Moonstruck: 9 Terms of the Lunar Lexicon

http://blog.dictionary.com/moonstruck/

Whether speculating on the havoc it wreaks when it’s full or waxing poetic on the beauty of its glow, people love talking about the moon. This age-old fascination with our celestial satellite has resulted in a lexicon loaded with lunar-themed words, phrases, and meanings. Consider the array of senses we have for the word moon itself: in addition to referencing our silvery orb, the term can mean “to act or wander abstractly or listlessly,” “to sentimentalize or remember nostalgically,” “to gaze dreamily,” or even “to expose one’s buttocks.” Here’s a look at the meanings and histories of 9 moony terms and phrases.

Lunatic
Nowadays, most of us would describe a lunatic as a person of unsound mind. But in the Middle Ages, one might describe a lunatic as a person who is acting under the influence of luna, the Latin word for “moon.” The notion that the moon causes certain kinds of madness or evokes dangerous aspects of our personalities has been around for millennia; Aristotle suggested that the moon could cause insanity by manipulating fluids in the brain, much in the same way it commands the tides.

Moonraker
In sailing, a moonraker is a light sail set at the top of the mast. But this term is also a demonym for people from Wiltshire, England. As the story goes, a few men from Wiltshire were discovered trying to rake the moon’s reflection out of a pond. However, if you ask a Wiltshire native, he or she might tell you another version of the story: the men were raking a pond for kegs of smuggled brandy, and when authorities appeared, the rakers feigned madness.

Moonstruck
Many of us use this term to mean “dreamily romantic,” a sense that was famously evoked in the 1987 movie titled Moonstruck starring Cher and Nicolas Cage, but drawing on the theme of moon-induced madness, moonstruck can also mean “mentally deranged, supposedly by the influence of the moon.”

Moonlight
Not all moon words conjure insanity or dreamy contemplation—moonlight, for example, can evoke industriousness. In addition to the noun meaning of “light of the moon,” moonlight can also mean “to work at an additional job, especially at night.” Approximately 70 years before that dutiful verb sense arose, moonlight meant to commit a crime at night. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, moonlightingalso described fleeing one’s residence under the cover of darkness to skip out on paying rent.

Moonshine
First appearing in the 1400s as another term for moonlight, moonshine is now most commonly used to refer to smuggled or illicitly distilled liquor, a popular term during Prohibition. This black-market booze likely earned this moony moniker because it was smuggled by the light (or shine) of the moon. Moonshine can also mean “nonsense.”

Honeymoon
Many old languages had one word for both month and moon, since it takes approximately one month for the moon to orbit around Earth. The moon in honeymoon draws on this temporal sense, reminding newlyweds that their period of blissful harmony has an expiration date.

Blue moon
This phrase is commonly means “very rarely,” as in “once in a blue moon,” and is sometimes used to suggest that something nearly never happens. Although the phrase is also commonly used to refer to the second full moon in a calendar month, it seems more likely that the “very rarely” sense came from the occasional appearance of a moon as blue in color due to extreme atmospheric conditions.

Over the moon
One of the earliest uses of this idiom, which means “extremely delighted” or “very pleased,” comes courtesy of the following nursery-rhyme line from the 1700s: “High diddle, diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Cow jump’d over the Moon.” Centuries later, J.R.R. Tolkien explained the fantastical abilities of the high-vaulting cow in his book of poetry, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Reach for the moon
A few centuries before cows began jumping over the moon to express their glee, people talking about the moon as a place or thing that is difficult or impossible to reach or obtain. The idiom “reach for the moon,” which means “to desire or attempt something unattainable or difficult to obtain,” incorporates this this wistful theme.

What are some of your favorite moon-related words or terms?

The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling CODY C. DELISTRATY

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-psychological-comforts-of-storytelling/381964/

Why, throughout human history, have people been so drawn to fiction?

When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum. Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy, Austen Henry Layard, Henry Rawlinson, and Hormuzd Rassam began excavations across what is now Syria and Iraq. In the subsequent years they discovered thousands of stone fragments, which they later discovered made up 12 ancient tablets. But even after the tablet fragments had been pieced together, little had been translated. The 3,000-year-old tablets remained nearly as mysterious as when they had been buried in the ruins of Mesopotamian palaces.

An alphabet, not a language, cuneiform is incredibly difficult to translate, especially when it is on tablets that have been hidden in Middle Eastern sands for three millennia. The script is shaped triangularly (cuneus means “wedge” in Latin) and the alphabet consists of more than 100 letters. It is used to write in Sumerian, Akkadian, Urartian, or Hittite, depending on where, when, and by whom it was written. It is also an alphabet void of vowels, punctuation, and spaces between words.

Even so, Smith decided he would be the man to crack the code. Propelled by his interests in Assyriology and biblical archaeology, Smith, who was employed as a classifier by the British Museum, taught himself Sumerian and literary Akkadian.

In 1872, after the tablets had been sitting in the British Museum’s storage for nearly two decades, Smith had a breakthrough: The complex symbols were describing a story. Upon translating the 11th tablet, now widely regarded as the most important part of the story, Smith told a coworker, “I am the first person to read that after 2000 years of oblivion.” The U.K. Prime Minister at the time, William Gladstone, even showed up to a lecture Smith later gave on the tablets, whereupon an audience member commented, “This must be the only occasion on which the British Prime Minister in office has attended a lecture on Babylonian literature.”

The story on the 11th tablet that Smith had cracked was in fact the oldest story in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh has all the trappings of a modern story: a protagonist who goes on an arduous journey, a romance with a seductive woman, a redemptive arc, and a full cast of supporting characters.

Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, sharing them orally even before the invention of writing. In one way or another, much of people’s lives are spent telling stories—often about other people. In her paper “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbarfound stories’ direct relevance to humans: Social topics—especially gossip—account for 65 percent of all human conversations in public places.

Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives—a form of existential problem-solving. In a 1944 study conducted by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel at Smith College, 34 college students were shown a short film in which two triangles and a circle moved across the screen and a rectangle remained stationary on one side of the screen. When asked what they saw, 33 of the 34 students anthropomorphized the shapes and created a narrative: The circle was “worried,” the “little triangle” was an “innocent young thing,” the big triangle was “blinded by rage and frustration.” Only one student recorded that all he saw were geometric shapes on a screen.

Stories can also inform people’s emotional lives. Storytelling, especially in novels, allows people to peek into someone’s conscience to see how other people think. This can affirm our own beliefs and perceptions, but more often, it challenges them. Psychology researcher Dan Johnson recently published a studyin Basic and Applied Social Psychology that found reading fiction significantly increased empathy towards others, especially people the readers initially perceived as “outsiders” (e.g. foreigners, people of a different race, skin color, or religion).

Interestingly, the more absorbed in the story the readers were, the more empathetic they behaved in real life. Johnson tested this by “accidentally” dropping a handful of pens when participants did not think they were being assessed. Those who had previously reported being “highly absorbed” in the story were about twice as likely to help pick up the pens.

A recent study in Science magazine adds more support to the idea that stories can help people understand others, determining that literary fiction “uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences.” That’s to say, if you read novels, you can probably read emotions.

But why start telling stories in the first place? Their usefulness in understanding others is one reason, but another theory is that storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.

The theory is that if I tell you a story about how to survive, you’ll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, “There’s an animal near that tree, so don’t go over there,” it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, “My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don’t go over there.” A narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone. In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives “up to 22 times more than facts alone.”

The value humans place on narrative is made clear in the high esteem given to storytellers. Authors, actors, directors—people who spin narratives for a living are some of the most famous people in the world. Stories are a form of escapism, one that can sometimes make us better people while entertaining, but there seems to be something more at play.

Perhaps the real reason that we tell stories again and again—and endlessly praise our greatest storytellers—is because humans want to be a part of a shared history. What Smith discovered on that 11th tablet is the story of a great flood. On the 11th tablet—or the “deluge tablet”—of Gilgamesh, a character named Uta-napishtim is told by the Sumerian god Enki to abandon his worldly possessions and build a boat. He is told to bring his wife, his family, the craftsmen in his village, baby animals, and foodstuffs. It is almost the same story as Noah’s Ark, as told in both the Book of Genesis and in the Quran’s Suran 71.

Humans have been telling the same stories for millennia. Author Christopher Booker claims there are only seven basic plots, which are repeated over and over in film, in television, and in novels with just slight tweaks. There is the “overcoming the monster” plot (Beowulf, War of the Worlds); “rags to riches” (Cinderella, Jane Eyre); “the quest” (Illiad, The Lord of the Rings); “voyage and return” (Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland); “rebirth” (Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol); “comedy” (ends in marriage); and “tragedy” (ends in death).

Helpful as stories can be for understanding the real world, they aren’t themselves real. Is there such a thing as too much fiction? In Don Quixote, Cervantes writes of main character Alonso Quixano, “He read all night from sundown to dawn, and all day from sunup to dusk, until with virtually no sleep and so much reading he dried out his brain and lost his sanity …”

The next morning, however, Alonso Quixano decided to turn himself into a knight. He changed himself into Don Quixote, deciding he would pave his own journey. Then he went off, “seeking adventures and doing everything that, according to his books, earlier knights had done.”

7 Habits of Chronically Unhappy People by Tamara Star

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-star/7-habit-of-chronically-unhappy-people_b_6174000.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

I often teach about happiness and what has become exceedingly clear is this: There are seven qualities chronically unhappy people have mastered.

According to Psychology Today, University of California researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky states: "40 percent of our of our capacity for happiness is within our power to change."

If this is true and it is, there's hope for us all. There are billions of people on our planet and clearly some are truly happy. The rest of us bounce back and forth between happiness and unhappiness depending on the day.

Throughout the years, I've learned there are certain traits and habits chronically unhappy people seem to have mastered. But before diving in with you, let me preface this and say: we all have bad days, even weeks when we fall down in all seven areas.

The difference between a happy and unhappy life is how often and how long we stay there.
Here are the 7 qualities of chronically unhappy people.

1. Your default belief is that life is hard.

Happy people know life can be hard and tend to bounce through hard times with an attitude of curiosity versus victimhood. They take responsibility for how they got themselves into a mess, and focus on getting themselves out of it as soon as possible.

Perseverance towards problem versus complaining over circumstances is a symptom of a happy person. Unhappy people see themselves as victims of life and stay stuck in the "look what happened to me" attitude versus finding a way through and out the other side.

. You believe most people can't be trusted.

I won't argue that healthy discernment is important, but most happy people are trusting of their fellow man. They believe in the good in people, versus assuming everyone is out to get them. Generally open and friendly towards people they meet, happy people foster a sense of community around themselves and meet new people with an open heart.

Unhappy people are distrustful of most people they meet and assume that strangers can't be trusted. Unfortunately this behavior slowly starts to close the door on any connection outside of an inner-circle and thwarts all chances of meeting new friends.

3. You concentrate on what's wrong in this world versus what's right.

There's plenty wrong with this world, no arguments here, yet unhappy people turn a blind eye to what's actually right in this world and instead focus on what's wrong. You can spot them a mile away, they'll be the ones complaining and responding to any positive attributes of our world with "yeah but".

Happy people are aware of global issues, but balance their concern with also seeing what's right. I like to call this keeping both eyes open. Unhappy people tend to close one eye towards anything good in this world in fear they might be distracted from what's wrong. Happy people keep it in perspective. They know our world has problems and they also keep an eye on what's right.

4. You compare yourself to others and harbor jealousy.

Unhappy people believe someone else's good fortune steals from their own. They believe there's not enough goodness to go around and constantly compare yours against theirs. This leads to jealousy and resentment.

Happy people know that your good luck and circumstance are merely signs of what they too can aspire to achieve. Happy people believe they carry a unique blueprint that can't be duplicated or stolen from -- by anyone on the planet. They believe in unlimited possibilities and don't get bogged down by thinking one person's good fortune limits their possible outcome in life.

5. You strive to control your life.

There's a difference between control and striving to achieve our goals. Happy people take steps daily to achieve their goals, but realize in the end, there's very little control over what life throws their way.

Unhappy people tend to micromanage in effort to control all outcomes and fall apart in dramatic display when life throws a wrench in their plan. Happy people can be just as focused, yet still have the ability to go with the flow and not melt down when life delivers a curve-ball.

The key here is to be goal-oriented and focused, but allow room for letting sh*t happen without falling apart when the best laid plans go awry- because they will. Going with the flow is what happy people have as plan B.

6 You consider your future with worry and fear.

There's only so much rent space between your ears. Unhappy people fill their thoughts with what could go wrong versus what might go right.

Happy people take on a healthy dose of delusion and allow themselves to daydream about what they'd like to have life unfold for them. Unhappy people fill that head space with constant worry and fear.

Happy people experience fear and worry, but make an important distinction between feeling it and living it. When fear or worry crosses a happy person's mind, they'll ask themselves if there's an action they can be taken to prevent their fear or worry from happening (there's responsibility again) and they take it. If not, they realize they're spinning in fear and they lay it down.

7. You fill your conversations with gossip and complaints.

Unhappy people like to live in the past. What's happened to them and life's hardships are their conversation of choice. When they run out of things to say, they'll turn to other people's lives and gossip.

Happy people live in the now and dream about the future. You can feel their positive vibe from across the room. They're excited about something they're working on, grateful for what they have and dreaming about the possibilities of life.

Obviously none of us are perfect. We're all going to swim in negative waters once in a while, but what matters is how long we stay there and how quickly we work to get ourselves out. Practicing positive habits daily is what sets happy people apart from unhappy people, not doing everything perfectly.

Walk, fall down, get back up again, repeat. It's in the getting back up again where all the difference resides.

7 Brain-Power Foods You Should Eat Every Day

https://www.yahoo.com/health/7-brain-power-foods-you-should-eat-every-day-101259575343.html

et you got two out of three right on this one. Why? Because our longterm memories, once they’re formed, are pretty much immobilized in amber. It’s the day to day stuff that slips through our grasp. Not remembering where you put your keys last night, or the name of the person you just met a moment ago, or the combination to your new gym locker, are all signs that the demands of daily life are intruding on your ability to form new memories. But here’s some good news: A few tweaks to your diet might restore your mediocre memory to Total Recall. (The original, not that Colin Farrell remake.)

Over here at Eat This, Not That!, we’re always monitoring breakthroughs in nutritional research, including an exciting new study just released from Columbia University that links high concentrations of the flavanols in cocoa to reversed age-related mental decline in healthy older adults. (Chocolate, you’ll be happy to discover, stars in our definitive 50 Best Snack Foods in America.)

And we’ve uncovered a collection everyday foods that you can throw into soups, pile on salads, and slip into your routine. Boosting your brain health and your memory has never been easier or more delicious. And before you forget, sign up for our free Eat This, Not That! newsletter to get the best nutrition, health and fitness secrets to live better, healthier and happier every day.

 BRAIN-POWER FOOD #1: Almond Butter

Swapping peanut butter for almond butter might better your chances of beating age-related memory loss. Almonds (like many nuts and seeds) contain high concentrations of vitamin E, which has been shown to help reduce the risk of cognitive impairment. And some studies indicate it can slow the decline caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

Almond butter contains three times more Vitamin E than peanut butter. For a snack, you can spread a teaspoon over celery, or mix a spoonful into morning oats.

 BRAIN-POWER FOOD #2: Leafy Green Salad with Cheese

If you’re constantly forgetting the name of someone you’ve just met, or if “We talked about this…” is a common conversation starter at your house, then leafy greens like spinach or broccoli may be your produce-aisle prescription. They’re packed with vitamin K, which has been has been shown to improve verbal episodic memory, your ability to absorb and remember verbal instructions. Leafy greens also deliver high doses of folate, which works in tandem with vitamin B12 to help improve cognitive function for older adults. Since greens don’t contain vitamin B12, add some cheese or eggs (which do) to a spinach or Romaine salad and you’re good to go.

BRAIN-POWER FOOD #3: Blueberries

Ready to expand your horizons? The flavonoids in blueberries have been shown to improve spatial memory in rats. Their antioxidants help lessen inflammation, which can cause longer-term problems for the brain and its memory function, so sprinkle them over your oatmeal and stock up on frozen bags for smoothie making in the winter! Bonus: Among the things you’ll be remembering are all the compliments you get when people seek your sleek new shape. Berries are one of the Best Fruits That Boost Fat Loss. The more of these you eat, the less of you there will be!

BRAIN-POWER FOOD #4: Green Tea

Drink up. One study found that subjects who drank green tea before a cognitive-functioning test performed significantly better than those who drank a placebo. Researchers who monitored the brain function of those undergoing testing say that the green tea improved brain plasticity—basically, it allowed their brains to learn faster. While you’re showing off your flexible new brain, you can also flex your abs by drinking any of these 5 Best Teas for Weight Loss.

BRAIN-POWER FOOD #5: Salmon or Tuna

It might seem fishy, but DHA—a type of omega-3 fatty acid found in fattier fish like salmon and tuna—can improve memory and the time it takes to recall a memory. Researchers tested DHA supplements on a group of 176 adults who had low levels of omega-3s in their diets. (Most of us do, by the way.) Just 1.16 grams of DHA—about what you’d find in a 3 ½ ounce serving of salmon—made a measurable difference.

BRAIN-POWER FOOD #6: Cherry Tomatoes

Bright red and orange vegetables are top sources of a type of nutrient called carotenoids, which seem to improve cognitionand memory over longer periods of time. One of the most powerful of these nutrients is lycopene, which is found in high doses in the skin of tomatoes. Lycopene also protects you from depression-causing inflammation, so working it into your daily diet can also boost your mood. Why cherry tomatoes, specifically? Because lycopene is concentrated in the skin, the little red buttons carry more per volume than their beefsteak brethren. Don’t forget to pile your salad high with more of the 11 Foods That End Bad Moods.

BRAIN-POWER FOOD #7: Root vegetables

In a recent study, older subjects (70 years of age and older) were given a dose of beet juice, then hooked up to an MRI machine. The researchers discovered that the beet juice measurably improved blood flow to their brains. The secret: nitrates, which are found in beets, carrots and other brightly colored root vegetables, as well as some greens, and converted into nitrite in the body. Nitrite, by the way, is the stuff that makes Viagra get its groove on. So perhaps more than your memory will be enjoying a boost.

Authors Share Their Best Writing Tips with NYPL

by Tracy O'Neill, Social Media CuratorOctober 20, 2014http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/10/20/authors-share-best-writing-tips#.VFK9d_DZEX0.facebook
Writing can be a daunting task. You sit in front of a blank page. You try to make something where there was nothing, and your only material is language. Yet over the years, NYPL has spoken to dozens of writers who have faced exactly this challenge and ended up on the other side of a finished book. If you want to write, then get ready to take notes. Here are some of the best bits of writing advice from the NYPL video archive.
Zadie Smith on writing and belief
"Each novel I've written, any novel anyone writes, it's not that you sit down saying 'I believe this, and now I will write this," but by the nature of your sentences, just by the things that you emphasize or that you don't emphasize, you're constantly expressing a belief about the way you think the world is, about the things that you think are important, and those things change. They do change. And the form of the novel changes as well. A very simple example is in a lot of my fiction I've delved very deeply into people's heads, into their consciousness and tried to take out every detail, and the older I get and the more that I meet people and realize I don't know them. My own husband is a stranger to me, really, fundamentally at the end you don't know these people. That should be reflected in what you write, that total knowledge is impossible."
Etgar Keret on form
"I'm not saying that form isn't important, but you feel that here in the U.S. sometimes, especially in a creative writing department, it's a shrine of form. It's like people comparing sentences, you know, people writing beautiful sentences and putting them in a wooden box and saying, 'I'm going to use this sentence sometime.' But you don't use the sentence sometime because if you have a good pickup line for a Chinese midget, you will not meet a Chinese midget in your life. So don't write a story about a Chinese midget just because you have a good pickup line! Write your story. When you get there, find a good sentence. If you don't have one, use a cliché. Maybe it will work, you know?"
Geoff Dyer on not suffering the anxiety of influence
"The fact that stuff's been written about before liberates one and frees one from having to do the donkey work of conveying facts and stuff. So, for example, so much has been written about D.H. Lawrence. There are great biographies of Lawrence so that meant I didn't have to do all that stuff. I could just write my crazy book about Lawrence. A book like that couldn't reasonably be the first book about Lawrence, so it's good I had all those things to draw on."
Jesmyn Ward on writing honestly
"With my first novel, I was encountering so much tragedy in my real life that the last thing I wanted to do was wrestle with it in my fiction. But because I was loath to do that, it meant I was cheating and I wasn't telling the truth. And so I understood that that was the case when I beganSalvage [the Bones], you know, I understood that I had failed in a way when I wrote my first novel. So when I wrote Salvage the Bones, it was very important to me to tell more of the truth. None of the stories I've written have been as searingly honest as the stories I tell in Men We Reaped."
Pico Iyer on retaining mystery 
"I said, 'No. Let this book hover somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. Let me give the reader no clue about how to categorize it before she begins or even after she's finished. Let me put the reader on alert, on edge, not knowing what she's going to get into.'"
Toni Morrison on writing what you don't know
"I tell my students; I tell everybody this. When I begin a creative writing class I say, 'I know you've heard all your life, "Write what you know." Well I am here to tell you, "You don't know nothing. So do not write what you know. Think up something else. Write about a young Mexican woman working in a restaurant and can't speak English. Or write about a famous mistress in Paris who's down on her luck."
Timothy Donnelly on collaging words
"I think sometimes collaging and a certain amount of levity, a kind of spiritedness of making allows me to feel more comfortable folding in some matters of great and publish import without it seeming to strange or too heavy-handed or too ponderous."
Cheryl Strayed on how to make it as a writer
"It's about having strength rather than fragility. Resilience and faith and nerve. And really leaning hard into work... Writing is hard for every one of us, straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."

VALUES IN AMERICAN CULTURE https://www.bu.edu/isso/Tips/AmericanValues.pdf

1. PERSONAL CONTROL OVER THE ENVIRONMENT
People can/should control nature, their own environment and destiny. The future
is not left to fate.
Result: An energetic, goal-oriented society.

2. CHANGE / MOBILITY
Change is seen as positive and good. This means progress, improvement and
growth.
Result: An established transient society geographically, economically and socially.

3. TIME AND ITS IMPORTANCE
Time is valuable - achievement of goals depends on the productive use of time.
Result: An efficient and progressive society often at the expense of interpersonal
relationships.

4. EQUALITY / EGALITARIANISM
People have equal opportunities; people are important as individuals, for who
they are, not from which family they come.
Result: A society where little deference is shown or status is acknowledged.

5. INDIVIDUALISM, INDEPENDENCE AND PRIVACY
People are seen as separate individuals (not group members) with individual needs.
People need time to be alone and to be themselves.
Result: Americans may be seen as self-centered and sometimes isolated and lonely.

6. SELF-HELP
Americans take pride in their own accomplishments.
Result: Americans give respect for self achievements not achievements based on
rights of birth.

7. COMPETITION AND FREE ENTERPRISE
Americans believe competition brings out the best in people and free enterprise
leads to progress and produces success
Result: Competition is emphasized over cooperation.

8. FUTURE ORIENTATION / OPTIMISM
Americans believe that, regardless of past or present, the future will be better and
happier.
Result: Americans place less value on past events and constantly look ahead to
tomorrow.

9. ACTION AND WORK ORIENTATION
Americans believe that work is morally right; that it is immoral to waste time.
Result: There is more emphasis on "doing" rather than "being". This is a
no-nonsense attitude toward life.

10. INFORMALITY
Americans believe that formality is "un-American" and a show of arrogance and
superiority.
Result: A casual, egalitarian attitude between people is more accepted.

11. DIRECTNESS / OPENNESS / HONESTY
One can only trust people who "look you in the eye" and "tell it like it is". Truth is a
function of reality not of circumstance.
Result: People tend to tell the "truth" and not worry about saving the other
person's "face" or "honor".

12. PRACTICALITY / EFFICIENCY
Practicality is usually the most important consideration when decisions are to be
made.
Result: Americans place less emphasis on the subjective, aesthetic, emotional or
consensual decisions.

13. MATERIALISM / ACQUISITIVENESS
Material goods are seen as the just rewards of hard-work, the evidence of "God's
favor."
Result: Americans are seen as caring more for things than people or relationships.

Adapted from “The Values Americans Live By”, L. Robert Kohls

Writing tips from the CIA’s ruthless style manual By Michael Silverberg @mbd_s July 8, 2014

http://qz.com/231110/writing-tips-from-the-cias-ruthless-style-manual/

This post has been updated.

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Strunk & White, it turns out, were CIA sources. The authors of The Elements of Style, a classic American writing guide, are cited alongside Henry Fowler, Wilson Follett, and Jacques Barzun in the Directorate of Intelligence’s Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications, whose eighth edition (from 2011) was quietly posted online (pdf) by the legal nonprofit National Security Counselors a little over a year ago, following a Freedom of Information Act request. (The document first surfaced on social media late last week.) So what role do partisans in the usage wars (pdf) have in a guide produced by an intelligence agency with a hidden hand in many real-life conflicts?

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Though the CIA may dissemble as a matter of course, it speaks plainly to policymakers and operations officers—its “customers,” in the language of the manual. The foreword begins, “Good intelligence depends in large measure on clear, concise writing. The information CIA gathers and the analysis it produces mean little if we cannot convey them effectively.”

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As revealed in the manual, the CIA is a prescriptivist scold, a believer in the serial comma, and a champion of “crisp and pungent” language “devoid of jargon.” It takes a firm stand against false titles used attributively and urges intelligence writers to lowercase the w in Vietnam war (“undeclared”).

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Like any style guide, whether it’s produced for a magazine or a government agency, this one reflects its authors’ environment and biases. The missile-related acronyms ABM, ICBM, IRBM, SAM, SLBM, and SRBM are all deemed well-known enough not to have to spell out. “US imperialism” gets scare quotes. Most jarring are the often bellicose usage examples, which are littered with protests, human rights positions, free enterprise, surface ship deployments, oilfields, and bombs.

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For more insight into how the CIA writes—and thinks—Quartz collected some notable entries from the 190-page document:

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• Keep the language crisp and pungent; prefer the forthright to the pompous and ornate.
• Do not stray from the subject; omit the extraneous, no matter how brilliant it may seem or even be.
• Favor the active voice and shun streams of polysyllables and prepositional phrases.
• Keep sentences and paragraphs short, and vary the structure of both.
• Be frugal in the use of adjectives and adverbs; let nouns and verbs show their own power.

regime: has a disparaging connotation and should not be used when referring to democratically elected governments or, generally, to governments friendly to the United States.

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tortuous (adj, twisting, devious, highly complex)
torturous (adj, causing torture, cruelly painful)

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while: as a conjunction, usually has reference to time. While the President was out of the country, the Army staged a coup. It can, with discretion, also be used in the sense of although or but. While he hated force, he recognized the need for order. Avoid using while in the sense of and.

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number of: a phrase that is too imprecise in some contexts. A number of troops were killed. (If you do not know how many, say an unknown number.)

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casualties: include persons injured, captured, or missing in action as well as those killed in battle. In formulating casualty statistics, be sure to write “killedor wounded,” not “killed and wounded.” (See injuries, casualties.)

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nonconventional, unconventional: Nonconventional refers to high-tech weaponry short of nuclear explosives. Fuel-air bombs are effective nonconventional weapons. Unconventional means not bound by convention.Shirley Chisholm was an unconventional woman.

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war crimes (n)
war-crimes (adj)

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lay, lie: Lay means to put, place, or prepare. It always takes a direct object. Both the past tense and the past participle are laid. (The President ordered his aide to lay a wreath at the unknown soldier’s tomb. The aide laid the wreath two hours later. Yesterday a wreath was laid by the defense minister.)

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affect, effect: Affect as a verb means to influence, to produce an effect upon. (The blow on the head affected John’s vision.) Effect, as a verb, means to bring about. (The assailant effected a change in John’s vision by striking him on the head.) Effect, as a noun, means result. (The effect of the blow on John’s head was blurred vision.)

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disinformation, misinformation: Disinformation refers to the deliberate planting of false reports. Misinformation equates in meaning but does not carry the same devious connotation.

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celebrity copycatting: can lead one up the garden path because those emulated are not always pure of speech. A venerable newscaster persists in mispronouncing February (without the firstr r sound) and has misled a whole generation. Another Pied Piper of TV is given to saying “one of those whois”—joining many others who are deceived by the one and forget that the plural who is the subject of the verb (see one). The classic copycat phrase, at this point in time, grew out of the Watergate hearings and now is so firmly entrenched that we may never again get people to say at this time, at present, or simply now (see presently).

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Capitalize the W in October War or Six-Day War because either term as a whole is a distinguishing coined name, but 1973 Middle East war or 1967 Arab-Israeli war is distinguishing enough without the capital W. Avoid Yom Kippur war, which is slangy. Do not uppercase the w in Korean war, which was “undeclared”; the same logic applies to Vietnam war and Falklands war, and a similar convention (if not logic) to Iran-Iraq war.

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die: is something we all do, even writers who relegate world leaders to a sort of Immortality Club with phrasing like the President has taken steps to ensure a peaceful transition if he should die. Reality can be recognized by inserting in office or before the end of his term, or even by saying simply when he dies.

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Free World: is at best an imprecise designation. Use only in quoted matter.

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Use parentheses to set off a word, phrase, clause, or sentence that is inserted by way of comment or explanation within or after a sentence but that is structurally independent of it. This style guide (unclassified) will be widely disseminated.

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This style guide was prepared by the DI[redacted]

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[This post was updated at 2:25 p.m. EDT to clarify when the manual was originally uncovered. The document first circulated on social media late last week, but it was posted online in late 2012 or early 2013 on the website of the intelligence-focused legal nonprofit National Security Counselors. The group's executive director, Kel McClanahan, received the document in early 2012 after submitting a FOIA request the previous year.]

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