Palm (unit)

The palm may be either one of two obsolete non-SI units of measurement of length.

In English usage the palm, or small palm, also called handbreadth or handsbreadth, was originally based on the breadth of a human hand without the thumb, and has origins in ancient Egypt. It is distinct from the hand, the breadth of the hand with the thumb, and from the fist, the height of a clenched fist. It is usually taken to be equal to four digits or fingers, or to three inches, which, following the adoption of the international inch in 1959, equals exactly 7.62 centimetres. It is today used only in the field of biblical exegesis, where opinions may vary as to its precise historic length.

In other areas, such as parts of continental Europe, the palm (French: palme, Italian: palmo) related to the length of the hand, and derived from the Roman great palm, the Latin: palmus major.

History

Ancient Egypt

On surviving Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods, the royal cubit is divided into seven palms of four digits each. Five digits are equal to a hand, with thumb; and six to a closed fist. The royal cubit measured approximately 525 mm, so the length of the ancient Egyptian palm was about 75 mm.

Hand

A hand (Latin manus) is a prehensile, multi-fingered organ located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints remarkably similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking.

Fingers contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, feet, legs) each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, so that handedness—the preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pencil, reflects individual brain functioning.

Some evolutionary anatomists use the term hand to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally — for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.

Palme

Palme or Palmé may refer to

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Mute (film)

Mute is a 2005 American short drama film directed by Melissa Joan Hart and written by Kristin Lipiro. The film stars Emily Hart, Emily Deschanel and Dylan Neal.

Cast

External links

Mute (music)

A mute is a device fitted to a musical instrument to alter the sound produced: by affecting the timbre, reducing the volume, or most commonly both.

Musical directions for muting

The use of a mute is usually indicated in musical notation by the direction con sordino (often abbreviated con sord, sord, sordino). (Sordina, with plural sordine, is the strictly correct Italian term for mute as used on string instruments; but the forms con sordino, senza sordino, sordino via, etc., are much more commonly used as terms in music than the forms con sordina, senza sordine, etc.) The mute should be removed with the senza sordino (or senza sord, senza sordina, etc.) direction.

When written in English the directions, "mute" and "open" (for brass instruments) or "unmute" (for stringed instruments) are used.

The equivalent German terms for "with mute" ("mute on") are mit Dämpfer (Dämpfer auf), and for "without mute" ("mute off") are ohne Dämpfer (Dämpfer ab/weg). The word Dämpfer is cognate to English "damper".

Mute (The Twilight Zone)

"Mute" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was written by Richard Matheson, based on his own short story of the same name.

Opening narration

Plot

Ilse, a twelve-year-old girl, is orphaned when her parents die in a fire. She is left in the care of others unaware of her true condition. It seems that her parents raised her in ignorance, and did not even teach her to talk. In actuality, Ilse was raised (along with other children in far-away Europe) by parents who subjected her to a language deprivation experiment in which no one spoke (verbally) with her. The intent was to draw out inherent telepathic abilities that the parents believed all people once possessed, but which had been repressed after the development of spoken language.

The experiment with Ilse was particularly successful: Ilse communicated well telepathically. But after the death of her parents, Ilse lives in a world of people who speak with voices instead of their minds, and her life is turned upside down. Her teacher also possesses telepathic abilities but believes they are a corruption to be overcome and works vehemently to destroy them.