Wordy Blog Archive 2011-11

Anne Rice's Vampire and Sleeping Beauty

The History of English in 10 Minutes

From Rags to Riches: the Story of J K Rowling (Harry Potter)

A little something for those of you aspiring writers:

Joanne “Jo” Rowling, OBE (born 31 July 1965), better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies and been the basis for a popular series of films, in which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts as well as maintaining creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment. Rowling conceived the idea for the series on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990.

Rowling has led a “rags to riches” life story, in which she progressed from living on welfare to multi-millionaire status within five years. As of March 2011, when its latest world billionaires list was published, Forbes estimated Rowling's net worth to be US$1 billion.

[2011-11-20 Wikipedia J. K. Rowling]

Allograph, Variant of the Letter s = ſ and Integral Sign ∫

Stephen King on Twilight

Movie “300” and Battle of Thermopylae

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. Derived from the Greek: ἐπίγραμμα epigramma “inscription” from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein “to write on – inscribe”, this literary device has been employed for over two millennia.

The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuaries – including statues of athletes – and on funerary monuments, for example “Go tell it to the Spartans, passersby…”. These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse. Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period, probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams.

Ostentatious, Spurious, but Uranian!

English: Blonde vs Blond

Chinese Simplified Character: 為→为

為→为 This is a good simplication because it's a abstract word. The traditional form makes no sense at all, especially with the misleading radical that's related to cooking.

為 为