Coffee Klatch

Here’s an interesting thing that I came across today–a website with meditation rooms. Several virtual rooms are available with soothing pictures and relaxing sounds. Themes include: Space, Winter, Floral, Forest, Water, and Zen, each with its own mood and energy level.

Visit http://www.lime.com/meditation_room to access these meditation rooms. You can also download them for your iPod or subscribe to them via iTunes.

When you’re getting stressed or tense from work or school or personal situations, take a few minutes to relax in one of these meditation rooms. Purposefully relax your shoulders and arms, letting the tension go while you let the sights and sounds of the virtual meditation room salve your soul.

(Nice, eh?)

I heard some interesting statistics today about book sales in the U.S. Last year, 1,446,000 DIFFERENT books were sold in the various bookstores around the country. That’s the number of different titles.

Now… how many of those books do you think sold more than 100,000 copies? It was a grand total of 483! Or 0.0003% (three ten-thousandths of one percent) of all the books sold.

On the flip side, how many books do you think sold FEWER than 99 copies? 1,123,000! 78% of all the different books sold in the U.S. sold under 100! Now, that’s not to say that all those books NEVER sold more than 100 copies. That’s just in the one year. But still, interesting statistics.

And if you’re in the process of writing that novel with the hopes of producing a best seller, just realize what a small percentage of books actually make it. Not to disillusion anyone, but at least to maybe keep you from resting ALL your hopes on that novel.

In March 2003 I started a little business offering genealogy research for people. It was fun and I was able to provide an excellent service to quite a few people, tracking the family trees of all but 2 people back to European royalty. While I still enjoy it and can do it for people, I haven’t had “business” in a couple years and have decided to discontinue the RoyaltyLinks website.

My blog is on this royaltylinks.com website, but it will soon be changing to a new URL and domain. I’ve already registered pfitzinger.net and will be using that for my blog and for most other resources I’ve provided on royaltylinks.com.

The URL for this blog will be changing to http://coffeeklatch.pfitzinger.net sometime this next week. Since the royaltylinks domain is registered until March 2008, I’ll just set the old blog URL to forward to the new URL. That should make the transition as clean as possible. If you normally get my RSS feed, you’ll have to change the feed URL, but otherwise it should be relatively painless.

If you have any problems making the switch or if you can’t find some resource you’ve been using, please let me know. Thanks.

An Easter Egg is a feature that’s hidden within a program, DVD, website, etc., that you have to activate by clicking in a special place or typing a special key combination. Well, today I found out that GOOGLE EARTH has a VERY COOL Easter Egg.

It’s a FLIGHT SIMULATOR! Not a pretend plane with up, down, left, right, fast, and slow, but with actual controls for the rudder, elevator, flaps, etc. Once you’re in Google Earth, just hit CTRL-SHIFT-A to enter the Flight Simulator. You have to choose which airport you want to use and there aren’t as many as I’d like. The closest to where I live was JFK Airport in New York City. Still, it’s fun to fly around over the virtual Earth as displayed by Google Earth. And much harder than you’d think!

Google Earth is awesome anyway, as I’ve blogged in the past, and that was before they added the SKY MAP, which allows you to scan the night sky and zoom through space. Complete with pictures from the Hubble telescope and more!

Check it out by clicking the link above. If you have comments on the flight simulator or on Google Earth in general, I’d welcome them in response to this post.

There’s another cool show on the Discovery Channel that I need to recommend. While Mythbusters is one of my favorite shows, this one is just about as good. It doesn’t have as much personality as Mythbusters, but it’s always really interesting. It’s called “How It’s Made.” Okay, technically, it’s on the Science Channel, but that’s just a subdivision of the Discovery Channel.

What’s so interesting is that they take you behind the scenes and show you how common, everyday objects are made (go figure!). Each episode covers four different things. Some of my favorite episodes have been about buttons, breakfast cereal, trombones, bread, holograms, and canned corn.

You can watch a few of their features in their online video gallery (watch the bread one!). And here’s the Episode Guide.

(Another new favorite is “Dirty Jobs,” but that’s a topic for a later post.)

Are you crepuscular? Kangaroos are. Bog turtles are. Dogs and cats are. Moose are. Rabbits, ferrets, and mice are. Even mosquitoes and great horned owls usually are crepuscular. But are you?

We tend to think of ourselves as either “morning people” or “night people,” but many of us are probably crepuscular. That means we’re more active during the twilight times of morning and evening. I’ve usually thought of myself as a morning person, but I just might be crepuscular instead.

Besides having a useful definition, it’s just a cool-sounding word! Find a way to use it today!

Have you ever heard a koala? I had no idea they sounded like this. Here are some links to audio files of koalas. Give ‘em a listen!

http://www.junglewalk.com/popup.asp?type=a&AnimalAudioID=623

http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds1/animal/Bears/koala[1].wav

http://www.pulseplanet.com/archive/Jun07/3981.html

Here’s a really good article that explains how HD-DVDs work (with how HD itself works thrown into the mix). It’s really interesting. What I like best is the comparison between regular DVDs and HD-DVDs. They make it easy to understand and use good pictures as well.

As with many of these really helpful articles, it comes from HowStuffWorks.com. The article is called “How HD-DVDs Work.”

There are two types of verbs: transitive and intransitive. Transitive verbs require a direct object while intransitive verbs don’t have direct objects. You usually see these in the dictionary with the abbreviations v.t. and v.i..

Transitive Examples: Make, Cut, Give
Intransitive Examples: Fall, Speak, Pause

There are times when transitive verbs don’t have a direct object, but they’re usually implied. And then there are quite a few verbs that come in both forms, meaning they can have a direct object or not, such as Drive or Whisper. Here’s a good website with more explanations.

Anyway, my problem is with how some people use the word “grow.” Yes, it is another one that can be either type of verb, depending on the definition. Here are the definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition:

INTRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To increase in size by a natural process.
2a. To expand; gain: The business grew under new owners. b. To increase in amount or degree; intensify: The suspense grew.
3. To develop and reach maturity.
4. To be capable of growth; thrive: a plant that grows in shade.
5. To become attached by or as if by the process of growth: tree trunks that had grown together.
6. To come into existence from a source; spring up: love that grew from friendship.
7. To come to be by a gradual process or by degrees; become: grow angry; grow closer.

TRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To cause to grow; raise: grow tulips.
2. To allow (something) to develop or increase by a natural process: grow a beard.
3. Usage Problem To cause to increase or expand by concerted effort: strategies that grew the family business.

PHRASAL VERBS: grow into 1. To develop so as to become: A boy grows into a man. 2. To develop or change so as to fit: She grew into her job. He grew into the relationship slowly. grow on (or upon) 1. To become gradually more evident to: A feeling of distrust grew on me. 2. To become gradually more pleasurable or acceptable to: a taste that grows on a person. grow up To become an adult.

IDIOM: grow out of To develop or come into existence from: an article that grew out of a few scribbled notes.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English growen, from Old English grwan. See ghr- in Appendix I.

OTHER FORMS: grower —NOUN
growing·ly —ADVERB

USAGE NOTE: Grow has been used since medieval times as an intransitive verb, as in Our business has been growing steadily for 10 years. It has been used with an object since the 18th century, meaning “to produce or cultivate,” as in We grow corn in our garden. But the transitive use applied to business and nonliving things is quite new. It came into full bloom during the 1992 presidential election, when nearly all the candidates were concerned with “growing the economy.” The Usage Panel is decidedly less fond of this development than business leaders and politicians are. Eighty percent of the Panel rejects the phrase grow our business. The Panel is more accepting of, though not enthusiastic about, the phrase grow our way, perhaps because of way’s established use in expressions like make our way and find our way: 48 percent accept We’ve got to grow our way out of this recession. The Panel has no affection for the odd but occasionally heard phrase grow down: 98 percent reject If elected, I shall do my utmost to grow down the deficit.

They sum up well what has been bothering me about using the word “grow” transitively with the object of business. The only time “grow” is properly used that way is with things that are living and do grow naturally, like corn in the example. They may be directed, planted, and cultivated, but “growing corn” sounds much different from “growing your business.” It should be “cause to grow.” It’s nice to read that 80% of their Usage Panel rejected the phrase “grow our business.” That’s exactly my problem. And it always irritates me to hear that phrase used.

At least I now can document that it’s not actually an appropriate or proper grammatical phrase and can say why.

Current music: Duruflé: Requiem

Yes, you’re reading it correctly. A PINK dolphin was seen in a lake in Louisiana a couple weeks ago. Apparently they’re a rare but not-unheard-of type of albino dolphin. They say it’s a bottlenose dolphin and not related to a pinkish breed of dolphins that live in the Amazon River.

Story by FOX News.

In other marine news, a WHALE was caught in June off the coast of Alaska that had the head of a nineteenth-century harpoon embedded in it. Whales are reported to live for up to 200 years, but this is the first time one has been documented so precisely (between 115 and 130 years old).