The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers is a Canadian indie rock band formed in 1999 in Vancouver, British Columbia.



The name of the band was chosen by member Carl Newman, who has said that he came up with it after watching a classic Japanese film called The Pornographers. (Not to be confused with several other films by that name - none of them "pornographic.")

A common assumption at the time of the band's first fame was that it was a reference to evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's claim that rock and roll was "the new pornography."

The band has released five albums to date: Mass Romantic (2000), Electric Version (2003), Twin Cinema (2005), Challengers (2007), and Together (2010). A live album recorded on their 2006 tour is available only at concerts and on the band's website.




Band Members:
Dan Bejar of Destroyer, Swan Lake, and Hello, Blue Roses
Kathryn Calder, solo artist and of Immaculate Machine
Neko Case, solo artist, also of Maow, The Corn Sisters, and Cub
John Collins of The Evaporators and Destroyer
Kurt Dahle of Limblifter and Age of Electric
Todd Fancey, solo artist (as Fancey) and of Limblifter
Carl Newman, solo artist (as A.C. Newman), also of Superconductor and Zumpano
Blaine Thurier, independent filmmaker

Love and Tennis

On this Valentine's day when love is in the air, we ponder why "love" came to mean nothing in the game of tennis.

This is one of those origins that is disputed. The two main explanations are as follows: 1) It was adapted from the phrase "to play for love of the game" (i.e. to play for nothing). 2) It represents a close sound to the French word l'oeuf, meaning 'an egg' from the the resemblance between an egg and a zero on the page. (Americans once used the term "goose egg" to mean a zero, as in a zero on an exam.)

Add to those origin possibilities this ine from the Online Guide to Traditional Games who propose that it comes from the Dutch/Flemish "lof" which means honor. Around the time that the expression came to be used, England received a wealth of immigrants from the low countries and most games were played for money. So, if a player scored no points, the phrase "omme lof spelen," meaning "played for the honor" might have been used.

I favor the French and egg theory, mostly because much of the game's formalities come from French medieval roots.

Originally, in lawn tennis using rackets scoring, a game comprised 15 aces, which could be won only by the server who remained "hand in" until the loss of a rally. Tennis scoring was adopted for the first Wimbledon Championships in 1877 and became the standard.

The origins of the 15, 30, 40 scoring system is also unclear but has medieval and French roots. One explanation is that the scoring system is based on the presence of a clock face at the end of the tennis court. A quarter move of the appropriate hand was made after each rest, with the score being called as 15, 30, or 45 as the case might be. As the hand was moved to 60, making the complete circuit, this was the game.

The term "deuce" is derived from the French "deux", an advantage of two points having to be gained.



Tennis: Origins and Mysteries




The Tennis Book: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Tennis

Blink and Blink 182

Blink is a pop/rock band from Ireland known for their mixture of humour and melancholy. They have released three albums:  A Map Of the Universe by Blink (1994), The End Is High (1998) and Deep Inside The Sound Of Sadness (2004).
A Map of the Universe by Blink was an Irish top ten album and The End is High was a Billboard magazine album of the week. Deep inside the Sound of Sadness was nominated as Best Irish Album of the Year in the 2005 Meteor Music Awards.

Blink was formed in the early 1990s by Dermot Lambert (vocals/guitars), Robbie Sexton (keyboards), Brian McLoughlin (bass) and Barry Campbell (drums).

http://blink.garageland.ie/

The San Diego, California based pop punk band now known as Blink-182 was originally also called Blink, but changed their name after being notified by the Irish Blink. They say that they appended "182" but that it has no special meaning.

Blink-182 is an American rock band formed in Poway, a suburb of San Diego, California in 1992. The trio consists of bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus, guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker.

The band is considered a key group in the development of pop punk music; their combination of pop melodies with fast-paced punk rock featured a more radio-friendly accessibility than prior bands. The group, with original drummer Scott Raynor, emerged from the Southern California punk scene of the early 1990s and first gained notoriety for high-energy live shows and irreverent lyrical toilet humor.

Crossing the Rubicon

The Rubicon River formed the border between Gaul and the Roman Republic. According to legend, when Caesar got to the river with his army, he still was not sure if he should cross and invade - something that would start a civil war.

In Suetonius' history of the emperors (written more than 100 years after Caesar crossed the Rubicon), he wrote: "Overtaking his cohorts at the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, he paused for a while, and realizing what a step he was taking, he turned to those about him and said: 'Even yet we may draw back; but once cross yon little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword.' As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden there appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a reed; and when not only the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers left their posts, and among them some of the trumpeters, the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of them, rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty blast, strode to the opposite bank."

Then Caesar cried: 'Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the false dealing of our foes point out. Alea iacta est, ("the die is cast").

And so, the Roman Republic was thrown into a civil war that was eventually won by Caesar defeating Pompey and his allies.

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" entered popular culture to mean "past the point of no return." A Google search on "crossing the Rubicon" will turn up everything from shopping sites to Vie-President Joe Biden saying "I crossed the Rubicon about not being president and being vice president when I decided to take this office" and Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy saying, "Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line."

Jiffy

"I'll be back in a jiffy"

Jiffy is an informal term we use for a short unspecified period of time. But it has taken on more precise applications for short, very short, and extremely short periods of time.

Though the word goes back to 1785, the word's origin is unclear. One possibility is that it was a "thieves' cant" for "lightning." Thieves' cant (AKA Rogues' cant and peddler's French) was a secret language (a cant or cryptolect) which was used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. It is now mostly obsolete, though still used in literature and fantasy role-playing.

One technical usage for jiffy was defined by Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946) who proposed a unit of time called the "jiffy" which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimeter (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds).

In electronics, a jiffy is the time between alternating current power cycles - 1/60 or 1/50 of a second in most mains power supplies.

In physics, (particularly in quantum physics) and often in chemistry, a jiffy is defined as the time taken for light to travel some specified distance.

In computing, a jiffy was originally the time between two ticks of the system timer interrupt - which is not an absolute time interval unit, since its duration depends on the clock interrupt frequency of the particular hardware platform. The term "jiffy" is sometimes used in computer animation as a method of defining playback rate, with the delay interval between individual frames specified in 1/100th-of-a-second (10 ms) jiffies.

Wikipedia.org