Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It was first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document" and gives a realistic frame story.
The story was likely influenced by the real life Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived four years on the Pacific island called Más a Tierra (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile. However, the details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Caribbean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast near the mouth of the Orinoco river, and in sight of the island of Trinidad.[1] It is also likely that Defoe was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, an earlier novel also set on a desert island.[2][3][4][5] Another source for Defoe's novel may have been Robert Knox's account of his abduction by the King of Ceylon in 1659 in "An Historical Account of the Island Ceylon," Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons (Publishers to the University), 1911.[6]
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//////////////////wotd=Namby-pamby (adjective)
Pronunciation: ['næm-bi-'pæm-bi (or -bee)]
Definition: Sentimental, insipid (British); weak and indecisive (U. S.)
Usage: Odd as it might seem, this word has begged for whimsical derivations. All of the following have been recorded by the grand old Oxford English Dictionary (OED): namby-pambyish "somewhat namby-pamby," namby-pambiness "namby-pamby quality," namby-pambical "of a namby-pamby nature," and my personal favorite, namby-pambics "namby-pamby behavior, especially writing."
Suggested Usage: What attracts us to this word is all the grossly underexplored derivational possibilities lurking within it: "If you want to see some absolutely masterful namby-pambics, watch George tell his daughter how she must reduce the charges to her credit card." "Your wife is seeing another man and you bought her a new dress so she wouldn't embarrass you? That is the most namby-pambical idea I've ever heard of!"
Etymology: A fanciful rhyming pair based on the name of Ambrose Philips, author of sentimental (namby-pamby) pastorals ridiculed by Carey and Pope, including Carey's 1726 work, 'Namby Pamby.'
////////////////Namby-pamby (adjective)
Pronunciation: ['næm-bi-'pæm-bi (or -bee)]
Definition: Sentimental, insipid (British); weak and indecisive (U. S.)
Usage: Odd as it might seem, this word has begged for whimsical derivations. All of the following have been recorded by the grand old Oxford English Dictionary (OED): namby-pambyish "somewhat namby-pamby," namby-pambiness "namby-pamby quality," namby-pambical "of a namby-pamby nature," and my personal favorite, namby-pambics "namby-pamby behavior, especially writing."
Suggested Usage: What attracts us to this word is all the grossly underexplored derivational possibilities lurking within it: "If you want to see some absolutely masterful namby-pambics, watch George tell his daughter how she must reduce the charges to her credit card." "Your wife is seeing another man and you bought her a new dress so she wouldn't embarrass you? That is the most namby-pambical idea I've ever heard of!"
Etymology: A fanciful rhyming pair based on the name of Ambrose Philips, author of sentimental (namby-pamby) pastorals ridiculed by Carey and Pope, including Carey's 1726 work, 'Namby Pamby.'
///////////////////ADHD, Sleep, and Children
A study published last weekshows that children with ADHD have significantly shorter sleep times than the non-ADHD control group.
The children with ADHD in the study got an average of 8 hours, 19 minutes of sleep per night, while the control group averaged 8 hours, 52 minutes of sleep. This missing half-hour of sleep each night adds up over the course of a week, a month, a year. The study also reported that the ADHD children had less REM sleep time each night than the control group.
So parents, this gives us good reasons to consider how our family spends its time from about 7:00pm and later into the evening. Try to structure the evening so that your children can wind-down, relax, and get ready for a full night's sleep. The results could be better performance at school the following day.
ADHDLI=
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Second Genesis: Life, but not as we know it
11 March 2009 by Bob Holmes
Magazine issue 2699. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
For similar stories, visit the Genetics and Evolution Topic Guides
Part 1: Making new life
Part 2: The search for shadow life
Gallery: What might shadow life be like?
WHEN the Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman died in 1988, his blackboard carried the inscription, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." By that measure, biologists still have a lot to learn, because no one has yet succeeded in turning a chemical soup into a living, reproducing, evolving life form. We're still stuck with Life 1.0, the stuff that first quickened at least 3.5 billion years ago. There's been nothing new under the sun since then, as far as we know.
That looks likely to change. Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time. David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been saying that scientists would create synthetic life in "five or 10 years" for three decades, but finally he might actually be right. "The momentum is building," he says. "We're knocking at the door."
Meanwhile, a no-less profound search is on for a "shadow biosphere" - life forms that are unrelated to the life we know because they are descendants of an independent origin of life. We know for sure that life got going on Earth once, so why couldn't it have happened twice? Many scientists argue that there is no reason why a second genesis might not have taken place, and no reason why its descendants should not still be living among us.
So the appearance of an "alien" organism seems imminent - we may find one that arose naturally, or engineer one in the lab. Either way, it's a momentous step. Until now, biologists have had to base their understanding of life on the plants, animals and microbes that surround us, which all share a common ancestor. That doesn't give much perspective.
"When you have a single example, it's very hard to know whether it's representative," says Carol Cleland, a philosopher of science and astrobiologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "If you were an alien biologist who's interested in understanding what a mammal was, and all you had was zebras, it's very unlikely that you would focus on their mammary glands, because only half the specimens have them. You'd probably focus on the stripes, which are ubiquitous."
Discovering - or engineering - a second genesis wouldn't just broaden our view of life. Alternative life forms could supply biotechnologists with fresh molecules and new functions that they could apply to practical problems. A synthetic, made-to-order living system might even serve as a self-maintaining, self-improving, adaptable assembly line for producing everything from pharmaceuticals to petrochemicals. Over the next four pages we first report on rapid progress in the lab, and then bring news from the field, as researchers race to make what could be one of science's most far-reaching breakthroughs.
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