A better term than brass instrument is 'labrosone', indicating the method of sound production. This includes the modern brass family, as well as instruments constructed of wood like the serpent and cornett, and older instruments made out of literal horns.

The serpent is a very difficult instrument to play in tune. The tone holes don't really have as much effect as embouchure. Most early "brass" ensembles prefer to use sackbutts.

Several of those are Fanimation fans (www.fanimation.com), which makes nifty, but somewhat pricy fans. I have one of their Fargo fans (the one that looks like a globe, kinda). It works great at keeping me cool at my computer desk, without disturbing any of the papers I leave on the desk.

Once upon a time, Neatorama did not post political content, but that seems to have changed in recent months. Why is that?

Sounds like it's time to post an ad for a record of all our favorite 2nd Viennese School hits! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACCAF04wSs

Crap! I knew about octopus being a Greek derivative and the derived plural being octopodes, but I had only read this, never heard anyone say it... so I've been mispronouncing octopodes for years. I feel so ashamed.

"The oldest known champagne currently on record is from 1825."

The existence of carbonated bottles of wine does not contradict that. Secondary fermentation of wine, after bottling, is a documented problem since antiquity. Bottles of insufficiently fermented wine were known to explode, sometimes causing great harm.

Utterly charming explanation of Lemarkian evolution!

Whew! Thanks for the tip. I had totally forgotten.

Ok, one more post. The title of the article is "Family scholarly culture and educational success".

Even more telling, footnote 2:
It is logically possible that books could be separated from such a culture - perhaps being inherited from a maiden aunt - and that they are so intrinsically attractive that children devour them voraciously in the absence of any support or encouragement from parents. But it is not likely: Moreover, analysis of many different aspects of the home environment finds that home library size has strong predictive validity as an indicator of parents' attraction to the teaching role vis a vis their children

So, there, you have it. Parents, not books, are the factor.

So, if you don't spank your kids, they're more likely to be passive? Aggressiveness or passiveness can both be positive, or negative, depending on the degree and the situation.

This reminds of Gov Blagojevich's attempt to start a program to give away books to children in Illinois, because of an earlier study that children who grow up around books do better in school.

It seems like an obvious problem of mistaking correlation with causation. It seems more likely that homes that include lots of books also include parents who like to read, and thus children grow up imitating their parents. Dropping a few books (or 500) in a household where no one gives a crap about reading is unlikely to result in any concrete gains.

Dumb article. Apart from Maya and Angkor, none of the others can be called "civilizations". One of them is wholly imaginary. Another, the Roanoake colony wasn't a civilization, but just a tiny colony.

And contrary to the article, we do know where Troy is, thanks to Calvert & Schliemann--and it wasn't a civilization in itself. It was a small city on the now-Turkish coast.

Hey! This was posted 2 years ago on Neatorama! http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/29/barkley-the-cat/

I guess that explains the -2 in the current URL.

Misuse of the term "evolution". If liberals and atheists are more likely to survive to sexual maturity and more likely to produce surviving offspring, they might arguably be referred to as "more evolved".

It seems like a better choice would have been to challenge the constitutionality of the judge's order, which would seem to conflict with the free exercise clause of the 1st amendment.

Instead, he violated the order and faces contempt charges.