and WWII, although modern weapons did render old-stye cavalry charges obsolete.]
Don senior grew up in Staten Island, New York, but from his choice of a CSA general's name for his second son, you might suspect a Southern background. In fact, the Magruder family was established in Maryland in 1659 by family patriarch Alexander Magruder. Thomas Jefferson Magruder, Jeb's great-grandfather, smuggled shoes and boots into Virginia during the American Civil War, and another ancestor, John Bankhead Magruder, was one of Robert E. Lee's generals (p. 13). Alexander, incidentally, arrived from Scotland as an impounded prisoner, and 1659 was the last year of Cromwell's rule -- the year before the restoration of the Stuarts to power. So there's another nominal connection. Moreover, after he was released from prison, Jeb Magruder pursued a career in the Presbyterian Church. (The Presbyterians are originally Scottish Calvinists. They were generally less regicidally disposed to Charles I, not necessarily because the Stuarts were a Scottish line of royalty.)
I myself met Robert E. Lee personally when he visited the Engineering Research Center at Arizona State University in the late 80's. He was introduced as Robert Lee, but I noticed a middle initial E on his briefcase and asked him if he was one of the Virginia Lees. He said no, his parents just liked the name. When Lee Iacocca (actually Lido Anthony Iacocca) was working his way up the corporate ladder at Ford, he spent some time in the South, where his Italian surname was regarded as difficult. He would break the ice by joking about being or not being part of the famous Lee family. (That's from memory; I suppose I read it in his best-selling 1984 autobiography.) The point, if there is one, is that you can't conclude too much from a name, although the collocation of ``Jeb'' and ``Stuart'' is rather suggestive, especially when Stuart is a given name.
That brings us to Jeb Stuart. He was born in 1956 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is a scriptwriter probably best known for the screenplay of Die Hard, based on a novel by Roderick Thorp. (This is the 1988 action movie -- the first in a franchise that will eventually include 23 sequels and an unknown number of prequels. For Die Hard XV through XXIV, a stunt double will be used for all scenes which require Bruce Willis to walk without assistance. Later, he will shill for the DieHard automobile battery company, which will have been spun off from Sears, which will have died around 2013.) This was Jeb Stuart's first script, or at least his first that was commercially produced. I hesitate to say that it's been downhill since then.
The point is (okay, this isn't the point, but I just ought to point this out), that those who do not remember history are condemned to use ``Jeb'' as a sealed acronym. Also, if it's true (as some claim) that ``Jeb'' arose independently as a short form of ``Jacob,'' then it might be a backronym. My head hurts when I try to figure out whether it could possibly be a sealed backronym.
I hope that's clear.
In a talk on 1997.10.1, a speaker on JEDEC specs in development was asked what ``JEDEC'' stood for, and he said ``it used to stand for'' the expansion above, ``but everyone had trouble remembering that so now it's just `jedec'.'' [Both ees short, accent on the first syllable.] (It's a good thing I put these comments in the glossary shortly after the meeting. I was just throwing away some old notes from that meeting, and ``jedec `used to' '' was all I had scribbled down.) It would help people realize that JEDEC no longer has an expansion if it was written
May the Enforce be with you.
Originally introduced by Sir Harold Austin as a rugged utility vehicle for the American market, it never quite caught on in the twenties and thirties; the American Austin company, reorganized under some other name I forgot, continued to make them in small numbers right up to the war. They achieved a small cult following. When the US went to war, bids were requested for a general-purpose 4WD military vehicle, to be produced in unheard-of numbers. The successful bids were all for minor variations on that American Austin vehicle. Ford and Willys produced 75 per day, and from 1942, when civilian production was halted for the duration of the war, that was the closest thing to a car that American industry produced. After the war, Willys continued to manufacture a 2WD version for the civilian market, instead of returning to conventional car production. They eventually made some small ``improvements'' like roll-down windows.
In the 70's, the military finally replaced the Jeep with the HMMWV (Humvee).
WWII-surplus jeeps in the Philippines were converted to small, garishly decorated open buses called jeepneys. Here's a page with lots of Philippine Jeepneys. A similar vehicle is used in Puerto Rico.
It's Willys and not Willy's, after owner John North Willys. Jeep, the vehicle and brand, has been a kind of curse -- a perennial survivor of the auto companies that manufactured it. American Motors (AMC) had the Jeep for a number of years after Willys folded, and introduced the highly successful Wagoneer series. Renault tried to make a go of American Motors, and when they sold AMC to the Chrysler Corporation, Jeep was the only product line that eventually survived (I think they also kept up the Eagle line for a little bit). In 1999, Chrysler ``merged with'' (i.e., was diplomatically taken over by) Daimler-Benz, which unloaded it for a loss in 2007. Chrysler's Plymouth brand was an immediate casualty of the takeover, but Jeep keeps on truckin'.
Allyn and Bacon had a front-page advertisement for the set on the 1948-49 school year's first issue of Classical Weekly (CW). The advertisement bore the caption ``Latin and World Peace.'' Those were the days. The days of dodgy reasoning, among other things. It's not like that any more. From the ad, I infer that the third-year book was by Kelsey and Meinecke by then, and the fourth-year by Carlisle and Richardson. I have no idea how well coordinated the original ``well-tested Series'' was.
The books have continued to be revised by an army of successors, but (or perhaps therefore) the only author whose name appears on the cover nowadays is Jenney's (Jenney's First Year Latin, etc.), and there are workbooks available for the first two years. (In 1948 there was a workbook by Thompson and Peters, and an associated volume of classical myths compiled by Herzberg.) Your opinion of the books is bound to depend strongly on your opinion regarding the value of the traditional ``grammar-translation'' approach. It is a very traditional book based on ``real Latin'' -- excerpts from classical literature -- rather than made-up readings. Other texts typically introduce ``real Latin'' in the fourth year. Here's a detailed review. (There is some sentiment that the 1984 edition is better than the subsequently improved versions.)
- The mother of Tom Jones in Richardson's novel of that name.
- A contributor to various web resources on Victorian literature, such as Voice of the Shuttle: English Literature and The Victorian Canon. [The latter is a ``web site devoted to investigating the problem of taste and aesthetics with regard to the Victorian canon in particular, and to the canon debates in the academy in general . . . contains on-line syllabi (e.g. Victoriana: The Popular Canon; The Victorian Novel; Victorian Poetry; The Novel and the Long 19th Century; Literature of Empire), on-line texts (including short stories by Lady Jane Wilde and Mary Elizabeth Braddon), images, external links, and a theory archive.''] Okay, so Richardson is pre-Victorian; it's close.
- An Academy-Award-winning actress. She starred as Emma Bovary in the 1949 movie Madame Bovary, which was constructed as a frame narrative about Gustave Flaubert's famous novel. She co-starred in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, discussed at the Babbitt entry. In her mid-twenties, she was cast as the fourteen-year-old Bernadette in the 1943 Song of Bernadette. This is a story about the creation of the religious attraction at Lourdes, and as such you expect it to have taken place in medieval times, but Bernadette reported her vision in 1858. Madonna named her daughter Lourdes. It seems to run in the family. Once I mentioned to Sabine that I had met a woman named Bernadette in France, and she laughed out loud -- Bernadette seemed such an old-fashioned name to her.
- There's another Jennifer Jones in show business, as well as a Jennifer Leigh Jones and J.B. Jones, who has gone by ``Jennifer Jones,'' and assorted Jennifer Joneses in non-acting roles.
- Third time derivative of position, equivalently the (first) time derivative of acceleration. Corresponds approximately to the ordinary notion of a jerk.
- [Among the old Los Alamos `device' makers] an energy of 1016 ergs. Does not correspond even approximately to anything ordinary.
The term jerry can, for a flat-sided metal fuel can, capacity about five (US) gallons, stems from jeroboam in the sense of a large fluid container. A lot of folks who don't drink enough probably suppose it has something to do with this other jerry.
Jessica's (and all her sisters') mother had the given name Sydney. Around 1982, I myself met a woman whose name was Sydney. This Sydney was American, and I would guess she was born in the 1950's. I asked her how she felt about her name. I can't remember her exact words, but she seemed to rather resent her parents' having given it to her. I didn't ask why she didn't change it. Apparently she was waiting for 1995 and the release of ``The American President,'' in which Annette Benning played the love interest of Michael Douglas, as the lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade to his President Andrew Shepherd.
Jessica Mitford herself was always known personally as ``Decca.'' Her first child, who died in infancy, was named ``Julia Decca Romilly.'' Her surviving children called her ``Decca'' or ``Dec'' rather than anything like ``mom.'' (Her daughter was called ``Dinky Donk'' and variants or pieces of that.) The kids got some press when they helped to promote Peter Sussman's Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford, published in 2006.
In early 1995, Jessica Mitford and her backing band recorded an album as ``Decca and the Dectones.'' The band was described by Patricia Holt in the San Francisco Chronicle as ``a kazoo-and-cowbell orchestra led by San Francisco author escort [the SBF glossary does not know what that means] and recording producer Kathi Kamen Goldmark. (Goldmark has done other similar projects; some are linked from this webpage, where you can order the two-song album in CD or MP3 format.) Yeah, Mitford was 77 at the time. That's not such a big deal; my mother was still singing (soprano in choirs) into her mid-80's. Mitford was wheelchair-bound with a broken ankle when she did her recordings, and she died of lung cancer a year-and-a-half later, aet. 78. Holt wrote, ``certainly the term `barrel-voice' comes to mind.''
I don't know how Jessica Mitford came by her nickname, but Decca was a well-known name in music for much of the twentieth century. In 1914, the musical instrument maker Barnett Samuel and Sons patented a portable record player called the Decca Dulcephone. The word Decca is said to have been coined by Wilfred S. Samuel, who merged the word Mecca with the initial D of their logo ``Dulcet'' or their trademark ``Dulcephone.'' I don't know what motivated an etymology based on Mecca. Barnett Samuel and Son was eventually renamed ``The Decca Gramophone Co., Ltd.'' and in 1929 it was sold to former stockbroker Edward Lewis. I suppose 1929 was a good year for former stockbrokers who still had their shirts to get into another line of business. Lewis fared well; his ``Decca Records, Ltd.'' [I guess there were partners] became the second-largest record label in the world. I used to own many of their records from the 1950's.
I'm not sure precisely when Jessica Mitford used a married name, but she does describe at least one occasion in Poison Penmanship. Vivian Cadden, an editor at McCall's, invited her to do an article on Elizabeth Arden's Maine Chance (a weight-loss spa located, against toponymic expectation, in Arizona):
... a slight feeling of paranoia took hold at the moment of actually picking up the phone to call Elizabeth Arden's for a reservation. Maine Chance would surely be, for me, enemy territory [she had earned a reputation as a muck-raking journalist]; what if my identity were discovered by the reservations people? Would they refuse my application? I could use my married name, but this would be scanty cover at the local Arden salon in San Francisco [she lived in Oakland], where they might easily make the connection with Jessica Mitford. So I telephoned to the New York office and announced myself as Mrs. Robert Treuhaft, which was how I was introduced to the other slimmers at Maine Chance. One day at lunch I overheard a woman asking another, ``Who is that?'' ``Oh, that's Mrs. Fruehauf'' came the reply. ``Her husband is very big in trucking.''
I thought the major was a lady suffragette. (Hey, a jet has wings, Wings had a Jet.)
In October 2005, when major rioting broke out in les banlieues around Paris, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly objected to the euphemism, insisting for example that voyous (`thugs') was a better word for the rioters than jeunes (`youth'). A snit-load of bien-pensants criticized him for using accurate terms such as this and racaille, q.v.
But the voters found a way to punish Sarkozy: they made him Co-Prince of Andorra! (And President of France.) Also, his half-brother married Mary-Kate Olsen. I don't know what to say, but I don't have to.
The story is told that once, after presenting a paper at a conference of film academics, P. Adams Sitney was asked by an audience member how he would characterize the methodology used for his analysis. Sitney replied,
``One God ... One Creation ... One Year ... One Foundation'' Trilogy. (Sorry, felt like sneaking that in.)
``Jackson Hole Bible College is a one-year, in depth study of the scriptures with a creation emphasis leading to a Biblical Foundation and Christian Worldview. ... We are dedicated to providing our students with a quality program combining outdoor recreational activities and solid Biblical teaching.''
One question you will ponder: ``How was the Grand Canyon really formed?'' Somehow I get the idea that this isn't going to be addressed from the ordinary godless perspective of a typical geology course. (Someone mentioned last February 2004 that there was a news story on just this topic: A book claiming that the Grand Canyon was formed in the aftermath of the Biblical flood was for sale at a US Park Service gift shop.)
Another: ``Could all the animals really fit on the Ark?'' Sure -- at the time all the life forms were prokaryotes.
Located in Jackson, Wyoming. ``Come visit our campus in the center of the beautiful Tetons.'' Pretty racy language for a bible college.
Okay, the manuscripts were due at the end of August, and the following June, we heard that the relevant special issue was in press. It's November, two issues have appeared since the heads-up, but our issue hasn't. This isn't slow -- not even a little strange. It's f---in' queer!
There's actually a little bit of historical information (in your face!) at the GLQ entry.
Required features:
- Creepy little girl with long, dark hair.
- Supernatural stuff.
- Water as symbol of death.
- Western stars.
- Remake of version with all-Japanese cast.
- Kouji Suzuki included in writing credits.
Movies like ``The Ring'' (2002) (not to be mistaken for the 1998 version with an all-Japanese cast or the 1999 Korean version), ``The Grudge'' (2004) (not to be mistaken for ``Ju-on: The Grudge'' (2003), Japanese cast), and ``Dark Water'' (2005).
Y'NO, I hadn't realized Kerry 2004 had a prospective policy-related message, but if I'd had to guess, I guess I'd have been way off. It's true that campaigns don't regularly have the luxury of being about what they'd like to be about, but this was ridiculous.
When they were founded, in 1973 or so, this was okay; since then, I guess the gee and oh terms have become increasingly politically fraught, so they're covering their, uh, asses. We live in a crazy world, but what's the alternative? This particular craziness is what we have come to recognize as a sealed acronym, but the seal is very slightly ajar or nonhermetic or something: Googling in January 2005, I found that for every page that revealed the original expansion of JHPIEGO, there were 300 that used JHPIEGO without the original expansion (whether without any expansion, or with the appositive and partially accurate expansion). That's unusual, but here at SBF it's our bread and butter, or anyway our virtual bread and butter. [In January 2013, it looks like someone has virtually eaten our breakfast, because that 300 is down to less than 20.]
Many webpages explain that JHPIEGO is ``pronounced `ja-pie-go'.'' When I learn how ``ja'' is pronounced (elsewhere than Jamaica), I'll let you know.
Since the 1950's the JHS has had a supplement entitled Archaeological Reports (AR).
George Westinghouse, now best remembered for his electrical enterprises, made his fortune with an air brake for trains, and was a great proponent of industrial standardization. He lost his money in a crash (of the stock market) and died poor.
Abstracted from the English Edition of the October MLA JIL's, 1975-1998, here is a graph of the number of positions listed. It peaked at 1053 positions in 1988. Another graph, served by ADE, shows the number of Ph.D.'s granted (probably only in the US) in English and American language and literature, 1958-2000. The curve has a similar shape, but it peaks at 1412 in 1973.
The gill is now generally taken to be equal to a quarter of a pint: 4 fluid ounces in the God-Ordained Tradition! System of Weights and Measures in use in the US, or 5 fluid ounces in the old British Imperial system. (Note that those are different fluid ounces: the fluid ounce of the US customary system is a volume equal to 1.8046875 cu. in., while the British fluid ounce measures 1.733871 cu. in., approximately.)
A half a gill (an eighth of a pint) is a noggin... in some places. In others it's equal to twice or four times that. Ain't it great? At various times and places, mostly in the past and England, a gill has also been a half pint, and in those places a quarter pint was a jack.
In Tour of the Hebrides for September 20, 1773, Boswell records Johnson's saying ``Each man called for his own half-pint of wine, or gill, if he pleased.'' I don't know how ``or'' was meant there (i.e., I don't know whether it is implied that a gill is a half pint), but I think it's worth pointing out that until British Imperial units were introduced, the Scots pint was a volume about equal to 1.80 US quarts.
Let's consider the spellings. English spelling generally reflects etymology, so that the pronunciation of certain letter sequences depends on the origin (or sometimes the mistakenly imputed origin) of the word. The initial letter sequence gi is a case in point.
The g is normally ``hard'' (or ``guttural'') in words of Germanic origin. Examples include giddy, gift, gild, gilt, gird, girdle, girth, girl, and give.
The g is ``soft'' in words taken from French, Italian, or Latin (even if they only passed through one of these languages on their way from Arabic or Greek). Relatively simple examples include giant, gibbet, giblet, gigantic, gigolo, ginger, and gingivitis. Gill itself is from the Old French gille, from the medieval Latin gillus, a wine vessel. Some exceptions to the rule can be explained on the basis of gui- spellings in Old French, including gimlet, gingham, and probably gizzard. More complicated things have happened as well (see gaol).
I suppose all this information really belongs at a gill entry rather than at this jill ``alternate spelling'' entry. Therefore, its presence here is a bonus.
Just to round out the entry, I should point out that in seventeenth-century England, the gill was once a unit used to measure quantities of tin, and in that application it corresponded to a full pint.
The first major research instrument was built at Dubna in 1947-1949, and the USSR Academy of Sciences eventually had two research institutes there: the Institute for Nuclear Problems (INP) and the Electrophysical Laboratory. CERN was created in 1954, and in 1956, keeping up with the Joneses of the West, the Soviet Union used those two Academy institutes as the basis on which to establish JINR. Initially, JINR could be regarded by the Soviets as their CERN, but over time they diverged. In particular, CERN eventually had showcase high-energy accelerators for elementary particle research, whereas Dubna stayed in what became the medium-energy regime -- nuclear physics. Probably the thing for which Dubna is best known is the discovery of new transuranic elements. This defines its peers: initially (like its prececessor INP), it competed with Berkeley (LBL) for discovery of and naming rights to new elements. Berkeley eventually moved in different directions also, and now Dubna's main peer institutions are GSI in Germany and the RIKEN Nishina Center (Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics Laboratory) in Japan.
The ``Joint'' in the name originally referred to various parts of the Soviet Empire: some, at least, of the republics of the USSR, and Soviet bloc member states. In a couple of days, I hope to find out about possible members or ``participants'' that are no longer such. I wonder in particular about the Baltic republics. It seems there may have been a little hesitation evem among those that re-upped: sovereign but not-especially independent Belarus renewed or continued its participation in 1991, seven other current participants that had been Soviet Republics did so only in 1992. (These were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). Russia, where Dubna is located, was always a participant by dint of the owner and operator, the Soviet Academy of Sciences, becoming the Russian Academy of Sciences. Nine other countries participate formally: Bulgaria, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Mongolia, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Vietnam. Most of these, or their Soviet-era predecessors, have been members since 1956; Cuba joined in 1976; and for North Korea (the ``Democratic People's Republic'' and mass prison), appropriately enough, no details are available.
Most of my life, I've heard JINR referred to simply as ``Dubna.'' The 1962 accident that ended Lev Landau's career took place when he was being driven to Dubna. He was being driven by a graduate student, so you might suppose Dau was going to JINR. I think he was, but he was probably mixing business with pleasure. As his widow Kora Landau-Drobantseva explained in ch. 4 of her 1983 memoir (Akademik Landau. Kak mi zhili, `Professor Landau: How We Lived'), the Landaus had an open marriage. That fateful morning of January 7, 1962, he told her that she shouldn't answer the door -- he would do so. This was what she called a `stop sign' or `red light' -- evidently a warning not to be too inquisitive about his plans.)
The acronym is also used in computer programming. In general it refers to the second stage in certain two-stage compilations. In the first stage, the source code of a stand-alone program or module is ``compiled'' to byte code. In the second stage, which occurs at run time, the byte code is ``JIT compiled'' or ``jitted'' into an executable. This sort of two-stage compilation, and the term JIT, are characteristic of Java in general, and of all programming languages running within Microsoft's .NET framework.
When we learned the word ogive in statistics (used as an alternate term for a cumulative distribution function) in high school, somebody observed that it was like, so cool to say ``oh jive!''
In college, Rowling read French with a Classics
subsid (majored in French and minored in Classics; you could do a Classics
subsid at Exeter without studying Latin). In one interview no longer at its
old URL she said,
I went to Exeter University straight after school, where I studied French. This was a big mistake. I had listened too hard to my parents, who thought languages would lead to a great career as a bilingual secretary.Her books are full of Latinate invented words, and she gave Hogwarts school the Latin motto Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (`Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon'). As she put it in a March '99 interview at the Mothers Who Think website,
I taught for about four years, mainly teenagers. It is my own memories of childhood that inform my writing, however; I think I have very vivid recall of what it felt like to be 11 years old. The classics part of my degree at Exeter College did furnish me with a lot of good names for characters -- not exactly the use my lecturers expected me to put it to, however.
It was announced in December 2001 that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first book in the Harry Potter series, would be published in Latin (in 2003) and ancient Greek (later). The stated intention is to help children overcome the common dread of studying the two dead languages. (Gives you a whole different take on ``scary stories,'' huh?) Peter Needham, who taught Latin and Greek at Eton College for more than 30 years, was contracted to do the Latin version. Needham is ``calling Harry Harrius Potter. Arrius is a Latin name -- there's an Arrius in a Catullus poem -- and it declines perfectly well so that, for example, we have Harrium Potterum. The literal translation of Potter would be Figulus but I very much hope that Potter will survive.'' (This is a bit of sly humor. In poem 84, Catallus ridicules Arrius for his speech defect: he inserts an aitch -- a rough breathing rather than a sound, as the Greeks and many Romans thought of it -- before words beginning in a vowel. Hence, he'd have pronounced his own name Harrius.)
For more on Roman attitudes to aitch, see comments in the Noctes Atticae (`Attic Nights') of Aulus Gellius, bk. II, iii.1-5, Quintilian, IO 1.5.19. One secondary source that I can think of, just speculation really, is E. S. Sheldon, ``H as a Mute in Latin,'' vol. 5 HSCP (1894), pp. 167-168.
Our small contribution to Harry Potter studies is the Voldemort entry.
For a deeper analysis of the use of initials and other variations in name presentation, see
- F. L. Wells and Helen R. Palwick, ``Notes on Usage of Male Personal Names,'' Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 31 (1950): pp. 291-294.
- A. A. Hartman, ``Name Styles in Relation to Personality,'' Journal of General Psychology, vol. 59 (1958): pp. 289-294.
It turns out the ``J. Rowling'' might have implied, depending on circumstances, that the author was self-derogatory or masochistic. ``J. K. Rowling'' is a form that may (as it does in this case) indicate a desire to avoid revealing oneself. Ezra Pound gave Hilda Doolittle the pen name H.D. I'm not clear whether this was intended to help get her work published; her first three published poems all appeared in the literary magazine Poetry, published by Pound's friend Harriet Monroe.
Other famous authors who have used a pseudonym that concealed the fact that they were women: George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans], George Sand, Collette. (No, ``Collette'' doesn't dissimulate the author's gender, but read on.) Samuel (Erewhon) Butler argued that The Odyssey (yeah, ``Homer's Odyssey'') was written by a woman (the title sort of kills the suspense of the argument: The Authoress of the Odyssey). A somewhat different case is presented by the Pentateuch, redacted from texts written by a number of authors (possibly not all male) and attributed to Moses (see J entry).
Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin (neé Dudevant) co-wrote her first novel with her then-lover Jules Sandeau, published under the single pseudonym Jules Sand. Her second novel, Indiana (my state of residence!), and subsequent novels, she single-authored as George Sand. She was famous not only for her novels but for her sexual iconoclasm -- smoking cigars, affecting male clothing, and engaging in multiple affairs with a lack of secretiveness unusual for women of her class. She had a prodigious output -- she wrote for the money. As Dr. Samuel Johnson said -- ``No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.''
Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine first wrote several books published under her husband's name (Henri Gauthier-Villars). After her divorce, she published first under her maiden name and then as Collette. In her memoirs she wrote
Born into an unmonied family, I never learned a métier. I knew how to climb, whistle, and run, but no one ever suggested that I earn my living as a squirrel or a deer. The day necessity put a pen in my hand, and in return for my written pages I was given a little money, I realized that every day thereafter I would slowly, tractably, patiently have to write . . .
(Did I mention Dr. Johnson? Have I pointed out that a major irritant in the long feud between Dostoyevsky and Turgenev was the fact that the latter was better-paid for his work? Dostoyevsky complained that Turgenev was paid five times as much per word. I wouldn't have complained if Fyodor had written shorter novels.)
George Sand, Collette, and J. K. Rowling all had unhappy first marriages, divorced and were poor, and wrote to make money. Mary Ann or Marian Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot, never had a legally sanctioned first marriage -- unhappy or otherwise -- but she lived happily with George Henry Lewes from 1854 until his death in 1878. (He was unable to obtain a divorce from his first wife; his sinful cohabitation with Evans was a scandal.) There must be a pattern or a lesson in all this, but I can't imagine what it is.
Joanne Rowling was married on Friday, October 16, 1992. In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Trelawney tells Lavender Brown, ``That thing you are dreading -- it will happen on Friday the 16th of October.''
Some of the people who write romance novels are men, but none of the names of authors listed on the covers of romance novels are men's names. If you'll just do the arithmetic, you'll see that this means that there are men writing under female pseudonyms. In the traditional romance novel, the heroine finds happiness in her first marriage. (Although there does now exist a ``second chance'' subgenre.)
I read three romance novels once, almost, and later I thought, ``Hey, I can turn out shlock like this too!'' My cousin Victoria (raking in the big bucks as a schoolteacher) encouraged me in this enterprise, sort of, and came up with a good pen name for me. Eventually, however, I realized that to write what you can't bear to read any more of can really put a damper on your working life, so that project is on hold everlasting.
There's a bound typescript publication by Alice Kahler Marshall, Pen Names of Women Writers from 1600 to the Present (1985). For Laura Riding, the pen names listed are Barbara Rich; Laura Riding (Jackson; Gottschalk). Don't worry if you find this confusing. It was confusing. There was an article on her in TNR many years ago (1980's, probably), and I think the title was Laura Riding Roughshod.
Here's something interesting that the whole family can appreciate: a half-page ad (5.5 × 4") costs $206, while a full-page ad (5.5 × 9") costs $275.
Superman's parents perished when his home planet was destroyed, and Batman's parents were murdered. They're both very unhappy about these violent demises of course. I don't know about the other superheroes, but I think I see a pattern of childhood fantasy here that would not want to recognize itself. Harry Potter is a sort of boy superwizard; his parents are killed at the beginning of the first Harry Potter book.
Incidentally, you know that according to oral history as handed down and reported by Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud. 1.13, 2), Isaac was twenty-five years old when Abraham set out to sacrifice him. Also according to the oral history, they came down Mt. Moriah in silence and never spoke to each other again. I mean, like, what do you expect?
[I think it's just so cool how, by proceeding methodically in alphabetical order, all of these unexpected connections just automatically reveal themselves. (Don't mind the dangle.) There must be something to literacy.]
J. K. Rowling's mother died of MS when the author was twenty-five. Her father moved in with another woman what-many-regarded-as indecently soon after, and due to various other circumstances, relations between Joanne and her father were strained. It seems they talk infrequently, if ever. I'd say more, but recently a Byzantinist I know, and I too, have been criticized for publicizing information about JKR. You know -- personal, private stuff, the kinds of secrets you only learn about if you read newspapers. God forbid if that kind of information were to get into a mailing-list or web site -- everyone would know about it. If I pick up any information in my lonely monitoring of the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, I'll be sure to keep mum about that too.
The US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology originally established the JLENS program office in 1996 as the Joint Aerostat Project Management Office. Originally targeted for initial deployment in 2012, the roll-out has been moved up (as of 2005) to 2010.
According to ACTFL figures mentioned in this report by Kyoko Toriyama (1992), it experienced a surge in the 1980's. By 1985 US high-school enrollments for Japanese had surpassed those for Russian, making Japanese the sixth-most-studied foreign language, with a total enrollment of 8,558. As of 2000, Japanese was still in sixth (at 0.8% of FL enrollments), after Spanish (70.8%, including SNS), French (18.3%), German (4.8%), Latin (2.7%), and Italian (1.2%).
The source for the Y2K percentages in the last paragraph is the ACTFL report quoted at the SNS entry, which does not list Japanese-language enrollments for 1985. It appears that enrollments continued to surge in the early 1990's and then began to stabilize: total public high-school enrollments were 24,123 in 1990, 42,290 in 1994, and 50,884 in 2000. (Yes, the ACTFL does these studies rather irregularly. In my experience, US Education statistics are gathered at haphazard intervals.)
California public high schoools had the most students studying -- about 10,000. Hawaii had 7400, which probably represents the highest percentage of students.
The 1992 study by Toriyama was primarily based on a survey sent to 29 high schools; usable responses were obtained from 17 schools. These schools reported using 11 different textbook series. The most popular textbooks were designed for the college level, and there was evident dissatisfaction with the available texts designed for English-speaking high-school students.
Most schools were allocating 3 to 6 weeks to learn hiragana and an additional 2 to 6 weeks for katakana. There was enormous variation in the rate at which kanji were introduced. The focus was generally on speaking and understanding first.
The first issue: November 2002.
If I order now (because I ``belong to a very special group'') I'll receive Passion for Manufacturing absolutely free! Wow. My mouth is secreting enzyme-rich anticipatory saliva.
They list no web site.
Well, if the navigation chart is jet, I hope they used a light-colored ink.
Compare Least Publishable Unit (LPU).