A busy weekend for me is this one. It includes a two-hour roundtrip drive on Saturday for a conference and a five-hour one-way drive on Sunday for another conference. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. So, I will have to post my vocabulary entry early. Maybe I can take my Sunday nap on Saturday afternoon.
DEFENESTRATION
I ran across this word in my studies of church history. The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was probably the bloodiest European war ever before we figured out how to do it up really big in the twentieth century. It started in Germany which, at the time, was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire (every term is ironic here). The Catholics and the Protestants were bunching up and spitting at each other, so you just know there had to be a fight brewing. When Ferdinand, cousin to the Emperor and staunch Catholic, was appointed king of Bavaria, he ran into a lot of opposition from the resident Protestants. One day a group of Bohemain Protestants appeared before the court asking for policy changes. When the king scoffed at them, they grabbed a couple of his advisors and threw them out the window. And that, my friends, is defenestration--throwing someone out a window. The Defenestration of Prague set off the Thirty Years' War.
So next time your kid or one of your students or a subordinate at work asks about the consequences of some infelicitous action, just intone gravely, "Denefenstration. Now." Of course, in West Texas where most buildings are single-story, that's not much of a threat. More humiliation than anything else. (BTW, the Prague advisors landed in a pile of garbage, so they suffered more humiliation than physical harm, too.)
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For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
Major newspapers and other concerns run their own blogs, but that's because they have to and deep down, they know citizen journalistst are gradually becoming the sources people turn to for unspun news and ...
Very interesting Blog. I'll be back. Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you!
I have a best small business opportunities site/blog. It pretty much covers best small business opportunities related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)
It seems you've been visited by the cyber-whores.
It takes me a while, but I finally figured out how to reduce these. I will on the next post. Don't know why I can't delete the present garbage.
I'd love to know a way to reduce cyber-whores without resulting to typing in those damnably hard to read letters.
As for the delete thing - its a glitch in blogger. Just long into blogger, go to the entry, check out the comments and hit refresh about 40 times until the little trash cans show up. (Technical advice a specialty.)
Love this word and the story. I feel smarter now.
Gee whiz M, would you please do a me-me?
~looks around and joins the other cyber whores~ MEME MEME MEME....I think Rach picked you already.
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