The letter “J” wasn’t added to the alphabet until after Shakespeare.

ARTS & CULTURE

It wasn’t until after the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) that the modern English alphabet welcomed “J” as its 26th and final letter. In fact, first-edition copies of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from 1597 were titled Romeo and Iuliet, as the letter “I” was often used as a written substitute for words with a “J” sound in English. In order to fully understand the letter’s origins, however, we need to go all the way back to ancient Roman times. 

In Roman numerals, a swash was sometimes used to denote the end of sequences — for instance, the number 13 often visually appeared in handwritten text as “XIIJ” instead of “XIII.” In classical Latin and in various European languages through the medieval era, the letter “I” was used as both a vowel and as a consonant, and the constant version of “I” morphed over the years and eventually began appearing as a “J” shape. In the late 15th century and early 16th century, a few scholars wrote treatises on grammar in which they suggested using “J” as the constant version of “I.”  In English, this change took hold in the early 17th century. A good illustration of this is the King James Bible, one of the first modern English texts to print “J” as a unique letter. The 1611 edition uses the consonant “I” in words such as “Iesus” and “Ioseph,” while the 1629 edition uses the letter “J,” paving the way for the eventual widespread inclusion of “J” in the English alphabet.

Thomas Edison invented the concept of the job interview.

SCIENCE & INDUSTRY

Although Thomas Edison was awarded 2,332 worldwide patents as an inventor, one of his lasting contributions to modern society was not proprietary: the job interview. Edison was not just a prolific inventor — he was also a businessman in charge of an industrial empire. His corporation, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., employed more than 10,000 workers at dozens of companies. Edison wanted employees who could memorize large quantities of information and also make efficient business decisions. To find them, he devised an extensive questionnaire to assess job candidates’ knowledge and personality.

Edison began using tests for candidate assessment in the late 19th century, but the questions he asked then were very specific to open positions he needed filled. Over time, he expanded on the idea, including questions that were not directly related to the job. While interviewing research assistants, for example, Edison served them soup to see if interviewees would season the soup before they tasted it; those who did were automatically disqualified as it suggested they were prone to operate on assumptions. In 1921, Edison debuted the Edison Test, a knowledge test with more than 140 questions. Questions varied depending on the job position, but all interviewees were asked about information outside of their areas of expertise. The queries ranged from agricultural in nature (“Where do we get prunes from?”) to commercial (“In what cities are hats and shoes made?”) to the macabre (“Name three powerful poisons”). After a copy of the questionnaire was leaked to The New York Times, Edison had to change the question bank multiple times to ensure applicants took the exam without any outside assistance.

A score of 90% was required to pass, and out of the 718 people who had taken the test as of October 1921, only 32 (just 2%!) succeeded. The test was difficult, to say the least. Edison’s own son Theodore failed it while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More famously, Albert Einstein failed the exam because he forgot the speed of sound. The 1920s saw an upswing in college-educated people in the workforce, leading to increased competition for skilled labor, and thus more applicants for employers to choose from. Edison’s strategy of questioning candidates to assess their personality and aptitude was innovative at the time, and is still standard practice today — though employers are more likely to ask about someone’s greatest accomplishment than the origins of prunes.

My addition to this article in 100 years they will claim Elon musk invented everything that is great and powerful in the 20 21st century as well. Let’s stop giving credit to people who are good at monopolizing other peoples ideas.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

Trump was found guilty on 34 counts and people still insist that he should be re-elected. This must be caused by some sort of virus or possibly an invasive worm in the brain. The crimes he was found guilty of in this trial all involve lying about your income and trying to hide things that you were doing to get elected. Most of the damage monetarily was to the state of New York, the greatest damage was the fact that he won the election.
That event has made it possible to be a total ass about anything and everything that shows disrespect for your fellow human beings. There seems to be no limit to the depths people can go to for the sake of degradation of others. Why is that? It is possible because the election put Trump in the WH and he proceeded to destroy civility by being the ass that is self.
When the leader of the pack does something the followers will do the same. Had a First Sergeant once that shaved his head before a field problem and about 50% of the unit followed that move. It may be very good for keeping clean but it opens the door to other issues. Point being that when people stop thinking for themselves and let themselves be led things tend to go wrong. Our national pastime of bullying and degradation proves that.
Now that he is pronounced guilty will it change minds? Some yes, others will continue to listen to his version of the story and call it anything but true and continue to follow. If enough follow and they put him in office again they will find that just like the lemmings they are going to jump off the cliff to their deaths, trouble is they are going to take the rest of us with them.
Will prison really solve the problem? The cult seems to be bent on visiting violence on any and all that go counter to the leaders wishes. Violence is not a tactic that we as a nation use to control our population so what can we do that will cause these people to stop and think about what they are doing? Some have seen jail from the Jan 6 issue but it has been years since that incident we need a quick solution.
Many are pushing to get names and addresses of the jurors, but they hide behind identities on the net. So maybe finding out who these people are and publishing their names will bring some interest from jobs, communities or other sources that will not be pleased.
What do we have to do to regain civility? If you do not like being referred to in derogatory terms do use similar remarks to refer to others. Grow a bit thicker skin. Don’t approach every issue with anger and a willingness to fight. Basically restore the Golden Rule and all our lives will hopefully be much better.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

So the conviction has only sealed the deal and now he will be re-elected for sure, so say some of the pundits that are getting air time. Lots of people are pouring huge amounts of money into his cause, thinking it will be used to win the election, most likely to pay legal fees. At any rate there are some in the nation that have to go sense not to put a convicted felon in the WH.
Over and over the question gets asked why are you all so determined this guy is a victim when he is clearly not. He may be the victim of his ego but if there is a deep state he is not a victim of it. What is the deep state, by the way?
Conspiracy theories are the mainstay of your entire lives, or so it seems. You are looking for things that are not there and convinced that you have found them. Mankind is the only being on this earth that has written language that sets us apart. You can say that we have self awareness but so do other creatures so that is not totally unique. We are the most violent creatures on earth and we have no limits as to who or what we are violent against.
This seems to be a common item in the social media comments pointed at people that do not agree with a certain point of view. Death to those that have caused the great one harm, common idea. So let us change the rules, if you wish someone else death then let that be visited on you regardless of whether the one you wished were dead is or not. Track you down and end your life. I suspect that if that were the cost of holding a difference of opinion and threatening someone else we might not be so free with the threats.
The troubles that have been heaped on Trump’s head are of his own making and he has had the opinion that he is exempt from legal action because he is who he is, a once very rich white man with a very large ego. The time has come to pay the piper and he is feeling sorry for himself not because of what he has done but because he has been caught.
He has made no attempt to really help anyone that has ran interference for him, nor is he likely to do so. They are expendable as is anything that gets in the way of his ego. He wants to be like the people he most admires and those are people like Putin and the leaders of North Korea and China to name a few. They are all great puppet masters and Trump’s problem is that he has not graduated past the Punch and Judy presentation in the park. Let him in the WH and he will feed you and the rest of us to the lions and as long as he walks away with a pocket full of money he will not care.

“Moby-Dick” was inspired by a real whale named Mocha Dick.

ARTS & CULTURE

“Call me Ishmael” is the legendary first line of Moby-Dick, but the protagonist’s name is hardly the most famous in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel. Indeed, he’s probably a distant third to both Captain Ahab and the eponymous whale himself, who was based on a real albino sperm whale named Mocha Dick. Named for the Chilean island near which his decades-long reign of terror took place, Mocha is said to have destroyed more than 20 whaling ships in addition to escaping 80 or so before finally being felled in 1838. His story was told by explorer and newspaper editor J.N. Reynolds, whose article “Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific” was published by The Knickerbocker the following year.

Described by Reynolds as “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength,” whose albinism made him “white as wool,” Mocha was made even more fearsome by the fact that his head was covered in barnacles. He was actually quite docile until he was attacked, and measured 70 feet long at the time of his unjust and untimely passing. As for why Melville changed the name from Mocha to Moby when he wrote his novel, no one knows. The author never revealed his reasoning, and no one has been able to figure it out.