2015年12月2日 星期三

serve up, catacomb, ossuaries, equifinality, squirreled away, catacombs, computer bugs and squirrels:


Did you know there are 33 square miles of underground catacombs beneath Beijing? The expansive subterranean network is being retrofitted as a tourist destination:


The New Yorker
The Borowitz Report: According to a fact-checking organization, the Republican candidates served up between eight and twelve facts, not including their names and job descriptions.


Over the course of three hours the Republican candidates served up...
NYR.KR|由 ANDY BOROWITZ 上傳




From their exteriors, these churches resemble many early, Gothic chapels. But inside, ossuaries, or “bone churches” found in several European cities, and were constructed to relieve overcrowded catacombs and cemeteries.
Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/BoneCrypts


Computer Bugs and Squirrels: A History of Nasdaq's Woes


Sunken bodies half-slept in the subway, car, the rushing catacombs,


Romney: "I Like Being Able To Fire People"


The GOP front-runner serves up a pull quote to his presidential rivals.

READ FULL STORY


The convergence of art and architecture, Korean and Western, old and new, finds a marquee home at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (747-18 Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu; 82-2-2014-6900; leeum.samsungfoundation.org). Squirreled away in a hilly residential section of the Itaewon area, the museum showcases the Samsung Foundation’s impressive art collection in a campus of buildings designed by Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and Mario Botta.





ossuary

Line breaks: os¦su|ary
Pronunciation: /ˈɒsjʊəri /



NOUN (plural ossuaries)

container or room in which the bones of deadpeople are placed.

Origin

mid 17th century: from late Latin ossuarium, formed irregularly from Latin ososs- 'bone'.

catacomb

Line breaks: cata|comb
Pronunciation: /ˈkatəkuːm , -kəʊm/

NOUN



(usually catacombs)
1An underground cemetery consisting of a subterranean gallery with recesses for tombs, as constructed by the ancient Romans.
1.1An underground construction resembling orcompared to catacombs.

Origin

old english, from late Latin catacumbas, the name of the subterranean cemetery of St Sebastian near Rome.

catacomb[cat・a・comb]
  • 発音記号[kǽtəkòum | -kùːm]名]
1 ((通例〜s))地下墓地.
2 ((the Catacombs))カタコンベ:ローマおよび付近の初期キリスト教徒の地下墓所.



squirrel
n.
  1. Any of various arboreal rodents of the genus Sciurus and related genera of the family Sciuridae, having a long flexible bushy tail and including the fox squirrel, gray squirrel, and red squirrel. Also called tree squirrel.
  2. Any of various other rodents of the family Sciuridae, as the ground squirrel or the flying squirrel.
  3. The fur of one of these rodents.
tr.v., -reled, or -relled, -rel·ing, or -rel·ling, -rels, or -rels.
To hide or store: squirreled away her money.
1 [with object] (squirrel something away) hide money or something of value in a safe place:the money was squirrelled away in foreign bank accounts
2 [no object, with adverbial of direction] move in an inquisitive and restless manner:they were squirrelling around in the woods in search of something
[Middle English squirel, from Anglo-Norman esquirel, from Vulgar Latin *scūriolus, diminutive of *scūrius, alteration of Latin sciūrus, from Greek skiouros : skiā, shadow + ourā, tail.]


. Dish out food, as in Next they served up some oysters. [First half of 1400s]
2. Provide, as in He served up joke after joke, delighting his audience. [First half of 1600s] also see hand to on a silver platter.



Equifinality is the principle that in open systems a given end state can be reached by many potential means. The term is due to Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of General Systems Theory. He prefers this term, in contrast to "goal", in describing complex systems' similar or convergent behavior. It emphasizes that the same end state may be achieved via many different paths or trajectories. In closed systems, a direct cause-and-effect relationship exists between the initial condition and the final state of the system: When a computer's 'on' switch is pushed, the system powers up. Open systems (such as biological and social systems), however, operate quite differently. The idea of equifinality suggests that similar results may be achieved with different initial conditions and in many different ways. [1]
In business, equifinality implies that firms may establish similar competitive advantages based on substantially different competencies.
In psychology, equifinality refers to how different early experiences in life (e.g., parental divorce, physical abuse, parental substance abuse) can lead to similar outcomes (e.g., childhood depression). In other words, there are many different early experiences that can lead to the same psychological disorder.
In archaeology, equifinality refers to how different historical processes may lead to a similar outcome or social formation. For example, the development of agriculture or the bow and arrow occurred independently in many different areas of the world, yet for different reasons and through different historical trajectories. Highlights that generalizations based on cross-cultural comparisons cannot uncritically be made.
In geomorphology, the term equifinality indicates that similar landforms might arise as a result of quite different sets of processes.
In environmental modeling studies, and especially in hydrological modeling, two models are equifinal if they lead to an equally acceptable or behavioral representation of the observed natural processes. It is a key concept to assess how uncertain hydrological predictions are.

See also

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