Traditional Spanish ham slicers try to break world record
Torrijos: Some 200 professional ham slicers were in action on Sunday in the ancient Spanish town of Torrijos in a bid to raise money for a charity by breaking the world record for the largest plate of a delicacy known as Jamón Ibérico, as witnessed by EFE photojournalists.
This type of ham, which is slow salt-cured in a traditional manner and is considered a delicacy by many in Spain, retains the central bone and so cannot be machine sliced. Hence, to be able to present a plate of this treat, specially trained professionals wielding long, thin and very sharp knives have to painstakingly cut the meat and place each individual slice.
The ham comes from Ibérico pigs that are a native, black-skinned Spanish race that is traditionally bred and raised in the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula.
Large herds of them live freely, or are partially free-range, and are able to graze on wild grasses but most particularly on fallen acorns.
The previous record was set when slicers cut 400 kg of ham. On this occasion, the plan was to plate more than 500 kilos of jamón.
The event was organized to raise funds for medical research unit of National Paraplegic Hospital in Toledo. (IANS)
Nepal says its tiger population has almost doubled from 2009
Kathmandu: The number of tigers roaming the jungles of Nepal has nearly doubled because of initiatives from the government, conservationists and local authorities who have worked for years to increase the tiger population in the Himalayan nation, an official said Sunday.
Gopal Prakash Bhattarai of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation said that the latest tiger count showed there were 235 tigers in the jungles — almost twice as many as the 121 that were found in 2009.
“Even the nation’s prime minister is involved and he heads the National Tiger Conservation Committee,” Bhattarai said, adding that there has been better security in the conservation areas and awareness among the people living near these locations.
Leaders of nations with tiger populations had met in 2010 and pledged to double the number by 2022.
Bhattarai said Sunday that Nepal is already heading in that direction and could be among the first nations to meet the goal. (AP)
‘Idiocracy’ among 1,400 new words in Oxford dictionary
London: Idiocracy — a government formed of people considered ignorant or idiotic — is among 1,400 new words, senses, and phrases added in the latest update of the Oxford English Dictionary.
The dictionary records over 100 words derived ultimately from the Greek suffix -cracy, meaning ‘power’ or ‘rule’. The new addition idiocracy, refers to a society consisting of or governed by people characterised as idiots, or a government formed of people considered stupid, ignorant, or idiotic.
Words like democracy and aristocracy originated in ancient Greek, but by the 18th century, -ocracy was being added to English words, as in statocracy and mobocracy. In the 19th century, the trickle of such formations became a flood, with many of the new words being terms of ridicule, a tradition to which idiocracy belongs; the earlier terms foolocracy (1832) and idiotocracy (used by Ambrose Bierce in 1909) express a similar concept.
Idiocracy itself is first attested in 1967, but it owes its current prominence to the title of the satirical 2006 film Idiocracy, which depicts a dystopian future in which the human race has become extremely ignorant, stupid, and anti-intellectual.
The quaterly update also added the term ‘trapo’. In Philippine English, trapo which describes a politician perceived as belonging to a conventional and corrupt ruling class.
Trapo’s is an abbreviation of the English phrase ‘traditional politician’, but with punning allusion to the Tagalog word trapo (‘rag’), which in turn is borrowed from Spanish. Another new item from Philippine English is the adjective bongga, borrowed from Tagalog, which means extravagant, flamboyant, impressive, stylish, or excellent.
The Oxford English Dictionary undergoes revision four times every year. Apart from new words and phrases, new senses are added to existing words. Some new entries are in fact extremely old, that were not identified in previous editions.
This update sees the addition of bedunged — that has been soiled with or covered in dung — which is first recorded from the early 15th century.
It persists in modern use, but is now considered archaic or used self-consciously for stylistic effect, as in a newspaper article from 2000 that referred scornfully to ‘the Young British Artists with their bedunged Madonna and mutilated mannequins’. (PTI)