Mary Purnell Revesby. The word "catholic" has a noble and secular ancestry dating back to the Greeks. In Homer we find "holos" meaning "whole, entire, complete". Aristotle uses the term "cath-holon" to refer to a general or universal truth.
The word 'catholicus' was taken over by Latin Christian writers in the 2nd century to mean 'universal'. Use of the word "catholic" with lower case inital letter preserves its original pre-Christian meaning. Humphrey Charles, Bronte. The word "catholic" comes from the Greek "katholikos" meaning universal.
So a catholic mind is all-embracing, one of varied interests and ideas. Anna Smith, Runcorn, Qld. Catholic, the actual word, is unrelated to religion.
It means from dictionary. Another meaning is Including or concerning all humankind; universal. This second meaning is the one from which Roman Catholic is derived, which I guess is the church for all humankind. Most people shorten Roman Catholic to simply Catholic.
This also explains why the Anglican Church's creed states that we are "part of one Holy Catholic Church" the exact wording escapes me through years of non-attendance! I remember we discussed that at Bible Study one night, as we were confused as to why Anglicans of which I am one would declare that I am part of the Catholic Church when Anglicans and Catholics had been fighting for centuries and were in fact separate Churches. It was pointed out to me the true meaning of Catholic, and its separation from the Roman Catholic Church which has the Pope as its figurehead.
Peter Hatley, Glendenning. Tennis players are seeded so that the top players do not meet each other in the early rounds, but rather meet in the finals. This is analogous to a farmer planting evenly spaced seeds. To continue the analogy, the seeds will grow and flourish in the finals. Joseph Lee, Belfield. It derives from the verbal sense of scattering seed, as with cloud-seeding. The top players are spread apart so that they can out-perform the weeds before competing with each other.
If re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere is so dangerous, why doesn't the space shuttle go slower? Leaving aside the considerable control problems of slowly "flying" an unpowered aircraft with relatively insignificant wing area for its weight, to go from orbital velocity and altitude to being stationary at ground level you need to convert the orbital motion kinetic and altitude potential energy into heat.
This can be done by atmospheric braking or by firing retro rockets. The latter method is now used to slightly brake the shuttle out of orbit. To slow the shuttle down with rocket power would require about the same additional fuel as is required to put it into orbit, plus further fuel to put this additional fuel into orbit with the shuttle, which is not practical.
Chris de Zylva, St Ives. Orbital speed and gravity are sucking it towards the earth at 8k per second, a pace requiring far too much fuel and power to resist with puny rocketry. The atmosphere works as the only brake. Freewheeling downhill with the brakes on creates all that friction and heat and the need for a foolproof heat shield. In , Sir Issac Newton published in his "Principia" the result of an idea that had been germinating in his mind since This was the first recognition of the importance of the gravitational forces, and their effect in regions far beyond the immediate vicinity of the earth's surface.
So when the space shuttle returns to earth, it'll required to apply the "brakes" or retro-rockets. This action will obviously produce heat, vibration, noise, gases, fire, light, etc and makes this maneuver very delicate and dangerous, as probably Dr Andy Thomas could explain in more detail.
Fausto Mino, Schofields. The shuttle operates at an orbital altitude of nautical miles. During de-orbit, the shuttle has to change from flying like a spacecraft into flying like a missile, and then finally into flying like a glider. Key point is that all of this must be accomplished without exceeding the thermal or structural limits of the spacecraft. Going slower at re-entry may require a lot of extra fuel and may increase the vertical velocity component for the rest of the descent, so re-entry temperatures would be higher.
It is the ultimate balance of compromises, but the amount of fuel needed to descend into the atmosphere with speed reduction at critical altitudes and air densities along with the associated equipment would be too expensive and probably as hazardous if not more so than the current re-entry profile. Francisco Mota, Thornleigh. The Shuttle has to travel at a sufficiently high speed so that the centripetal acceleration required by it motion in its nearly circular path matches the acceleration due to gravity at that altitude.
The same is true for any other satellite travelling in an orbit about the Earth. Hence, the engineers have to design a heavy-duty heat shield for space vehicles requiring re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.
Lawrence J. Doctors, Kensington. It takes enormous energy to get the space shuttle up to a speed of around 16, mph to stay in Earth orbit.
Firing a retro rocket, removes enough of that energy for the shuttle to slow and approach the atmosphere at a gradual angle. The bulk of the atmosphere is about 20 miles thick and travelling at such great speeds, it's still a very sudden entry.
Nearly all of the remaining energy turns into heat due to air friction, so the more gradual the approach the safer. If the retro rocket fired for a longer time, this would certainly slow it down a little more, but unfortunately the shuttle would begin to drop into the atmosphere at an even steeper angle.
The shuttle would heat up at a much faster rate, adding greatly to the danger. Grahame Wilson, Lane Cove. The only thing thing that keeps satellites in orbit is the high orbital speed which counters the pull of earth's gravity. In the shuttle example, the orbit speed is around 30, kmh. If it travelled slower, it would inexorably spiral back to earth and burn up in the upper atmosphere.
Any faster and it might achieve escape velocity and soar off into outer space. In the shuttle case, the re-entry is planned around a critical re-entry angle.
The reason why re-entry occurs at such high re-entry speed, around 22, kmh, is that to slow the shuttle down any further would require a lengthy rocket burn to shed speed. During the launch, the main thrust comes from the Solid Rocket Boosters SRBs , in combination with the shuttle's liquid rocket engines which are primarily fuelled by that massive rust-colored external fuel tank.
Both the SRBs and the external fuel tank are depleted and jettisoned before the shuttle reaches orbit. Using either to slow the shuttle down further is simply not an option. Instead of burning scarce fuel, the shuttle sheds speed by utilizing the friction of the upper atmosphere to create drag.
This method requires only enough fuel to slow the craft down from 30, kmh to 22, kmh but it does generate the extraordinary skin temperatures experienced by the thermal protective tiles.
Some students communicated their messages via e-mail and others via voice recordings. Participants who received the voice messages accurately gleaned the sarcasm or lack thereof 73 percent of the time, but those who received the statements via e-mail did so only 56 percent of the time, hardly better than chance.
By comparison, the e-mailers had anticipated that 78 percent of participants would pick up on the sarcasm inherent in their sarcastic statements.
That is, they badly overestimated their ability to communicate the tenor of their sarcastic statements via e-mail. They guessed they would correctly interpret the tone of the e-mails they received about 90 percent of the time. They were considerably less overconfident about their ability to interpret voice messages. In recent research, my colleagues and I discovered an upside to this otherwise gloomy picture of sarcasm.
In one study, we assigned some participants to engage in either simulated sarcastic, sincere, or neutral dialogues by choosing from pre-written responses on a sheet of paper. Others were recipients of these different types of messages from others.
Not surprisingly, the participants exposed to sarcasm reported more interpersonal conflict than those in other groups. More interestingly, those who engaged in a sarcastic conversation fared better on creativity tasks. The processes involved in initiating and delivering a sarcastic comment improved the creativity and cognitive functioning of both the commenter and the recipient. Why might sarcasm enhance creativity? Because the brain must think creatively to understand or convey a sarcastic comment, sarcasm may lead to clearer and more creative thinking.
To either create or understand sarcasm, tone must overcome the contradiction between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates, and is facilitated by, abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking. Consider the following example, which comes from a conversation one of my co-authors on the research Adam Galinsky, of Columbia had a few weeks before getting married.
This is not the first set of studies showing that creativity can be boosted by things that would commonly be considered creativity killers. In one series of studies , for example, researchers found that moderate noise can be an untapped source of creativity, providing a welcome distraction that helps the brain make disparate associations. In addition, alcohol is believed to aid creativity , up to a point, by reducing focus and relaxing the mind.
Oh, please yourselves. This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent, That with the strook he was almoost yblent; And he was redy with his iren hoot, And Nicholas amydde the ers he smoot, Of gooth the skyn an hande brede aboute, The hoote kultour brende so his toute, And for the smert he wende for to dye.
Help for Goddes herte! The jokes that small children make up. They are always far more unexpected than anything us adults, who have lost so much spontaneity, can come up with. Real, honest true-life stories. He came back with flowers and a bakewell tart. Sometimes being a form of satire, but wittier and more sustained.
It requires a deeper contemplation of the circumstances than the often unthought, off-the-shoulder satirical snap. A good farce can maintain the humour for a whole play or programme on the single theme, while satire is but a single shot wasted in a moment.
Readers reply: if sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, what is the highest? Dr Willis Stone, London Send new questions to nq theguardian.
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