mauler's New Writeups

Yomei (person)

2009-11-12T14:52:00Z

用明

Yômei (518-587) was the 31st Emperor of Japan, according to the official chronology, reigning a mere two years from 585 to 587, before dying of illness and being succeeded by his half-brother Sushun.

Yômei was the half-brother of Emperor Bidatsu, whom he succeeded, and was the father of the legendary Prince Shôtoku by his own half-sister, who was one of his consorts.

Despite his brief reign, Yômei is often cited as the first Japanese Emperor to formally adopt Buddhism as his religion, paving the way for Buddhism to become the state religion under the regency of his son, Prince Shôtoku.

But the supporters of Shintô were still strong in the court at this time, and included the powerful Lord Mononobe no Moriya and Yômei's own brother Prince Anahobe. After Yômei's death, Moriya and Anahobe made an abortive attempt to seize the throne and ensure that Shintô would remain the…

Diopatra (person)

2009-11-12T14:30:44Z

1. In Greek Mythology, Diopatra was a naiad who lived in a spring of the river Sperkheios on Mount Othrys in Malis (in what is now northern Greece). One time the god Poseidon came upon her and was so struck by her beauty that he caused her sisters, who were with her at the time, to sprout roots and turn into poplar trees temporarily so that he could rape her unhindered.

(Source: Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 22)

Back to E2 Dictionary of Classical Mythology

2. In biology, Diopatra is a genus of undersea tube worm, whose classification is as follows:

Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Annelida
Class Polychaeta
Order Aciculata
Suborder Eunicida
Family Onuphidae
Genus Diopatra

Individual species include:

Diopatra cuprea
Diopatra denticulata
…

Hijiki (recipe)

2009-10-20T13:03:36Z

鹿尾菜

Hijiki (Sargassum fusiforme, aka Hizikia fusiformis) is a dark brown seaweed that grows on rocks along the coast in the northern regions of Asia, and is an important part of a traditional Japanese diet. The kanji for hijiki are ateji, and mean "Deer-tail grass."

Hijiki is rich in dietary fiber and magnesium and also has ridiculous amounts of calcium, iron. It is also a good source of protein, iodine, phosphorus, potassium, niacin, and vitamins A, B, and C. Among the more new age-y nutrients found in hijiki are phytohormones (held to fight cancer), and alginic acid (held to cleanse the body of toxic heavy metals).

Traditionally, daily consumption of small amounts of hijiki was held to held to help women have longer, more lustrous black hair, and hijiki is still used today in several types of Japanese…

Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing (poetry)

2009-09-09T13:45:23Z

Your gaze has, from the passing-by of the cars,
so exhausted become that it holds nothing more.
You feel as if there were a billion billion cars
and behind a billion cars, no world.

The sweaty course of your increasingly stubby fingers,
which in ever-smaller circles trace,
something like a sigil of impotence upon your desk,
at which, benumbed, your mighty intellect slumbers.

Only sometimes the office window blinds release
by themselves, sliding down, but the image remains,
passes through your body's inert stillness—
and festers in your heart.

game score (idea)

2009-06-19T06:20:48Z

Game score is a metric designed by baseball stats guru Bill James which is used to measure the quality of the individual performance by a starting pitcher in a given baseball game.

To determine a pitcher's game score...

Start with 50 points.
Add 1 point for each out recorded.
Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th.
Add 1 point for each strikeout.
Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed.
Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed.
Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed.
Subtract 1 point for each walk.

The total number of points accrued when the pitcher exits the game can be used as a measure of the quality of his or her performance. A final score of 50 or higher is considered a "quality start," which means that under most circumstances a pitcher giving this type of performance would usually earn a victory for his team. A score of 90 or…

Atlas Bear (thing)

2009-06-17T14:03:22Z

The Atlas Bear (Ursus arctos crowtheri) is an extinct species of Brown Bear, very similar in size and appearance to the American Grizzly Bear, which once roamed across vast swaths of Northern Africa, making its home in the once forested slopes of the Atlas Mountains, from which its English name derives. It was Africa's only native species of bear.

The populations of the Atlas Bear were first significantly diminished during Roman times when the Romans captured thousands of these bears to be slaughtered in gladiatorial games. In later years the bears were further decimated by deforestation of their mountainous homelands and by the desertification of the Sahara, which drastically reduced their natural habitat, and by overhunting by humans.

By the 19th century, the bears' range had shrunk to a tiny area in the immediate vicinity of Mount Atlas in Morocco. As late as the early 1830s, the bears were still plentiful enough to be regularly…