Optimates (, ; Latin for "best ones"; sg. optimas) and populares (; Latin for "supporters of the people"; sg. popularis) are labels applied to politicians, political groups, traditions, strategies, or ideologies in the late Roman Republic. There is "heated academic discussion" as to whether Romans would have recognised an ideological content or political split in the label. Among other things, optimates have been seen as supporters of the continued authority of the senate, politicians who operated mostly in the senate, or opponents of the populares. The populares have also been seen as focusing...

The Blue Banana (Dutch: blauwe banaan; French: banane bleue; German: Blaue Banane; Italian: banana blu), also known as the European Megalopolis or the Liverpool–Milan Axis, is a discontinuous corridor of urbanization in Western and Central Europe, with a population of around 100 million. The conceptualisation of the area as a "Blue Banana" was developed in 1989 by RECLUS, a group of French geographers managed by Roger Brunet. It stretches approximately from North West England through the English Midlands across Greater London to the European Metropolis of Lille, the Benelux states with the Dutch...

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults are unconstitutional. The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases had found the U.S. Constitution provides, even though it is not explicitly enumerated. It based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's own relationships and of American traditions of non-interference with any or all forms of private sexual activities between consenting adults. In 1998, John Geddes...

Verb: snarf (third-person singular simple present snarfs, present participle snarfing, simple past and past participle snarfed)

1. (transitive, slang) To eat or consume greedily.
2. (transitive, slang) To take something by dubious means, but without the connotations of stealing; to take something without regard to etiquette.
3. (transitive, slang, computing) To slurp (computing slang sense); to load in entirely; to copy as a whole.
4. (transitive, slang, computing, by extension) To fetch (in general).
5. 2001: Brad A. Myers, Choon Hong Peck, Jeffrey Nicols, Dave Kong, and Robert Miller, Interacting at a Distance Using Semantic Snarfing, in Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, pages 305-314.
6. Other future applications of the semantic snarfing idea might include classrooms, where students might snarf interesting pieces of content from the instructor's presentation; […]

A Night in the Lonesome October is a novel by American writer Roger Zelazny published in 1993, near the end of his life. It was his last book, and one of his five personal favorites. The book is divided into 32 chapters, each representing one "night" in the month of October (plus one "introductory" chapter). The story is told in the first-person, akin to journal entries. Throughout, 33 full-page illustrations by Gahan Wilson (one per chapter, plus one on the inside back cover) punctuate a tale heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft. The title is a line from Edgar Allan Poe's "Ulalume" and Zelazny...

Jagoff or jag-off is an American English derogatory slang term from Pittsburghese meaning a person who is a jerk, stupid or inept. It is most prominent in the Pittsburgh area and Pennsylvania in general, along with wide use in Chicago, particularly in the Irish taverns. The Dictionary of American Regional English defines the term as a "general term of disparagement". It is an archetypical Pittsburgh word, evoking feelings of delight among Pittsburgh expatriates. Despite the term's phonetic resemblance to jack off, the two possibly have different origins and jagoff, while derogatory or playful...