Onomatopoeia are “sound words.” I did know that much. A better description is that they are words that imitate or suggest the source of the sound they are describing.

Common examples are oink, meow, roar, crash, bang, and boom!

They are not universal across languages, but interestingly they do conform to border linguistics… which makes sense… it’s a spelling of the way something sounds. An example is tick tock in English is tik tak in Dutch and tic-tac in French.

Other common examples are in comics. Spiderman’s webs make a “thwip!” sound, Wolverine’s claws are “snikt!” (or the lesser known “schlikt!” during the period when his adamantium was removed) and Nightcrawler’s “bamf!” teleportation.

Or in 70′s TV; wham!, pow!, “biff!”, crunch and “zounds” from the Batman TV show.

Or in 90′s hilarious cartoons; nuh!, newt! and mint! in the “Radioactive Man” episode of The Simpsons.

There is also apparently an internet meme, “I can punch you so hard words will appear in thin air.”

Or my favorite:

In one Captain America comic, the accidental use of the word “wank” as an onomatopoeia was found hilarious by many teenagers, due to its slang usage for masturbation. (The enemy was saying “Captain America, I command you to-” but was interrupted by Captain America striking a robot with his thrown shield and the “wank!” showed up right after the enemies’ speech bubble; Thus looking as though it had said: “Captain America, I command you to- Wank!”.)

In closing, I did know a lot of this already, but it expanded on some previous reading and I thought I’d make for some good blaging.

Source: Wiki

Don Hewitt, television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes (currently the longest-running prime time broadcast on American television), has passed away today at the age of 86.

Andy Rooney, at age 90, is still kickin’ it.

Source: Wiki and Ed.

We all know the common allotropes of the element carbon in 2 of its most common forms; graphite (pencil “lead”) and diamonds (the hardest substance known to man). There are, however, a few other forms. One of them, carbon 60, is 60 atoms of carbon arranged in a “soccer-ball” like formation. This formation is humorously named Buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyballs.” They are named this in homage to Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller whose geodesic domes C60 resembles. Now, all massive carbon-only molecules are referred to as fullerene’s. This includes buckyball clusters, nanotubes, megatubes, polymers, nano”onions”, linked “ball-and-chain” dimers, and fullerene rings.

Bucky, the man, was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary who lived from July 12, 1895 to July 1, 1983.

He devoted his life to the question, “Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?” His brand name was “Dymaxion” (syllabic abbreviation of dynamic maximum tension).

Based on a geodesic dome (EPCOT sphere being one such example) one of his many projects was the Dymaxion House, or Dome Home. It is essentially a dome-shaped house designed to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. There were several designs over the years, but they all had in common was they were all dome shaped (which is strong, light weight, and efficient), were all factory manufactured kits to be assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently.

They (obviously) didn’t catch on. I blame the bathroom.

There was to be a waterless packaging toilet that deftly shrink wrapped the
waste for pickup for later composting.

Fortunately:

During the prototyping process, the idea for the packaging toilet was
immediately replaced by a conventional septic system because the packaging
plastic was not available.

Lloyd Kahn, Editor and chief of Shelter Publications, Inc., who is also a pioneer of the green building and green architecture movements, wrote two books on the subject (Domebook 1 and Domebook 2), became disillusioned with domes. He calls domes “smart but not wise.”

Sources – wiki wiki wiki wiki. I can’t believe I don’t have more tags either!

I’m sure there are even more, but in one of the last posts, I noticed that the Harbinger missed out on announcing the passing of actors David Carradine and Karl Malden, and politician Corazon Aquino. A quick bit about each.

John Arthur “David” Carradine was an actor best know for playing Caine in Kung Fu and Kung Fu: the Legend Continues. He appeared in more than 100 feature films and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award. He died on June 4, 2009 in a way to Michael Hutchence of INXS…

Karl Malden was born Mladen George Sekulovich appeared in such films as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, One-Eyed Jacks, Baby Doll, How the West Was Won, Patton and the TV series The Streets of San Francisco. He also did the voice-overs for the 1980′s American Express adds; “Don’t leave home without it.” He died on July 1, 2009. He was 97.

Maria Corazon “Cory” Sumulong Cojuangco Aquino was the 11th President of the Philippines and the “Mother of Democracy”, serving from 1986 to 1992. She was the first female president of the Philippines and the first female president of any country in Asia. On March 24, 2008, the Aquino family announced that the former President had been diagnosed with colon cancer. She passed away August 1, 2009.

Sources: wiki, wiki, wiki.

Though there isn’t a wiki page for it (yet), people are now referring to the summer of ’09 as the “Summer of Death.”

So far, there has been David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Karl Malden, Walter Cronkite, Corazon Aquino, John Hughes, and Gidget, the taco bell dog.

Add another to the list. Lester William Polsfuss A.K.A. Les Paul, famed musician and inventor of the solid body electric guitar and multi-track recording. He was also the godfather of Steve Miller! He passed away 8/13/09 from complications relating to pneumonia.

When looking for this information, I also found a potentially tasteless, yet funny, article mentioning some of the celebrities that are still alive, but people think aren’t. Doris Day (she was the good looking WDSTF one, not the slutty hag) is specifically mentioned as was Les Paul until his passing. Kinda funny.

Source: Dave Ryan and wiki.

You really have to see it to believe it. But those of you who are bandwith-ly challenged can read about it instead.

Actually, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t. But she did refer to a President of the United States as Feckless. And that’s really my thing.

Only she used the word to describe George Bush, specifically his foreign policy.

Feckless, I’ll remind you, means weak or ineffective.

You could argue that Bush was ineffective, but weak? Wasn’t he beat up for 8 years for using “Cowboy Diplomacy” and being “reckless” by calling Iran, Iraq and North Korea evil?

Ms. Paglia- I urge you to rescind your use of feckless, and find a new adjective for George Bush.

Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama have the market cornered on feckless, as you can see by reading my blog.

Diane Warren is a song writer. She’s the thirty-fifth most successful songwriter in singles chart history in the UK. Or so says wiki.

I’m not sure about the UK, but over here, she’s been pretty damn successful. She has written a ton of songs that you would know, and her songs have been performed by pretty much everyone (including Kiss and Haylie Duff).

At one point she had 7 different songs by 7 different artists on the Billboard singles chart. She’s also been nominated for a variety of Golden Globes and Oscars for her songs in movies.

A sample of some of her hits:

• Cher – “If I Could Turn Back Time”
• Celine Dion – “Because You Loved Me”
• Toni Braxton – “Unbreak My Heart”
• Aerosmith – “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”
• Bad English – “When I See You Smile”
• Ace Of Base – “Don’t Turn Around”
• LeAnn Rimes – “How Do I Live”
• Milli Vanilli – “Blame it on the Rain”

But my personal favorite: Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

Health Care Fun Fact #4,235: The proposed health care legislation sets aside funds for the really important things. You know, like bike paths and street beautification, whatever the hell that means.

Under the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act,” local governments can apply for “community transformation” grants to build jungle gyms, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and grocery stores, to install streetlights, and to establish new farmers’ markets.

…

Cities can also apply for “community makeover” grants, which can provide them with up to $10 per resident in taxpayer dollars for “beautifying streets.”

When I lived in MN I was the Vice President of our Home Owner’s Association. Well, until I resigned in a fit of childish anger. Then The Wife^® joined the board in my place and orchestrated a bloodless coup to overthrow our crooked management company. But I digress.

Anyway, when I was on the board, one of the items we tackled was what to do with one of the common areas, which were called outlots. This particular outlot had wild prairie grasses on it, and we had been warned by the city several times that we needed to trim the grass, or risk being fined and having the city cut it for us.

After crunching the numbers it turned out that it was more cost effective to pay the fine. The cost to have a lawn service company come do it far exceeded the fine. So we just paid the fine and now the city cuts the grass when it annoys them.

There’s a similar scheme going on with health care. The President likes to say that if you like your doctor/insurance plan you can keep it. Except that your insurance is likely provided by your employer. So if they decide to dump their plan in favor of putting you on “the public option” you don’t have a choice.

Why would they dump you into the public plan? It’s more cost effective for them to just pay the fine:

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act” contains an “employer mandate,” or a legal requirement that all American businesses with 25 or more employees offer health insurance to their workers.

The penalty for failing to comply with this mandate to offer employees health insurance is a $750 fine per full time worker per year.

In 2008, employer-provided insurance policies averaged $4,704 a year for individuals and $12,680 for families, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (p. 2 here). This means employers would be able to save $4,000 per worker (or $12,000 per family) by ending their employee health benefit programs and simply paying the federal government the fine.

So while the President’s scheme may not technically bar you from keeping your insurance, it will incent your employer make that decision for you. And the numbers make it a pretty easy decision indeed.