Word: greeke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Greeks philosophized about the physical nature of stars. Xenophanes, who lived in the 6th century B.C., argued that heavenly bodies were luminous clouds, rather than gods. Anaximander of Miletus described the sky as a sphere surrounded on the outside by wheels of fire; the stars, he thought, were the lights of these fires shining through tubelike breathing holes in the sky. Another citizen of Miletus, Anaximenes, believed the stars were fixed like nails to the vault of the heavens. Aristotle maintained that celestial objects were permanent, immutable and perfect. His notion so influenced Greek thought that when the astronomer Hipparchus...
...Astronomer Edmund Halley of comet fame showed that Sirius, Procyon and Arcturus had changed positions−relative to other stars−since Greek times, establishing for the first time that the stars were not fixed in the heavens. By the early 1900s, astronomers had learned that the sun was merely one of billions of stars in a disc-shaped galaxy, or island of stars, then believed by many to constitute the entire universe. In 1920 Harlow Shapley calculated that the galaxy, called the Milky Way, was some 300,000 light years* in diameter, a distance too stupendous for most people...
...Holy Greek Hogwash...
...Death of a Fraternity Pledge" [Nov. 22] brought up the subject of hazing at universities. It makes my stomach turn to think that people will create this needless suffering for anybody else, for any reason, and particularly in the name of some holy Greek hogwash. Sheryle Bowles Dallas
...GREEK WORD for newspapers is ephemeris, which is where we get ephemeral: short-lived, transitory. That's what most journalism is--stories that are here today, of practically no interest tomorrow, but caught for the moment like flies in amber. In that sense, the best journalists are the best fly-catchers, and very occasionally, fly swatters...