ChiefBell: February 2005

Monday, February 28, 2005

Loren, Sophia

Before working in the cinema, Sofia Scicolone changed her name to Sofia Lazzaro for work in the foto-romanzo, popular pulp magazines that used still photographs

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Saint Basil The Blessed

Also called �Pokrovsky Cathedral, �Russian �Svyatoy Vasily Blazhenny, or Pokrovsky Sobor, � church constructed on Red Square in Moscow between 1554 and 1560 by Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible, as a votive offering for his military victories over the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. The church was dedicated to the protection and intercession of the Virgin, but it came to be known as the Cathedral of Vasily Blazhenny (St. Basil the Beatified) after Basil, the Russian holy fool

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Eusebius Of Caesarea

Eusebius was baptized and ordained at Caesarea, where he was taught by the learned presbyter Pamphilus, to whom he was bound by ties of respect and affection

Friday, February 25, 2005

Confession

In literature, an autobiography, either real or fictitious, in which intimate and hidden details of the subject's life are revealed. The first outstanding example of the genre was the Confessions of St. Augustine (c. AD 400), a painstaking examination of Augustine's progress from juvenile sinfulness and youthful debauchery to conversion to Christianity and the triumph

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Scylitzes, John

Scylitzes was a high officeholder at the Byzantine court. He may have written a legal work for Alexius I in 1092. In his history he drew on the work of others for the early part and then largely relied on sources no longer extant and on contemporary oral tradition. In some manuscripts

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

B�o-b�o River

River in south-central Chile. It rises in the Andes on Chile's eastern border and flows generally northwestward to enter the Gulf of Arauco on the Pacific Ocean near Concepci�n after a course of 240 miles (380 km). The B�o-B�o River traverses the fertile Central Valley and then forms the only major transverse valley through the coastal mountain range. Although it is one of Chile's

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Likoma Island

Island in Lake Nyasa, Malawi, just northwest of C�bu�, Mozambique. Located near the lake's eastern shore, the rocky and barren island has an area of 7 square miles (18 square km). There is some fishing and limited cultivation of grain; cassava and corn (maize) are imported. The Universities' Mission to Central Africa (Church of England) established a station there in 1885 as a base for

Monday, February 21, 2005

Epinephrine And Norepinephrine

Also called �adrenaline �and �noradrenaline,� two separate but related hormones secreted by the medulla of the adrenal glands. They are also produced at the ends of sympathetic nerve fibres, where they serve as chemical mediators for conveying the nerve impulses to effector organs. Chemically, the two compounds differ only slightly; and they exert similar pharmacological actions, which resemble the effects

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Skaraborg

Former l�n (county) of south-central Sweden, located between Lakes V�nern and V�ttern. Founded as a county in 1634, it was merged with the counties of �lvsborg and G�teborg och Bohus in 1998 to form the county of V�stra G�taland.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Dygasinski, Adolf

Dygasinski was a teacher by profession and a worshiper of science. He published about 50 volumes of short stories of uneven literary quality, the best pieces of which deal with the lives of domestic and wild animals.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Sea Whip

Any of several genera of corals of the order Gorgonacea (phylum Cnidaria), characterized by a long, whiplike growth and a variety of bright colours. The �whip� consists of a colony of tiny polyps (cylindrical, stalklike forms with a mouth and eight tentacles at the upper, or free, end) that grow upon one another in a continuous single stem. Spicules, or needlelike

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Asia, North Asia

Northeastern Siberia comprises faulted and folded mountains of moderate height, such as the Verkhoyansk, Chersky, and Okhotsk-Chaun mountain arcs, all Mesozoic structures that have been rejuvenated by geologically recent tectonic events. The Koryak Mountains are similar but have a Cenozoic origin. Volcanic activity took place in these areas during the Cenozoic.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Trachea

In vertebrates and invertebrates, a tube or system of tubes that carries air. In insects, a few land arachnids, and myriapods, the trachea is an elaborate system of small, branching tubes that carry oxygen to individual body cells; in most land vertebrates, the trachea is the windpipe, which conveys air from the larynx to the two main

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Bachman, John

Ordained in 1814, Bachman obtained a parish in Charleston, S.C., the following year. Long a natural-history enthusiast, he published studies of southern animals and works on botany

Monday, February 14, 2005

Biblical Literature, The Letter of Paul to the Galatians

Paul's Letter to the Galatians is a forceful and passionate letter dealing with a very specific question: the relation of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in the church, the problem of justification through faith not works of the Law, and freedom in Christ. Paul probably wrote from Ephesus c. 53 - 54 to a church he had founded in the territory of Galatia in Asia

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Rush, William

Rush trained to make ornamental ship carvings and figureheads. During the American Revolution he served as an officer in Philadelphia's militia and campaigned with George Washington in the city's defense. Shortly after

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Mountain, The Andes

The Nazca Plate, which underlies most of the southeastern Pacific, is being subducted beneath most of the west coast of South America at a rapid rate of 80 to 100 millimetres per year. A nearly continuous chain of volcanoes lines the margin of South America, and the world's tallest volcano, Ojos del Salado (6,893 metres), is one of these peaks. The Andean range, however, is more than just

Friday, February 11, 2005

Durham

Administrative, geographic, and historic county of northeastern England, on the North Sea coast. The administrative, geographic, and historic counties cover somewhat different areas. The administrative county comprises seven districts: Chester-le-Street, Derwentside, the city of Durham, Easington, the borough of Sedgefield, Teesdale, and Wear Valley. The geographic

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Haakon V Magnusson,

The younger son of Magnus VI Lawmender, Haakon succeeded his older brother, Erik II Magnusson, in 1299. Determined to reduce the

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Tasmania

J.L. Davies (ed.), Atlas of Tasmania (1965), offers comprehensive map coverage with detailed commentary. The Tasmanian Year Book (biennial) is the most comprehensive single reference. C.F. Burrett and E.L. Martin (eds.), Geology and Mineral Resources of Tasmania (1989), is also useful. Margaret Stones and Winifred Curtis, The Endemic Flora of Tasmania, 6 pt. (1967 - 76), is a definitive study, beautifully illustrated. W.A. Townsley, The Government of Tasmania (1976), is a good political guide. The great 19th-century history is by John West, The History of Tasmania, 2 vol. (1852, reissued in 1 vol., 1971); its successor is by Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, 2 vol. (1983 - 91), who has also written A Short History of Tasmania (1985). Outstanding historical monographs include Peter Bolger, Hobart Town (1973); Geoffrey Blainey, The Peaks of Lyell, 4th ed. (1978), on copper mining; and Marilyn Lake, A Divided Society: Tasmania During World War I (1975). P. Conrad, Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania (1988, also published as Behind the Mountain: Return to Tasmania, 1989), is an account by an intellectual aghast at the oddities of his native spot.

Monday, February 07, 2005

National Socialism

German �Nationalsozialismus�, also called �Nazism� or �Naziism� totalitarian movement led by Adolf Hitler as head of the Nazi Party in Germany. In its intense nationalism, mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, National Socialism shared many elements with Italian fascism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Madi

Primarily hoe cultivators with millet as their staple crop, the Madi also fish, hunt, and keep cattle; smithing is an important

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Cipher

All ciphers involve either transposition or substitution, or a combination of these two mathematical operations - i.e., product ciphers. In transposition cipher systems, elements of the plaintext

Friday, February 04, 2005

John Of Ephesus,

A Syrian monk, he became a deacon at Amida in 529, but because of the Byzantine persecution of the Monophysites he was forced to lead a nomadic life. Later, at the Eastern imperial court of Constantinople, John was

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Zaramo

Also spelled �Dzalamo�, or �Saramo� a people who reside in the area surrounding Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, and comprise the major ethnic component in the city. The Zaramo are considered to be part of the cluster of Swahili peoples on the coast of East Africa who have incorporated elements from many diverse ethnic backgrounds but who are unified in the Islamic faith and in the use of the Swahili

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Astor, John Jacob

Astor started a fur-goods shop in New York City about 1786 after learning about the fur trade while aboard the ship that brought him to the U.S. Benefitting

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

H I Region

Also spelled �Hi Region, � in astronomy, interstellar matter composed of neutral hydrogen atoms. Most of the matter between the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, to which the Earth belongs, as well as in other spiral galaxies, occurs in the form of relatively cold, neutral hydrogen gas with a temperature of only about 100 K and a density of approximately one atom per cubic cm. There also exist cold compact

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