Steely Dan

  
 

Steely Dan is an American rock band. The core members are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s, with the release of seven albums blending elements of jazz, rock, funk, R&B, and pop. Rolling Stone magazine has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies."

The band's music is characterized by complex jazz-influenced structures and harmonies (played by Becker and Fagen along with a revolving cast of rock and pop studio musicians) and cerebral, wry and eccentric lyrics.

They are recording studio perfectionists. The story is told that the pair used at least 42 different studio musicians, 11 engineers, and took over a year to record the 7 tracks that resulted in the album Gaucho.

Becker & Fagen  2007

Donald Fagen was born in Passaic, New Jersey and Walter Becker was born in New York City and met as students at Bard College.

Being fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named their band after the "Steely Dan III from Yokohama," a strap-on, steam-powered dildo referred to in the Beat classic by William Burrough's Naked Lunch.

http://www.SteelyDan.com

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

Katy Lied

Can't Buy a Thrill

Pretzel Logic

Gaucho

Countdown To Ecstasy

Aja

The Royal Scam

Steely Dan - Greatest Hits

Citizen Steely Dan: 1972-1980

Alive in America

Two Against Nature

Steely Dan - Two Against Nature - DVD

Everything Must Go

Steely Dan on DVD - Aja 

In Concert

            

Devil's Advocate

Detail of the Devil from Hans Memling's Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation (c. 1485)

Nowadays, the phrase "playing devil's advocate" describes a situation where someone, given a certain point of view, takes a position they do not necessarily agree with (or simply an alternative position from the accepted norm), for the sake of debate. For example, let's say that I believe that mankind is causing climate change, but for the sake of debate and opening up the conversation in a group of like-minded people I decide to be the devil's advocate and challenge some of the group's view.

Doing this can open up the thought further using valid reasoning that both disagree with the subject at hand and yet proves their own viewpoint as valid. This is one of the most popular present-day English idioms used to express the concept of arguing against something without actually being committed to that contrary view.

But being the devil’s advocate was a real job until late in the 20th century. When the Catholic church wanted to canonize a saint, an official acted as the devil’s advocate by questioning the candidate’s saintliness and arguing against their supposed miracles. If the potential saint could hold up to the intense criticism, the church knew they officially deserved the title. The advocatus diaboli (Latin for Devil's advocate) was this official position within the Catholic Church. Now more commonly referred to in the church as the Promoter of the Faith, this person is still part of the process that the Vatican has for declaring someone a saint (canonization).

Knowing that the devil is very good at arguing and very persuasive, this office was created by Pope Clement XI in 1708. The position was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983 as part of streamlining the whole canonization process.

Promotor Fidei (Promoter of the Faith) is still an official of the Roman Congregation of Rites at the Vatican but is sometimes commonly referred to, somewhat jokingly, as the devil's advocate. Presenting opposing views is still allowed. For instance, Christopher Hitchens was brought in to testify when Mother Teresa was being beatified in 2002.

Atlas

Frontispiece of the 1595 Atlas by Mercator

Gerardus Mercator was a 16th-century German-Flemish geographer, cosmographer and cartographer. He is most renowned for creating his 1569 world map based on a new projection which we now refer to as the "Mercator Projection." He was one of the pioneers of cartography and in his time was also known as a maker of globes and scientific instruments.

His early maps were in large formats suitable for wall mounting. In the second half of his life, he produced over 100 new regional maps in a smaller format suitable for binding into a book.

He called that book of maps his Atlas of 1595. This was the first appearance of the word "atlas" in reference to a book of maps. He chose "atlas" as a commemoration of the Greek mythological Titan named Atlas, "King of Mauretania", whom he considered to be the first great geographer. In Greek mythology, the Titans were the pre-Olympian gods.

Mercator published his Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura. (Atlas or cosmographical meditations upon the creation of the universe, and the universe as created.) with this title that provides Mercator's definition of the word as a description of the creation and form of the whole universe, not simply as a collection of maps.

It was published posthumously one year after his death as this quite wide-ranging text. But in later editions, it was reduced to simply a collection of Earth maps and that is the sense that the word was used from the middle of the 17th century through today.

Mercator may have appreciated the broader meaning used today for the website and print version that is called the Atlas Obscura - though he would have wanted them to go beyond Earth.

         

Bodoni

Most people don't think about the font or typeface that they are reading. If this post suddenly changed to Georgia or to Helvetica, you might notice. And most people don't know the names of the designers of the typeface, although some carry the designer's name. 

The printer Giambattista Bodoni was born in Saluzzo, Italy in 1740. He came from a family of engravers, and by the time he died, he had opened his own publishing house that reprinted classical texts.

He personally designed almost 300 typefaces, but he is remembered today for the typeface that bears his name and has been used in four centuries. Bodoni is still available on almost any word processing program. Many people consider it to be one of the most elegant typefaces. It is most commonly used in headings and display uses and in better magazines done on high-gloss paper that allows for fine strokes.

To a modern audience, Bodoni is best known as the name of a typeface, but he was an expert printer who ran a prestigious printing-office under the patronage of the Duke of Parma. His company's work in metal-casting of the type, printing and of the paper made in Parma were all known to be of very high quality. The smooth finish of the paper allowed fine detail to be retained.


A version of this post appeared earlier at One-Page Schoolhouse

Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri.

They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.

Lamar Hunt made unsuccessful attempts to purchase and relocate the NFL's Chicago Cardinals to his hometown of Dallas, Texas but was turned down. So, Hunt then established the American Football League and started his own team, the Dallas Texans, that began to play in 1960.

In their third season, the Texans played in their first American Football League Championship Game, against the Houston Oilers. The game was broadcast nationally on ABC and the Texans defeated the Oilers 20–17 in double overtime.

Hunt decided that the Dallas–Fort Worth media market could not sustain two professional football franchises and considered moving the team to either Atlanta or Miami, but an offer from Kansas City Mayor Harold Roe Bartle with a promise to triple the franchise's season ticket sales and expand the seating capacity of Municipal Stadium to accommodate the team clinched a move to KC.

In 1963, the team relocated to Kansas City and assumed their current name. Oddly enough, Hunt and head coach Hank Stram initially planned to retain the Texans name in KC. But, like many other teams, a fan contest was set up and that determined the new "Chiefs" name. "Chief" would appear to be an Indian reference but actually was meant to honor Mayor Bartle whose nickname of "Chief" that he acquired in his professional role as Scout Executive of the St. Joseph and Kansas City Boy Scout Councils and founder of the Scouting Society, the Tribe of Mic-O-Say.

The other contest leaders were "Mules" and "Royals" and in 1969, "Royals" would be the name of the city's Major League Baseball expansion franchise after the Athletics left Kansas City for Oakland.

From 1960 to 1969, the Chiefs/Texans won 87 games, which was the most in the 10-year history of the AFL. After the American Football League merged with the National Football League, the Chiefs were placed in the American Football Conference's West Division.

In 1970, the Chiefs won only seven games in their first season in the NFL and missed the playoffs.

The Chiefs have won three AFL championships, in 1962, 1966, and 1969. They became the second AFL team (after the New York Jets) to defeat an NFL team in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game when they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

In 2020, after a 50-year drought, they played in Super Bowl LIV (54) against the San Francisco 49ers and were able to become champions once again with a score of 31 -20. They play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2021 Super Bowl LV.

Many sports teams with names or mascots that allude to Native Americans have been considered controversial. The Chiefs have largely avoided that controversy.

Though their name came from a non-Indian origin, their logo was an Indian arrowhead, and their first mascot was Warpaint, a pinto horse. Warpaint served as the team's mascot from 1963 to 1988.

In the mid-1980s, the Chiefs featured a short-lived and more controversial unnamed "Indian Man" mascot which was scrapped in 1988.

The team then moved to a cartoonish "K. C. Wolf" which has served as the team's mascot. The mascot was named after the Chiefs' "Wolfpack" which was a group of rabid fans from the team's days at Municipal Stadium. The rebranding worked and K. C. Wolf is one of the most popular NFL mascots and was the league's first mascot inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2006.

San Francisco 49ers

The San Francisco 49ers (also known as the Niners) are a professional American football team. The 49ers are currently a member of the Western Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).

The name "49ers" comes from the name given to the prospectors who went west during the California Gold Rush which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.

In the next year, that news brought some 300,000 people to California. The gold-seekers, called "Forty-niners" as a reference to 1849. Because of the gold rush, San Francisco grew from a small settlement to a boomtown, and roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. A state constitution was written and California became a state in 1850.


The 49ers official mascot is Sourdough Sam who wears jersey number 49. Before Sourdough Sam, the team's first mascot was a prospector's mule named Clementine that wore a red saddle blanket and appeared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sourdough Sam is a gold rush prospector/miner who first appeared in the 1970s though he was based on a character that appeared on the covers of game programs created by William Kay between 1946 and 1949.

The "Sourdough" refers to sourdough bread which is associated with San Francisco.

Team owner Anthony J. Morabito chose 49ers for his All-America Football Conference squad because it reflected San Francisco’s link to the California Gold Rush.

The 49ers began to play in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and joined the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC merged into the older league.

The team was the first NFL franchise to win five Super Bowls.

The 49ers teams of the 1980s and early 1990s were a dynasty given their five Super Bowl triumphs in that span, including four in the 1980s. The Niners won 10+ games for 16 straight seasons.


Famous 49ers include three-time Super Bowl MVP Joe Montana, perennial Pro Bowler Ronnie Lott, all-time highest career quarterback rating holder Steve Young, and career touchdown leader Jerry Rice.

All of them played for the 49ers during their greatest period.

They have been division champions 20 times between 1970 and 2019, making them one of the most successful teams in NFL history.

The 49ers have been in the league playoffs 50 times (49 times in the NFL and one time in the AAFC).

In 2020, they played in Super Bowl LIV in Miami against the Kansas City Chiefs and lost with a score of 31 - 20.

Going South

The phrase "going south" to mean "becoming worse" is another one whose origin is not settled.

The most common origin attributes it to the standard orientation of maps. South is the downwards direction so things going south are going down. That would fit this type of usage: "Yesterday the stock market moved south, ending up on a loss for the day."

Another origin say that it was a euphemism used by some Native Americans for dying. "He was unconcerned that his health might go south."

This idiom always means that a situation becomes unfavorable, decreases, or takes a turn for the worse. "My luck went south."

Kick the Bucket, Buy the Farm and Bite the Dust

Most idioms don't make a lot of literal sense and so they often don't translate to other languages. In English, we have lots of ways of euphemistically say that someone has died. In this post, I'll consider three of them. Sometimes even the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary(OED) can't quite say definitively what the origin of a phrase might be. That's the case for the three in this post.

Why would we say that someone has "kicked the bucket" when they have died? One possible origin is that a person standing on a pail or bucket intending to commit suicide would put their head into the noose and then kick the bucket away.

Is that any more plausible than the archaic use of "bucket" as a beam from which a pig is hung by its feet prior to being slaughtered. To kick the bucket, was the term used to mean the pig's death throes.

Another origin that comes from the Catholic church is that at one time when a body had been laid out, a holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When mourners came to pray they could sprinkle the body with holy water. I don't see any kicking involved in that explanation.

My favorite "kick the bucket" movie moment still comes in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. 

To "buy the farm" meaning to die is an American expression going back to the WWII and the Air Force.  At the time the similar "buy the plot" (as in a cemetery plot) and buy the lot were also used, but the farm survived.

A military pilot with a hit plane would often attempt to crash land in a farmer's field. If the crash destroyed some crops, the government paid reimbursement to the farmer, but if it was a really bad crash that destroyed most of the crops or buildings, the government would "buy the farm."

Then again, there are older British slang expressions "buy it," "buy one" or "buy the packet" that are supposed to be references to something that one does not want to buy.

The earliest citation of the 'bite the dust" is from 1750 by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett , in his Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane: "We made two of them bite the dust, and the others betake themselves to flight."

I also found a reference to a much earlier phrase "lick the dust" that is supposed to appear in the Bible.

Samuel Butler's 19th-century translation of Homer's The Iliad contains "Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him." But this is not Homer but Butler's use of the phrase.

And these are not all the euphemistic phrases for death. But we won't get into others like "to punch your ticket" or "meet your maker."

Another source of some interesting origins is Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins by Michael Quinion

Are You a -phile?

Are you a "bibliophile"? That is a lover of books. The suffix -phile denotes a fondness for a specified thing and comes from the Greek philos meaning "loving." A heliophile is a lover of the sun.

There are hundreds of different types of "philes" with new ones being created for new things but probably using a Greek or Latin word attached to the suffix.

A retrophile loves things from the past. "Retro" itself is fairly new being a 1960s creation 1960s from French rétro, an abbreviation of rétrograde which has a number of meanings (mostly scientific) but usually refers to something going backward or reversing.

An oenophile comes from oinos, the Greek word for wine and so an oenophile is a lover of wine. This isn't just someone who drinks a lot of wine, but rather is interested in wine production and probably collects wines.

You don't hear many people saying they are turophiles, but many people do love cheeses. Taking the Ancient Greek word for cheese, "turos," is much classier than saying you're a cheesephile or cheesehead. The true turophile (as with oenophiles) doesn't just eat up all the cubes of cheddar on the appetizer table, but knows many types of cheeses and collects favorites.

A few others:

• Cynophile - lover of dogs
• Pluviophiles have a fondness for rain (Latin pluvial for rain). A lover of rain does not just find enjoyment in the physical presence of rain, they also find joy and peace when a rainy day descends.
• Can you hear a color in caeruleaphile? These people have a strong fondness for blue.
• I know many javaphiles who love their coffee. This one is neither Latin or Greek but takes the slang word ‘java’ for coffee.

More 
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53610/15-philes-and-what-they-love

https://steemit.com/philes/