“Babylon An ancient city in Mesopotamia, first prominent under Hammurabi who made it capital of the kingdom of Babylonia. The city (now in ruins) lay on the Euphrates 55 miles south of present-day Baghdad and was noted for its luxury, its fortifications, and particularly for the ‘Hanging Gardens,’ which were one the Seven Wonders of the World.”
Excerpted from: Wright, Edmund, Ed. The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged asian-pacific history, professional development, readings/research
“Adana: City (population 2019: 1,769,000) south central Turkey, on the Seyhan River. An agricultural and industrial center and one of Turkey’s largest cities, it probably overlies a Hittite settlement that dates from c.1400 BC. Conquered by Alexander the Great in 335-334 BC, it was later a Roman military station. It came under the rule of the Abbasid Arabs at the end of the 7th century AD and changed hands intermittently until the establishment of the Turkmen dynasty in 1378. Adana’s prosperity has long derived from the fertile valleys behind it and its position as a bridgehead on the Anatolian-Arabian trade routes.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Yamazaki Ansai: (1619-1682) Japanese exponent of the philosophy of the Chinese Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi. Early in life he was a Buddhist monk, but he gradually rejected Buddhism in favor of Confucianism, which he began to teach to thousands of students. He reduced Neo-Confucianism to a simple moral code, which he then blended with native Shinto religious doctrines. He equated Neo-Confucian principles and theories with Shinto legends and divinity, creating a philosophical system that took on greater authority that its sources possessed alone. His thought was one of the sources of the extreme nationalism and emperor worship that developed later in Japan.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Buddha A title given to successive teachers (past and future) of Buddhism, although it usually denotes the founder of Buddhism, Siddartha Gautama (c. 563 BC-c. 489 BC). Although born an Indian prince (in what is now Nepal), he renounced his kingdom, wife, and child to become an ascetic, taking religious instruction until he attained enlightenment (nirvana) through meditation beneath a bo tree in the village of Bodhgaya. He then taught all who wanted to learn, regardless of sex, class or caste, until his death. ‘Buddha’ means ‘enlightened’ in Sanskrit.”
Excerpted from: Wright, Edmund, Ed. The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
“bhiksu: In Buddhism, a member of the sangha, the ordained order of men established by the Buddha. (Female orders exist in some Mahayana Buddhist traditions). Originally they were mendicant followers of the Buddha who taught Buddhist ways in exchange for food. Today children may enter monastic life as novices, but candidates for ordination must be 21 years old. There are more than 200 rules; sexual relations, taking of life, stealing, or boasting of spiritual attainment will lead to expulsion. A bhiksu shaves his head and face, owns a few essential items, and begs daily for his food. Theravada Buddhism forbids monks to handle money and perform labor. Chan (Zen) Buddhism requires monks to work. See also Vinaya Pitaka.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“acme: [L16th] In Greek akme meant ‘point’ or ‘pinnacle, highest point.’ Its use dates from the late 15th century, although for the next hundred years or so it was consciously used as a Greek word and written in Greek letters. For many people their first exposure to the word comes from the ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoons featuring the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, where the characters buy products from the Acme company. ‘Acme’ was a real brand name for various US firms in the last two decades of the 19th century, chosen in part because the word comes near the top of any alphabetical list of suppliers. Acne [M19th] the skin condition, has a similar root. The idea is that all those red pimples are little points sticking up from someone’s face.
Excerpted from: Creswell, Julia. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
“Rayonism: A Russian movement, a short-lived offshoot of Cubism and a parallel to Futurism, started in 1913 by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Their emphasis on rendering parallel and crossed beams of light to suggest the fourth dimension was important to the development of Suprematism.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“recall: A term used to describe the ability to retrieve information from long-term memory. Recall is involved in a broad range of tasks, from remembering a phone number to recalling information for a school exam. While useful as a descriptive term, it does not refer to a specific area of cognitive function.
Difficulty recalling information may be cause by a number of different learning problems. This may include problems imprinting information during processing because of poor attention or short-term memory, as well as difficulty with rapid retrieval tasks that are typically found in expressive language disorders.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
Edmund Wilson: (1895-1972) U.S. critic and essayist. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, he attended Princeton University and initially worked as a reporter and magazine writer. Much of his writing, in which he probed diverse topics with scholarship and common sense in clear and precise prose, appeared in The New Republic and the New Yorker. Among his influential critical works are Axel’s Castle (1931), a survey of the Symbolist poets; To the Finland Station (1940), a study of the thinkers who set the stage for the Russian Revolution; and Patriotic Gore (1962), analyzing the American Civil War literature. His other writings include plays, poetry, the short-story collection Memories of Hecate County (1946), and five volumes of posthumously published journals. He was widely regarded as the leading critic of his time.
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
At least for the moment, we have (finally!) reached the end of planning materials posts for The Writing Revolution. What you should know, and possibly dread, is that I have quite a lot of materials based in the methods of The Writing Revolution in various stages of development. So those will appear here eventually.
For this morning, however, let me post the last two learning supports, these on expository words:
V-A*Argumentative Nouns and Verbs
And even though there are only these two items on it, here is the table of contents for these two documents. And, if it is of any use to you, here is the the complete table of contents as I use it for all the learning supports excerpted or adapted from The Writing Revolution.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
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