Immortal Books

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg aka ‘Rube Goldberg’ was born on 4th July, 1883, to a Jewish couple – Max and Hannah Goldberg, in California, United States. His father – Max Goldberg, was a police and fire commissioner of the city of San Francisco. Rube graduated with a College of Mining degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1904, after which he began working as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department of the city of San Francisco. He realized that engineering was not his calling, and quit his job at the Water and Sewers Department to join ‘San Francisco Chronicle’ where he worked as a sports cartoonist. This was the beginning of Rube Goldberg – the cartoonist, who eventually became one of the most famous cartoonists in the world. Given below are more of such interesting facts about Rube Goldberg’s life which will help you trace his life as a cartoonist.

•Rube Goldberg quit his job at the San Francisco Chronicle to take up a job at the San Francisco Bulletin wherein he worked till 1907.
•In 1907, he moved to the city of New York wherein he drew cartoons for five different newspapers – including some big names like the New York Evening Mail and New York Evening Journal.
•In his stint with editorial cartooning, which began in 1938, Goldberg worked as a political cartoonist for The New York Sun, The New York Journal and The Journal-American.
•He produced several cartoon series – most popular among which were Mike and Ike, Boob McNutt, Lunatics I Have Met, They all Looked Good When They Are Far Away, Foolish Questions, etc., which brought him all the fame in the United States.
•Rube Goldberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Best Editorial Cartoon for his cartoon ‘Peace Today’ – his satirical take on the development and use of atomic weapons.
•Other that the Pulitzer Prize, Goldberg was also awarded the Gold T-Square Award (1955) and the Banshee’s Silver Lady Award (1959) for his works.
•As an author, Goldberg wrote two popular books – How to Remove the Cotton from a Bottle of Aspirin (1959) and Rube Goldberg vs. the Machine Age (1968).
•He was the first cartoonist to have his work exhibited at the National Museum of American History in Washington in 1970.
•A ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ refers to a device which is deliberately made in such a manner that it would do even the simplest of task in a complex way. In 1931, the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted the term ‘Rube Goldberg’ as an adjective for accomplishing something simple by complex means; and that is no doubt the biggest honor that a person can get.
•Rube Goldberg died on 7th December, 1970, at the age of 87, and was cremated at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York. Continue reading »

I’m sure all of you have seen a harp, whether in reality, on the television or Internet or pictures of it. At the first glance, it looks roughly like a right-angled triangle with curved sides mounted on a short, straight base. The ‘hypotenuse’ side of this triangle, i.e., the longest arm is usually straight or slanted but never curved, unlike the other two arms. When made to stand on its short base, vertical strings fill up the space inside this triangular frame and these are tightly stretched from end to end to produce musical vibration when strummed in the perpendicular direction by an instrumentalist’s fingers. Following are some more facts about harp:-

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First things first, let’s take a quick look at the harp’s origins. The harp is one of the few musical instruments to have been originated in the prehistoric era and which still remains among us in more or less the same form in which it was first created.
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More often than not, the roughly triangular frame of the harp is made of wood. The strings are stretched between the soundboard, which is the slightly slanted and uncurved arm of the entire triangular frame, and the curved, often elaborately carved, top.
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Apart from the soundboard, a harp is made up of the base, column (the straight hypotenuse perpendicular to the base), neck (the lowest point in the curve of the topmost arm of the frame) and the tuning pins at the conjunction point of the strings and the upper arc.
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There are primarily two major types of harps that are used for concerts, solo and symphony performances – pedal harps and lever harps. Pedal harps are the typical concert harps and usually have a number of pedals at the base which are used for changing notes and for switching keys. Lever harps, also known as folk harps and Celtic harps, are floor harps that do not have pedals. The former type of harps have around 41-47 strings while the latter may have just about 20-40 strings.
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The harp, a major Irish musical instrument, is the political symbol of Ireland.
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Harps are not confined to European culture alone. Engravings and paintings inside tombs of various ancient Egyptian pharaohs depict numerous figures playing harps.
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•As friendly as a black lab.
•As sleepy as a bear.
•As tall as a Sequoia tree.
•As pink as a flamingo.
•As brave as a lion.
•As brown as a berry.
•As quiet as a mouse.
•As sharp as a razor.
•As fat as the Pentagon.
•As slow as a snail.
•As fast as a cheetah.
•As annoying as a pesky bug.
•As silly as a clown.
•As hot as the sun.
•As hot as the Sahara Desert.
•As musical as a hummingbird.
•As fat as a blown up blue balloon.
•As stubborn as an untrained dog.
•As loud as my brother who is always screaming.
•As smart as Albert Einstein.
•As white as my great-grandmother’s hair.
•As loony as my sister when she stands on the tire swing at home.
•As fierce as a tiger that was asleep in his cage until my brother pulled his tail.
Simile Examples in Poetry

Life’s Pearl of Wisdom
Here and there in oysters fall,
A single grain of sand.
Producing later a lustrous ball,
In a fisher man’s hand… ~ Michael P. Johnson

Moon Poetess
Hands flicker, the smokes hurries
And insignia like ice blows in appearance
So seated and commanding twisting joints.
Powers, so she use and sleep… ~ Ebi Robert

Role Model
A role model is someone
Whom you always want to be.
Someone who gives you hope
When you are down… ~ Kholekile Monakali

If you thought these similes were interesting, then take a look at: •Examples of Similes
•Simile Examples
Simile Examples in Literature

My love is like a red, red rose, that is newly sprung in June. ~ Robert Burns

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate. ~ Shakespeare

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore… ~ Poe Continue reading »

Here is list that contains names of some world renowned educational publishers from all around the globe. Some of these names are a century old and some are pretty new.

Macmillan
#1 on the esteemed educational publishers list is the name Macmillan. Founded in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, two Scottish brothers from the Isle of Arran. It was founded in the UK but over the years they have become one of the most famous publishing houses in the world. With their proud heritage and spectacular history, they apply the best modern methods of production and distribution.

Cambridge University Press
It is the oldest printing and publishing house in the world. It was founded on a royal charter by Henry VIII in 1534. Since then, it has been operating as a printer and publisher since the first press book release in 1584. Now Cambridge University press is recognized as one of the best educational publishers in the world, publishing over 2000 books and more than 150 journals a year.

Andromeda
Andromeda is one of the world’s leading publishers. Located in the UK, with a proven record of excellence, loyalty and producing high quality books for adults and children in English and foreign languages. Andromeda has always been a favorite child with critics and has won many awards over the past 25 years.

Deberett’s Limited
For the past 200 years, Deberett’s Limited has been recording the lives of Britain’s most influential people. It still continues to be Britain’s most respected and most recognized authority on the British way of life. Considered as the best publisher of biographical reference books, Deberett’s Limited has recorded the lives of some 100,000 people. These people have played an important part in shaping up our world’s history and will continue to do so.

H.W. Wilson
Founded in 1898 and located in the Bronx since 1917, H.W. Wilson is a leading publisher of reference materials and databases. The company’s indexing and abstracting publications are renowned worldwide. It introduced “The Readers Guide to Political Literature” in 1901, and this guide quickly became a classic in the field of literature, and is still used today.

Library of Congress
Any fine educational publishers list is incomplete without the Library of Congress. It’s America’s oldest Federal cultural institution. The Library of Congress is filled with a collection of more than 121 million items, of which most of them are turned in books and two thirds are in media. This prestigious collection includes the largest map, film and television collections in the world. In addition to helping the Congress in research, the Library of Congress also serves the American population through its popular website.

Princeton University Press Continue reading »

The extended metaphor can be well understood by means of some more examples given below.

Example 1

BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
-The Sun Rising, John Donne

In this extended metaphor poem by John Donne, the sun is accused of being the enemy of two lovers, who are forced to part with each other because it is a new day and they must get on with it. In the following lines, the poet scolds the sun and tells it to wake up little school boys, and disturb other people, implying that others may be slaves of time, but lovers are definitely not. Towards the end of the stanza, the poet makes a point by saying that love knows no time or season, and compares various time frames as the ‘rags’ or the mere appendages of time.

Example 2

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.
-Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger Continue reading »