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Fact of the Day - PHRASER "ROGER THAT" Did you know.... There was once a non-zero chance that ‘Robert that’ or ‘robust that’ became a thing, instead. On the list of guys immortalized in common phrases, it seems like the Roger of Roger that should be right up there with the great Scott of great Scott and the real McCoy of the real McCoy. But unlike those latter two expressions, which likely were inspired by actual people (though there are competing theories about which McCoy is the real one), Roger that is a reference of a different sort. Alphabet City In the early 20th century, as wireless transmissions became more common, institutions devised phonetic alphabets to cut down on miscommunication over the radio. The first meaningful effort to standardize the practice across the globe came from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the 1920s; this alphabet, seen below, primarily used city names. The ITU’s First Global Phonetic Alphabet Letter -- Code Word A -- Amsterdam B -- Baltimore C -- Casablanca D -- Denmark E -- Edison F -- Florida G -- Gallipoli H -- Havana I -- Italia J -- Jerusalem K -- Kilogramme L -- Liverpool M -- Madagascar N -- New York O -- Oslo P -- Paris Q -- Quebec R -- Roma S -- Santiago T -- Tripoli U -- Uppsala V -- Valencia W -- Washington X -- Xanthippe Y -- Yokohama Z -- Zurich But plenty of organizations, the U.S. military among them, still stuck with their own code words for years after that. The U.S. Army and Navy teamed up to create a joint alphabet in the early 1940s, and upon entering World War II, they realized it would make sense for U.S. and British forces to use the same one. While it’s often said that Britain simply adopted the U.S. military’s alphabet—officially the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet—there’s more to the story than that. In 1942, the U.S. military enlisted Harvard University’s Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory to help them develop the ultimate phonetic alphabet with the most intelligible and least confusing words. So the laboratory’s researchers analyzed a list of 250 terms compiled from various phonetic alphabets (as well as some of their own previous research) and made their recommendations. By the end of the year, leaders from both countries were under serious pressure to hurry up and finalize their selections so the system could be implemented. According to a 1959 technical report written for the Air Force [PDF], “It is reported that after carefully evaluated decisions had been made on most of the alphabet, there still remained several words on which neither the U.S. nor the British side would yield. Therefore, the Generals and the Admirals went down the list taking first a U.S. and then a U.K. preference to complete the list and get on with the war.” Enter Romeo This alphabet, widely known as the Able Baker alphabet after its first two entries, features Roger for the letter r [PDF]. It’s not surprising that it made the cut: Not only had the U.S. already been using Roger—the Navy in particular since 1927—but researchers had identified it as one of the most intelligible options for r. Evidently, the generals and admirals liked it better than another high performer, robust, and the British military’s go-to, Robert. World War II–Era Able Baker Alphabet Letter -- Code Word A -- Able B -- Baker C -- Charlie D -- Dog E -- Easy F -- Fox G -- George H -- How I -- Item J -- Jig K -- King L -- Love M -- Mike N -- Nan O -- Oboe P -- Peter Q -- Queen R -- Roger S -- Sugar T -- Tare U -- Uncle V -- Victor W -- William X -- X-ray Y -- Yoke Z -- Zebra It didn’t take long for Allied fighters to start utilizing Roger as shorthand for received. Contrary to popular belief, the term didn’t confirm any action on the speaker’s part—it really just meant “message received.” If the speaker intended to follow a given directive, they might say “Wilco,” short for will comply, or “Roger wilco.” The Able Baker alphabet was very English-centric, though, which made it ill-suited for global use (though that didn’t stop the U.S. Weather Bureau from using it to name hurricanes for a few years). So in 1956, NATO and the International Civil Aviation Organization rolled out another alphabet that’s still in use today. While a handful of words from Able Baker remained the same—e.g. Charlie, Victor, and X-ray—Roger was replaced with Romeo. Current NATO Phonetic Alphabet Letter -- Code Word A -- Alfa B -- Bravo C -- Charlie D -- Delta E -- Echo F -- Foxtrot G -- Golf H -- Hotel I -- India J -- Juliett K -- Kilo L -- Lima M -- Mike N -- November O -- Oscar P -- Papa Q -- Quebec R -- Romeo S -- Sierra T -- Tango U -- Uniform V -- Victor W -- Whiskey X -- X-ray Y -- Yankee Z -- Zulu One Small Step for Roger By that point, however, it didn’t really matter: Roger meant “received” to soldiers whether it was in the official alphabet or not, and they kept on saying it through later conflicts. It’s unclear when Roger that first gained popularity, but it was definitely in play during the Vietnam War. As for how the expression made its way into the wider English lexicon, military jargon often does: Soldiers come home and assimilate their slang into civilian life. (World War II also gave us honcho and eager beaver.) Not to mention that we’ve seen decades’ worth of World War II depictions in film and television, many of which feature Roger in context. Plus, the term isn’t just used by the military—it’s also common among others involved in radio communications, from truckers to commercial pilots. But there might be another reason Roger is so widely understood by the general public: because people around the world heard it countless times during broadcasts of the Apollo missions. An estimated 1 billion people tuned in to Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve message of 1968; and some 650 million people watched Apollo 11’s moon landing the following summer. The most memorable line from the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969, the so-called “dress rehearsal” for the lunar landing, is Thomas P. Stafford’s “You can tell the world that we have arrived.” What Stafford said right before that was “Roger, Houston. Apollo 10.” By the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in July, surely no viewer was still asking who Roger was. (Except maybe as a joke.) Source: Who Is the Roger of ‘Roger That’?

What's the Word: CONSANGUINEOUS pronunciation: [kan-sang-GWIN-ee-us] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Latin, early 17th century Meaning: 1. Relating to or denoting people descended from the same ancestor. Examples: "You two look so similar, you could be consanguineous." "The patients are not consanguineous; they are husband and wife." About Consanguineous Consanguineous originated from the Latin word "consanguineus," or "of the same blood," which is a combination of the words "con" ("together") and "sanguis" ("blood"). Did you Know? Testing DNA is a relatively recent invention, but now almost anyone can provide a saliva or cheek swab sample to receive their genetic profile from any one of several services. Even beyond discovering consanguineous relations, people are now able to learn more about their health and predispositions to certain conditions.

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Fact of the Day - WHAT DOES HE EAT? Did you know.... The adorable Arctic predators never let a little snow get in the way of a meal. It isn’t easy living on top of the world, where there’s no sunlight for four months a year and even summer is literally freezing. Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus, also known as Alopex lagopus) are perfectly adapted for life in this harsh terrain. They are found through the circumpolar region as far south as the northern edges of North America, Europe, and Asia. Their small, sturdy bodies are a first line of defense against the full-time chill. At about 1 foot tall and 2 to 3 feet long, Arctic foxes are more compact and stout than other fox species, with short legs and snouts that reduce the loss of body heat. Their long, fluffy tails help insulate them and aid in balance, and a luxurious, white winter coat makes them nearly invisible against the snow, camouflaging them to predators like wolves and polar bears. Arctic foxes are omnivores, eating everything that their tundra habitat provides. In summer, the environment bustles with tasty options: voles and other small mammals, birds, frogs, berries, insects, birds’ eggs, and even the feces of other animals. If they live near coastlines they may feed on fish, seal pups, and sea birds. In winter, when food is much harder to find, the crafty canines follow polar bears onto ice floes and scavenge the scraps from the bears’ hunts. When food in one place is depleted, Arctic foxes been known to travel 2500 miles for better pickings. Lunching on Lemmings One of the Arctic fox’s preferred foods are lemmings, a genus of small mammals that live throughout the Arctic. Lemmings are so important to Arctic foxes’ survival that fox populations fluctuate in response to lemming numbers. These plump little rodents keep warm and active in winter by tunneling under the snow, where they’re invisible to predators. But not inaudible, at least not to the Arctic fox. The foxes have exceptionally keen hearing. If they detect movement beneath the snow, they wait patiently, cocking their heads back and forth, listening for the lemmings’ squeaks and footfalls. When a fox gets a bead on one, they literally leap into action: they jump several feet straight up in the air and dive snout-first into the snow, often snagging a lemming like a Hot Pocket out of a toaster oven. The Arctic Fox Life Cycle When snow and ice melt in the short Arctic summer, the fox’s white fur seems to melt away, too. They shed their floof to make way for a shorter bluish-gray or brown coat to blend in with the rocky tundra. When prey is more abundant in warmer months, Arctic foxes store surplus food for the leaner winter months in their dens, which can be vast, multi-chambered homes buried six to 12 feet underground. If necessary, foxes can slow down their metabolism and curl up in their dens for a mini-hibernation. Some dens are hundreds of years old and have been used by many successive generations. Those generations begin with a couple’s courtship involving chasing and play-fighting [PDF]. Mating usually takes place in spring, with the young, called kits or pups, born after six to eight weeks. They start life with gray or brown fur, whatever the season. Both parents take part in raising their kits. Arctic foxes are monogamous, so the mating pair usually stays together for life—as if they weren’t sweet enough already. Unless, of course, you happen to be a lemming. Source: What Do Arctic Foxes Eat?

What's the Word: SOCKDOLAGER pronunciation: [sahk-DOL-e-jər] Part of speech: noun Origin: American English, mid-19th century Meaning: 1. An exceptional person or thing. 2. A forceful blow. Examples: "All of the nominees tonight are well-accomplished sockdolagers." "The baseball hit Randy with a sockdolager that knocked the wind out of him." About Sockdolager It's believed that "sockdolager" developed as a fanciful formation from "sock." How the word became associated with an exceptional person or a forceful blow is unknown. Did you Know? To find a sockdolager, you need not look much further than the Nobel Prizes. People who qualify for nomination are exceptional in their actions and impact, and have found a way to contribute to humanity’s progress in a particular field. Some notable recipients include activist Malala Yousafzai, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna, chemists who invented genome editing tools.

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Just as a heads up, they changed the Haruhi Suzumiya episode order from the original way it was broadcast to a chronological one since season 2 came out. It's prevalent on most sites and regarded as the 'preferred' way to watch if you watch both seasons + film. I also need to catch up on K-On! at some point ^^

I'm thinking about re-watching the series for the first time around 15 years. A couple songs from the rock performance scene was fire. Remembered glimpsing at it for the first time discovering Haruhi Suzumiya, when I catch my bro watching it on Youtube. Can't wait to get nostalgic l-o-lz.. I never watched the next season after this, here goes my chance. After I'm currently dealing with K-On season 2.

The Suzumiya Haruhi film. I found it a great finale to the story, with a nice payoff for some of the plot points introduced in the 2009 series.

Fact of the Day - CONDIMENTS Did you know... Fries without ketchup, pancakes without syrup — what would your favorite dishes be like without a little sauce? Condiments can make or break a meal; the word, after all, comes from the Latin condimentum, meaning “to season.” Take a moment to appreciate all the taste bud sensations that sidekick sauces can provide with these eight facts. 1. Soy Sauce Was Originally Made From Meat The soy sauce you find at grocery stores today typically contains just four simple ingredients — soybeans, wheat, salt, and water — which are blended and fermented over several months or years to give the sauce its umami flavor. However, the oldest known types of soy sauce used meat in place of legumes. Called jiang, the flavoring was a thick and pasty blend of meat, a fermenting agent made from millet, and salt that fermented for about 100 days; it was ready when the meat had entirely dissolved. Food historians believe Chinese soy sauce makers eventually ditched using meat and switched to soybeans about 2,000 years ago. 2. Mayo Became Popular After a French and British Battle The origins of mayonnaise are heavily debated among food historians, particularly regarding the issue of whether the creamy spread was invented by the Spanish or the French. One commonly told tale dates back to 1756 during the Seven Years’ War, when French forces set siege to Minorca’s Port Mahon (then ruled by the British). After the battle, a French chef working for the invading forces reportedly blended egg and oil together in a celebratory meal, calling the finished product “mahonnaise” for the region. However, some researchers believe residents of Port Mahon had already been making and using mayonnaise (their version was called Salsa Mahonesa). Regardless of who created it, mayo became linked with French cooking by the early 19th century, and the multipurpose dressing reached American menus by the 1830s. 3. White House Staff Kept Ketchup on Hand for One President’s Breakfast Among White House staff, Richard Nixon’s love of cottage cheese was well known. During his time in the Oval Office, the 37th President regularly enjoyed a breakfast of fruit, wheat germ, coffee, and cottage cheese topped with ketchup. (His last meal in office nixed the condiment, but did include a tall glass of milk and cottage cheese atop pineapple slices.) 4. Nearly All American Shoppers Buy Peanut Butter There’s one condiment you’ll have a good chance of finding in pantries across the country: peanut butter. In 2023, 90% of U.S. households included the smooth and creamy spread on their grocery lists. On average, Americans consumed 4.4 pounds of peanut butter per capita in 2023, a culinary craving that first became popular during World War I, when peanut butter was an inexpensive and easily accessible protein during wartime rationing. 5. Syrup-Producing Trees Have a Special Name Making pure maple syrup is a time-intensive labor that starts inside of “sugarbushes,” aka groves of maple trees. Syrup farmers can wait up to 40 years before a maple tree grows large enough to be tapped, and even when they are, the trees typically produce just 10 gallons of sap per tap hole per season. After boiling off excess water, that’s enough to make about 1 quart of maple syrup. 6. There’s a Hot Sauce-Themed Opera Not many foods are the stars of an opera performance, though one kind of hot sauce is. Boston composer George Whitefield Chadwick debuted Tabasco: A Burlesque Opera in 1894. It tells the story of an Irish traveler lost at sea who washes ashore in Morocco and works as a chef, and who creates spicy dishes (his secret ingredient: Tabasco). Chadwick’s opera was partially financed by the McIlhenny Company — the maker of Tabasco. In its first week, it turned a profit of $26,000. 7. Ernest Hemingway’s Burger Recipe Used Tons of Condiments One of Ernest Hemingway’s lesser-known creations wasn’t a novel, but a hamburger. His recipe included a smattering of condiments inside the mixture rather than on top. The author’s technique called for wine, garlic, and sometimes ground almonds, but also several different spice blends and relishes. His recommendation for getting the meat perfectly ready for the grill? Let it “sit out of the icebox for 10 to 15 minutes while you set the table and make the salad.” 8. Historians Have Recreated a 2,000-Year-Old Condiment You can get a taste for how ancient Romans and Greeks once ate with a little dash of garum, a fish sauce that was popular about 2,000 years ago. Historians relied on surviving recipes for instructions that included steps like leaving fish to break down in open containers for three months. However, it wasn’t until clay pots from a garum-making shop in Pompeii were unearthed that researchers found evidence of the sauce that could be analyzed for additional ingredients such as dill, fennel, and coriander that help the salty and umami-flavored sauce shine. Source: Saucy Facts About Condiments

What's the Word: DIGERATI pronunciation: [dih-jə-RAH-dee] Part of speech: noun Origin: English, 1990s Meaning: 1. People with expertise or professional involvement in information technology. Examples: "Betty had complete faith that if she couldn’t fix her computer, the company’s digerati could." "It was hard to pick one candidate out of the many qualified digerati who applied." About Digerati This word developed from a 1990s mash-up of the words “digital” and “literati” (describing well-educated people who are interested in literature). Did you Know? A badge of honor for some digerati is a high WPM (words-per-minute typing skill), but the QWERTY keyboard was actually designed to slow down typists. Mechanical typewriters were prone to jamming, and even though a skilled typist could get a job based on a high WPM, typing too quickly would cause delays. Today's digerati continue to use the QWERTY keyboard because of the legacy of decades of typing classes taught using the layout.

Fact of the Day - ORIGIN OF "WITH A GRAIN OF SALT" Did you know... ‘Take it with a grain of salt’ all (probably) started with Pliny the Elder, but he was talking about literal poison. If an unverified gossip account on Instagram posts that your favorite celebrity couple just broke up, you might take that rumor with a grain of salt. In other words, you’ll exercise a healthy bit of skepticism and wait for more evidence. The (Likely) Origin of Take It With a Grain of Salt Though no literal salt is involved, it was when the phrase was first mentioned (that we know of) in ancient Rome. In his Natural History, written around 77 CE, Pliny the Elder recounted the story of how Pompey—best known for warring with Julius Caesar—found directions for the concoction that Mithridates VI used to inoculate himself against certain poisons. Mithridates VI famously ingested small doses of poison to build up his immunity, but according to Pliny, the recipe called for other ingredients, too: dried nuts, figs, and rue leaves. Everything should be minced together and taken after having added a grain of salt: addito salis grano. The Meaning of Take It With a Grain of Salt It’s not totally clear how the phrase ended up with its modern meaning—“a skeptical attitude,” per Merriam-Webster—after that. According to Michael Quinion’s blog World Wide Words, some people who read Pliny’s Natural History later on may have mistaken his mention of salt as a figurative warning. As in: “Be skeptical about this recipe, since I’m not sold on its efficacy and you might accidentally poison yourself to death,” or something to that effect. But without any evidence that other ancient Romans used grain of salt as an idiom, it seems more likely that salt was part of the actual recipe. It’s also possible that the idea of using salt to make poison easier to swallow just seemed like an apt description for adding a little skepticism when consuming questionable information. In any case, grain of salt showed up again in John Trapp’s 1647 A commentary or exposition upon all the Epistles and the Revelation of John the Divine, but didn’t really catch on until the 20th century. As HowStuffWorks reports, the literary journal The Athenaeum mentioned it in a 1908 issue that read, “Our reasons for not accepting the author’s pictures of early Ireland without many grains of salt … ” By that point, the idiom was presumably common enough for readers to understand its meaning. But considering the large gaps in the history of the phrase, this rundown can’t exactly be called a comprehensive origin story. In other words: take it with a grain of salt. Source: Why Do We Tell People to Take Something “With a Grain of Salt”?

What's the Word: SYNECDOCHE pronunciation: [sə-NEK-də-kee] Part of speech: noun Origin: Late Middle English, 1350s Meaning: 1. A figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa. Examples: "The team's full name is the Jacksonville Jaguars, but they are often referred to by the synecdoche 'Jaguars.'" "The tourism campaign was pushing for 'Maple Town' to be the synecdoche for the village known for its maple syrup festival." About Synecdoche While synecdoche became used through Late Middle English, it originated from the Greek word "sunekdokhē" — a combination of the words "sun" ("together") and "ekdekhesthai" ("to take up"). Did you Know? Despite the complicated spelling and pronunciation of the word "synecdoche" (suh-NEK-duh-kee), you likely use this type of figure of speech every day. If your favorite sports team is the Oakland Athletics baseball team and you call them the "A's," that's synecdoche. Referring to the United States as "America" or saying a statement has been put out by the company when it was actually a single spokesperson are both examples of synecdoche. To clarify, anytime you use a simplified term as a part to represent a whole, or vice versa, that's synecdoche.

Fact of the Day - WHY ARE THEY NAMED THAT? Did you know... Certain generational names are well-known, but how exactly did they come to be in the first place? Discover the origins behind a few of them here. Wondering how different generation names came to be? While the Pew Research Center has revamped their definitions for who gets counted under what generation, who actually decides what those generations are called can be a much hazier thing. Surprisingly, there isn’t one single clearinghouse where these generational names are chosen. Instead, generations frequently receive multiple monikers that then battle it out until only one remains—a process that was being fought between the likes of iGen, Generation Z, and Post-Millennials. Although Gen Z won out as the name for the current generation, older group names generally involve one writer picking a term and then a bunch of other writers all coming to some crude form of consensus—with a couple of failures along the way. Baby Boomers (1946-1964) Calling a dramatic increase in the number of children born a “baby boom” dates to the 19th century. In 1941, an issue of LIFE magazine—discussing the increasing birthrate due to older couples having children after the Great Depression and the many marriages that came about because of the peacetime draft of 1940—proclaimed that “the U.S. baby boom is bad news for Hitler.” The children who would come to be known as Baby Boomers, however, wouldn’t be born for a few more years as soldiers returned home from the war and the economy “boomed.” Although the children born from 1946 to 1964 are referred to by Baby Boomer now, the phrase wouldn’t appear until near the end of that period. In January 1963, the Newport News Daily Press warned of a tidal wave of college enrollment coming as the “Baby Boomers” were growing up. That same year, the Oxford English Dictionary quoted the Salt Lake Tribune as saying “Statistics show that ... long hours of television viewing put an extra strain on chairs, causing upholstered seating pieces to wear out three to four times faster than in the days before television and the baby-boomers.” Oddly, an alternate moniker for people born during this time was Generation X; as London’s The Observer noted in 1964, “Like most generations, ‘Generation X’—as the editors tag today’s under 25s—show a notable lack of faith in the Old Ones.” Generation X (1965-1980) That comment in The Observer was in reference to a then-recently published book called Generation X by Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett. A few years later, Joan Broad bought a copy at a garage sale, her son found it, and he fell in love with the name. That son was Billy Idol, and according to his memoir, “We immediately thought it could be a great name for this new band, since we both felt part of a youth movement bereft of a future, that we were completely misunderstood by and detached from the present social and cultural spectrum. We also felt the name projected the many possibilities that came with presenting our generation’s feelings and thoughts.” The band Generation X would begin Billy Idol’s career. But the name Generation X wouldn’t become associated with a wide group of people until 1991. That’s the year Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture was released. The book became a sensation for its ability to capture early ’90s culture and, although it didn’t coin the words, helped popularize a range of terms as diverse as McJob and pamphleting—and a name for an entire generation. Millennials (1981-1996) What comes after Generation X? Generation Y, obviously. That was the logic behind several newspaper columns that proclaimed the coming of Generation Y in the early ’90s. (While the magazine Advertising Age traditionally gets credit for coining the term in 1993, it was actually in use in 1992.) But as psychologist Jean Twenge explained to NPR regarding the failure of baby busters as a term to describe Generation X, “Labels that derive from the previous generation don’t tend to stick.” Instead, in 1991 authors Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote Generations, which included a discussion about the Millennials. According to Forbes, they felt that as the oldest members of this generation were graduating high school in 2000—and everyone was focusing on the coming date—Millennials seemed a natural fit. Source: How Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials Got Their Names

What's the Word: FETTLE pronunciation: [fedl] Part of speech: noun Origin: Late Middle English, 1300s Meaning: 1. Condition. Examples: "Despite being over a decade old, the biplane remained in fine fettle." "Mark had experience with repairing manual vehicles from keeping his own vintage cars in good fettle." About Fettle While the word "fettle" developed as a verb meaning "to prepare oneself or get ready" in Late Middle English, it originated from the Old English word "fetel" (referring to a strip of material) and the Germanic word "fessel" (meaning "chain, band"). In English, it can still be used as a verb meaning "to make or repair" or in a specific pottery usage, but its most common usage is as a noun, meaning "condition." It's often paired idiomatically with "fine," as in "fine fettle." Did you Know? Old vehicles displayed in museums and in classic car shows may seem to naturally remain in fine fettle, but a lot of care goes into maintaining their condition. A vintage Mustang or classic roadster can't go to just any mechanic. People who make classic cars their hobby either learn the skills to maintain the vehicles themselves, or pay an expert in the specific model of car to keep it in good fettle.

Fact of the Day - I WANT IT THAT WAY Did you know... When “I Want It That Way” comes on, everyone sings along—even if they don’t understand what, exactly, the song means. Musically, it’s neither a grand romantic ballad nor a propulsive dance banger, and lyrically, it’s semi-coherent at best. Technically, it’s not even the group’s highest-charting U.S. single. And yet, the Backstreet Boys’ 1999 smash “I Want It That Way,” which celebrates its 25th anniversary in April 2024, is among the definitive songs—if not the definitive song—of the ’90s teen-pop explosion. More than just a sign of the times, “I Want It That Way” is a ridiculously catchy, expertly crafted piece of music that transcends eras and defies criticism. When it comes on the radio, everyone in the car sings along—period. “I Want It That Way” is largely the handiwork of Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin, a melodic genius who has penned hits for everyone from NSYNC to The Weeknd—and who’s arguably done more than anyone to shape the sound of popular music over the last quarter-century. The story of how the song and its iconic music video came together is filled with little twists and strange artistic choices that make it seem like the universe wanted “I Want It That Way” to happen. And you really can’t blame the universe. Orlando Origins To fully appreciate the significance of “I Want It That Way,” one must first know some Backstreet Boys history. The quintessential ’90s American boy band comprises A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter, and cousins Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell. They came together in Orlando, Florida, in 1993, after a secretly shady (more on that later) blimp magnate named Lou Pearlman placed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel. Pearlman was looking to start a group like New Kids on the Block, who’d achieved massive success earlier in the decade, and soon, his photogenic fivesome had signed a deal with Jive Records. Their name derives from the Backstreet Market, an outdoor flea market in Orlando. When the Backstreet Boys debuted in 1995, America wasn’t quite ready for a teen-pop takeover. Their debut single, “We Got It Goin’ On,” went no higher than No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100. Over in Europe, however, it became a bonafide smash, reaching the Top 10 in numerous countries. The group’s 1996 self-titled debut album didn’t even come out in America, but it topped the charts in places like Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. On August 12, 1997, America finally got its own version of Backstreet Boys. It contains songs from the international edition of the album and its follow-up, Backstreet’s Back, which came out globally (though not in the U.S.) on August 11, 1997. The singles “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” and “All I Have to Give” cracked the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100—the former peaking at a career-best No. 2—and by August 31, 1998, the album had gone sextuple platinum. (It was certified 14x platinum in April 2001.) Seven years after Nirvana had instigated the angsty grunge rebellion with 1991’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a new revolution was underway. This time, it would be clean-cut model-types and former Mouseketeers leading the charge, presenting America’s youth with a decidedly peppier vision of adolescence. Melodies to the Max Two of the biggest songs on the American edition of Backstreet Boys, “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” and “As Long As You Love Me,” were written or co-written by one Karl Martin Sandberg, a.k.a. Max Martin. A product of Sweden’s famed state-sponsored music education programs, Martin started off playing the recorder before graduating to French horn, drums, and keyboards. In addition to being an ace musician, Martin was a huge music fan. Growing up in suburban Stockholm in the ’70s and early ’80s, Martin absorbed his parents’ records—the Beatles, Elton John, Vivaldi—before latching onto theatrical hard rockers Kiss, whom he discovered through his older brother. In the mid-’80s, Martin began fronting the glam-metal outfit It’s Alive. When he wasn’t rocking out with the band, he was sneaking listens to pop songs like The Bangles’s “Eternal Flame,” a harbinger of things to come. Martin’s life changed in 1994, when he met producer Dag Krister Volle, otherwise known as Denniz PoP. As co-founder of the now-legendary Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, PoP had produced a string of memorable hits for the Swedish electro-pop foursome Ace of Base. PoP became Martin’s mentor and gave him his stage name. Whereas PoP was an untrained musician who trusted his gut, Martin had a deep knowledge of music theory. He was able to synthesize new sounds and textures into funky, hooky music that left his collaborators floored. PoP and Martin co-wrote and co-produced “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” Backstreet Boys’s debut single. Around the same time of those early Backstreet Boys hits, the world received another Max Martin pop gem, “...Baby One More Time,” the 1998 debut single by a then-unknown Louisiana hopeful named Britney Spears. Written and co-produced by Martin, that song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and shook the Earth off its axis. Teen pop had fully arrived. “Abstract” Lyrics Despite their heightened profile, Backstreet Boys didn’t have an easy road to their third album (second in America), 1999’s Millennium. In 1998, four of the five members sued Lou Pearlman; among the issues was the accusation that Pearlman pocketed $10 million from a European tour, while they’d only made $300,000. After a court case that involved 20 judges and lawyers spread across three states, they wound up settling in October 1998 (the terms were not disclosed). That same year, BSB member Brian Littrell underwent surgery to fix a hole in his heart. Amid all this drama, Backstreet Boys hit the studio in the fall of 1998 and started work on Millennium, an album that would be loaded with songs written and produced by Martin and his Cheiron collaborators. (PoP was not among them—he died of cancer in August 1998 at age 35.) Among them was a mid-tempo number called “I Want It That Way.” Martin wrote it with help from Andreas Carlsson, a relative newcomer at Cheiron who’d given up his pop-star dreams after opening for Backstreet Boys in Sweden in 1996. “All I understood after that was that I was a waste of time as an artist—because they were so good!” Carlsson told Billboard. Martin came up with the bulk of “I Want It That Way” himself. He had the opening line, “You are my fire/The one desire,” but he enlisted Carlsson—whom he’d recently discovered was his next door neighbor—to help him complete the lyrics. They tried a “million different variations” for the second verse, Carlsson told HitQuarters, before they ultimately used the “fire/desire” rhyme again, albeit with a slight tweak: “Am I your fire / Your one desire?” They capped the song off with a guitar lick that, according to numerous online sources, was inspired by Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” (Remember: Martin was a metal guy.) When it was finished, everyone loved it. There was just one little problem. “The band and the record company heard it and they immediately said, ‘This is a classic,’” Carlsson told Billboard. “But they weren’t sure about the lyrics because they thought they were too abstract—and rightfully so!” “Abstract” is a nice way of putting it. “I Want It That Way” is sung from the perspective of a guy who doesn’t want to break up with his significant other. He begins by telling this person they’re his “fire” and “one desire.” “Believe me when I say/I want it that way,” he adds. Simple enough so far. But then comes this section: “But we are two worlds apart Can’t reach to your heart When you say That I want it that way” Those lines are confusing unless you throw quotation marks around the phrase I want it that way, thereby indicating that the narrator’s love interest is the one saying those words. It’s worth noting that there are no quotation marks in the lyrics printed in the original CD booklet, so it’s unclear whether Martin and Carlsson intended them to be there. But quotation marks around I want it that way would also come in handy on the chorus: “Tell me why Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache Tell me why Ain’t nothing but a mistake Tell me why I never wanna hear you say I want it that way” With quotation marks, this reads like the narrator telling his partner that he never wants to hear them say that this relationship is a heartache and a mistake. (Though even if you add quotation marks, the lyrics are pretty confusing—people aren’t wrong to scratch their heads.) The Backstreet Boys themselves seemed to support this interpretation when they responded to a tweet from Chrissy Teigen in 2018. Teigen was puzzled by the lyrics that end the song—“I never wanna hear you say/I want it that way/Cause I want it that way.” In particular, she wanted to know what “it” means—and BSB offered this response: “Don’t wanna hear you say that you want heartaches and mistakes... or to be 2 worlds apart. We don’t want you to want ‘it’ that way - that’s the way we want it... for you to not want it that way.” This wasn’t the first time the Backstreet Boys had weighed in on the song’s cryptic lyrics. “Ultimately the song really doesn't really make much sense,” BSB member Kevin Richardson told LA Weekly in 2011. Richardson chalked it up to Martin’s limited command of the English language. “His English has gotten much better,” he said, “but at the time …” Melodic Math Martin’s limited English skills might have actually been a blessing. In a 2015 article for The New Yorker, John Seabrook argues that Swedish songwriters like Martin are liberated from the demands of having to be witty and clever. Instead, they can focus on what Martin has called “melodic math,” the notion that words should function mostly in service of a song’s melody. The hook is everything—meaning is secondary. “I Want It That Way” is far from the only example of questionable English in Martin’s oeuvre. When he wrote the line “Hit me, baby, one more time” for Britney Spears’s breakthrough, he thought hit was slang for call, and that the line meant “call me one more time.” But people didn’t get it. As Seabrook puts it, “It was hard to imagine that anyone for whom English is a first language would write the phrase ‘Hit me, baby’ without intending it as an allusion to domestic violence or S & M. That was the furthest thing from the minds of the gentle Swedes, who were only trying to use up-to-the-minute lingo.” Martin originally offered the song to TLC, and they turned it down partially due to that lyric. “I was like, I like the song but do I think it’s a hit? Do I think it’s TLC?” group member T-Boz told MTV. “I'm not saying ‘hit me baby.’ No disrespect to Britney. It's good for her. But was I going to say ‘hit me baby one more time'? Hell no!” Justin Timberlake was more accommodating when Martin asked him to pronounce the word me as “may” on the 2000 *NSYNC smash “It’s Gonna Be Me.” “I don’t remember if the specifics were a ‘meaner me,’ but I sang, ‘It’s gonna be me,’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no,’” Timberlake said on the YouTube series Hot Ones. “He was like, ‘It’s may.’ … The parts of their English that were broken actually made them catchier songwriters because they would put words a way that almost didn’t make sense, but when you sang them, they were more memorable.” Slightly more recently, Martin made headlines for the grammatical liberties he took in writing Ariana Grande’s 2014 song “Break Free,” featuring Zedd. Martin’s lyrics required Grande to sing lines like “Now that I’ve become who I really are” and “I only wanna die alive,” and that didn’t sit right with the pop star. “I fought [Martin] on it the whole time,” Grande told TIME magazine. “‘I am not going to sing a grammatically incorrect lyric, help me God!’ Max was like, ‘It’s funny—just do it!’ I know it’s funny and silly, but grammatically incorrect things make me cringe sometimes.” She sang the lyrics as written anyway, and the song peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. “No Goodbyes” Jive ultimately released “I Want It That Way” with Martin’s convoluted lyrics, but only after the label commissioned an alternate version co-written by South African superproducer and songwriter Robert John “Mutt” Lange, the man behind hits for Def Leppard, AC/DC, and Shania Twain. Now known as “No Goodbyes” by Backstreet Boys superfans, the alternate version includes the following chorus, which completely flips the meaning of the original. (It could also use quotation marks around “I want it that way,” but maybe that’s nitpicking.) “No goodbyes Ain’t nothing but a heartache No more lies Ain’t nothing but a mistake That is why I love it when I hear you say I want it that way” So why isn’t this the version that’s burned into the brain of every ’90s kid on the planet? The Backstreet Boys vetoed the rewrite and stuck with Martin and Carlsson’s lyrics. “I don’t think that it would have ended up the way that it did had we gone with the proper version,” McLean told HuffPost. “I guess you could say, you know, the one that made sense.” “Sometimes you overthink things,” Richardson said. “I think the newer version or the second version that we did that was more of a literal context didn’t ... it was the rhyming scheme that didn’t feel right. Yeah, it just didn’t feel as good, so sometimes you just got to go with what feels right.” Richardson believes that “I Want It That Way” makes perfect sense to most fans, since “everyone interprets lyrics differently and every song moves people differently.” The song certainly spoke to people somehow. Released as the lead single off Millennium, “I Want It That Way” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Top 40, and Top 40 Tracks charts. It stalled at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, but only because no physical CD single was available for purchase. Millennium debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and the 1.1 million copies it sold in its first week broke a record previously held by Garth Brooks. Dancing at LAX Upon hearing “I Want It That Way,” anyone old enough to remember MTV’s TRL will naturally picture the music video, which features the group dancing in all-white outfits in an airport terminal and serenading fans on a tarmac. The Backstreet Boys shot the clip at Los Angeles International Airport, and according to McLean, it was the “first and only time” such a thing was allowed, as the tragedies of 9/11 a couple years later made filming at airports impossible. While the costumes and choreography would become iconic—pop-punkers Blink-182 famously lampooned the video in their “All the Small Things” music video—none of the Backstreet Boys were particularly impressed at the time. “I just remember having to film the music video in between doing a lot of stuff,” Carter told Us Weekly in 2017. “I don’t remember traveling but I remember coming in and working up a choreography routine at the last minute. I think we felt that it was super cheesy and it was something that was unnecessary. It was kind of like we didn’t want to do it.” Legacy of a Bop In 2012, Rolling Stone readers voted Backstreet Boys the No. 1 boy band of all time, and the accompanying article refers to “I Want It That Way” as a “genre-transcending classic.” VH1 ranked “I Want It That Way” as the No. 3 song of the ’90s, right behind Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and U2’s “One.” “I Want It That Way” has been covered by everyone from goofy ’80s hair-metal revivalists Steel Panther to ’70s-era psych rockers Vanilla Fudge to YouTuber Billy Cobb, who created a popular emo version. “I Want It That Way” has also appeared in commercials for Geico, Chipotle, Downey, and Doritos—the latter was a high-profile Super Bowl spot starring Chance the Rapper, who gave the song a hip-hop update. All the while, fans have continued listening to the original. In November 2021, the “I Want It That Way” music video reached a billion views on YouTube. As of 2023, Backstreet Boys are still together. They’ve released seven albums (not counting compilations) since Millennium, the most recent being 2022’s A Very Backstreet Christmas. That collection of holiday tunes includes a cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. The group was set to star in an ABC special titled A Very Backstreet Holiday in December 2022, but those plans were scrapped due to rape allegations against Nick Carter. Carter has denied the claims, and earlier this year, he filed a defamation suit against another rape accuser. Legal troubles also haunt the legacy of Lou Pearlman. It turns out he was running a massive Ponzi scheme that he used to steal more than $317 million from investors, many of whom were retirees. (Some former associates have also accused Pearlman of sexual misconduct.) After fleeing the U.S., Pearlman was arrested in Indonesia in 2007. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering, and making a false claim in a bankruptcy, and he was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. He died of a heart infection in 2016 at the age of 62. The biggest winner of this story is Max Martin, who has remained pop’s go-to collaborator and reigning chart champion for decades. In the last 10 years alone, he’s written and produced blockbuster singles for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and Ariana Grande, among many, many others. The man has more than two dozen No. 1 pop hits to his credit, including “My Universe,” Coldplay’s 2021 team-up with the K-pop band BTS. Martin’s list of chart-toppers contains bangers galore, but few will get you screaming along in the car quite like “I Want It That Way.” Source: How Max Martin’s ‘Melodic Math’ Led to This Enduring (and Confusing) Backstreet Boys Hit

What's the Word: NODUS pronunciation: [NO-dəs] Part of speech: noun Origin: Late Middle English, late 14th century Meaning: 1. A problem, difficulty, or complication. Examples: "The team hadn’t expected to encounter a nodus this early in the project." "Despite the nodus of the car not starting, they both managed to get to work on time." About Nodus Nodus developed in Late Middle English as a way to describe a knotty swelling; it originated in Latin as the literal translation for "knot." Over time, it evolved to describe a knotty problem or conundrum. Did you Know? Escape rooms are a novel way to spend some time with friends. A group of people is locked in a room filled with puzzles and clues. They must solve each nodus within a set period of time to win.

Fact of the Day - CATS & VOICES Did you know... While dogs are often touted as man’s best friend, cats can be so aloof that they seem like little more than a passing acquaintance. However, there is more going on between felines and their human owners than a cat’s sometimes steely exterior may suggest. In October 2022, researchers from France published results from an experiment examining the relationship cats have with their owners’ voices. In the study, cats responded more positively to a familiar human voice (swishing tails, pivoting ears, pausing grooming) than when they heard the voice of a stranger. This builds on previous research from 2013 that found a similar connection between a familiar voice and its effects on a cat — though none of the felines in that study even bothered to get up in response to the voices they recognized. Unlike dogs, cats were never domesticated to follow a human’s orders, and instead were the product of a more symbiotic relationship, as the rise of agriculture also gave rise to rodents and other pests for cats to hunt. The French researchers also studied how owners spoke with their pets; specifically, if they used cat-directed speech — aka baby talk — which is known to positively impact both babies and canines. (In fact, babies learn words more quickly when listening to baby talk.) Owners’ voices were recorded asking questions such as “do you want to play?” and “do you want a treat?” using both cat-directed speech and human-to-human conversational speech. Like dogs and babies, cats reacted more positively to cat-directed speech than to an owner’s normal speaking voice. There’s a scientific reason why you hate listening to your own voice. Hearing a recording of your voice can be an unpleasant experience, as the sound isn’t usually what you expect. To put it simply, hearing works by something called “air conduction,” in which sound waves travel to our ears’ cochleas, which in turn stimulate nerve axons that send signals to the brain — but that’s not what happens when we speak. While some air conduction occurs when we hear ourselves talking, most sound is translated through “bone conduction,” particularly our skull bones. This blend of both air and bone conduction gives our voice a deeper, richer low end, which explains why most people perceive their voices as higher pitched when listening to a recording. Source: Cats can recognize their owners’ voices.

What's the Word: SHEEPSHANK pronunciation: [SHEEP-shangk] Part of speech: noun Origin: Unknown, mid-17th century Meaning: 1. A kind of knot used to shorten a rope temporarily. Examples: "Killian was glad he remembered how to tie a sheepshank from his Boy Scout days." "The sailor quickly tied some sheepshanks to keep the rope out of the way." About Sheepshank While we know that this noun first originated in the 17th century as a type of temporary knot used to shorten a rope quickly, its literal origins are largely unknown. Did you Know? A sheepshank is a knot that can quickly be tied to take up slack on a rope. It’s not very stable, so it shouldn’t be used in situations that require a secure hold.