Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HOW WOULD YOU SAY YOUR HUNGEROVER?

Did you know... It only takes one word to convey that you’re suffering the aftermath of overzealous imbibing: hungover. But it’s not the only word that people have ever used to describe such a state—and, frankly, some of history’s lost synonyms are a little more fun. From ale passion to vinnecky-vasky, here are 10 forgotten ways to say you’re hungover.

 

1. Ale Passion
Ale passion isn’t an enthusiasm for alcohol—it’s what comes after you exercise that enthusiasm. Passion used to mean “a painful disorder, ailment, or affliction,” per the Oxford English Dictionary. The phrase ale passion had fallen out of fashion by the 1600s, though not before it made an appearance in a 1593 account of how Bacchus supposedly celebrated Pentecost. In it, a courtier named Gotfrey Grouthead shows up to the festivities with “a wallet full of woodcocks heads, the braines thereof tempered with other sauce” as “a passing preservative against the ale-passion or paine in the pate.” Marinated bird brains may not rank as a science-backed hangover cure, but they’re far from history’s grossest.

 

2. Chippy

The upbeat and cheerful chipper has an evil twin: chippy, a Victorian term to describe feeling hungover or unwell in general (often in the morning). It’s unclear exactly where it came from. Green’s Dictionary of Slang suggests that it’s an offshoot of cheap, which was also used to describe feeling ill (again, often in the morning). But the OED has its money on chip as the source word in the “broken fragment” sense.

 

3. Crapulous
Crapulous may seem like a tidy adjective for “feeling like crap,” but the two craps in question actually have different origins. Crapulous derives from the Latin crapula, meaning “drunkenness” or “hangover.” By the late Middle Ages, English speakers were using crapulous to describe “gross excess in drinking or eating,” per the OED, and by the mid-1700s that definition had broadened to include what too much booze can do to you—namely, make you feel like crap.

 

4. Crawsick
Crawsick is 18th-century Irish slang for hungover that remained popular well into the 20th century; James Joyce even mentioned it in Ulysses. Craw is another word for stomach, so the term technically refers to feeling sick to your stomach—but you can probably get away with using it for ale passion of any kind.

 

5. Like a boiled owl

Inebriated English speakers have been saying they’re “as drunk as an owl” at least since the mid-1600s. The origins of the expression are a mystery, but radio program A Way with Words once suggested that the link between owls and inebriation “may have to do with their glassy-eyed stare, the way they regurgitate undigested food, and the clumsy way they fly when startled.” As far as we know, no owls were harmed in the transition from as drunk as an owl to as drunk as a boiled owl or as drunk as a stewed owl: The words boiled and stewed both just meant “drunk.” By the 1800s, people had started likening themselves to boiled or stewed owls whenever they felt exhausted, ill, or both—as is so often the case with hangovers.

 

6. Fishy about the gills
“You look fishy about the gills” is a very Victorian way to tell someone that it’s obvious they were out drinking the previous night. As James Redding Ware explained in his 1909 book Passing English of the Victorian Era, “Drink produces a pull-down of the corners of the mouth, and a consequent squareness of the lower cheeks or gills, suggesting the gill-shields in fishes.”

 

7. Hot coppers

Ever woken up after one too many with your mouth and throat positively burning with thirst? You’ve experienced hot coppers. The phrase, which first started appearing in print during the early 19th century, was apparently inspired by the big copper cooking (and laundry) pots known in the UK as coppers.  American writer George Ade mentioned the phenomenon in a song called “R-E-M-O-R-S-E” from the musical The Sultan of Sulu, which premiered on Broadway in late 1902. The character is lamenting the 23 cocktails he tossed back the night before:

 

“Last night at twelve I felt immense,
Today I feel like thirty cents.
My eyes are bleared, my coppers hot,
I’ll try to eat, but I cannot.”

 

Hot coppers and bleary eyes seem like a small price to pay for escaping death after downing nearly two dozen cocktails in a single night.

 

8.  Katzenjammer
Katzenjammer, German for “cats’ wailing,” was a jaunty synonym for hangover from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. It could also describe depression, an uproar, or any “unpleasant aftermath or reaction,” per the OED. But the best-known usage of katzenjammer comes from the comic strip Katzenjammer Kids, created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and carried on later by other artists. The titular kids, Fritz and Hans, weren’t hungover—they were just really naughty.

 

9. Monday head

The Monday after a party-heavy weekend is often characterized by a pounding headache and other symptoms of a vengeful hangover. Late 19th-century English speakers had a phrase for that: Monday head. Writer Wadham Peacock paid tribute to society’s collective malfunction on Mondays in a 1910 poem for The Sketch called “The Mondayish Feeling”:

 

“Laymen, going by rule of thumb,
Have known for ever so long
That Monday’s the day when everyone
And everything goes wrong.
But they’ve taken it all as a matter
of course,
Shrugged their shoulders, and said,
‘It’s that end-of-a-holiday,
After-a-jolly-day,
Old-fashioned Monday head.’”

 

10. Vinnecky-vasky
According to Green’s, vinnecky-vasky was a Victorian term for “suffering from and complaining of a hangover.” It only shows up once in the written record—in an 1850 slang dictionary by Edward Duncombe (or his brother John, depending on your source). But what vinnecky-vasky lacks in historical citations it more than makes up for by being fun to utter aloud.

 

 

Source: Old-Timey Ways to Say You’re Hungover

[DarkRavie]

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Fact of the Day - CLASSIC CHRISTMAS COMMERCIALS

 

Did you know... The holiday season, like the Super Bowl, is one of the few times where people actually look forward to seeing which commercials will interrupt their favorite shows. In addition to premiering fresh content each year, companies lean into holiday nostalgia by using the same cozy commercials over and over again. Some, like Hershey’s Kisses’s “Christmas Bells,” continue to run today; others that no longer air, such as the 1993 TV debut of the Coca-Cola polar bears, still had a lasting effect on holiday advertisements. Here are seven beloved commercials that have stood the test of time and remain Christmas classics.

 

1. Folgers Coffee’s “Peter Comes Home for Christmas” // 1986

 

Peter first first came home for Christmas in 1986 in this feel-good Folgers ad. According to Greg Wrangler, the actor who played Peter, the original commercial aired for nearly 20 years. Folgers came out with a new version of the 1986 ad in 2009, in which a different Peter comes home to a very excited sister; that commercial went viral due to what viewers deemed was an unusually intimate relationship between the siblings. 

 

2. Budweiser’s “Holiday Greetings” // 1987

 

The Budweiser Clydesdales have starred in many a commercial since the 1980s. In this heartwarming advertisement, the giant equines dash through the snow to deliver a giant Christmas tree. It’s a classic Budweiser commercial that many still look back on with nostalgia.

 

3. Hershey's Kisses’s “Christmas Bells” // 1989

 

No cable Christmas movie marathon would be complete without at least one performance of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” by this tree-shaped chocolate ensemble. It’s the candy company’s longest-running commercial, and it has quite the fan base: In 2020, Hershey's faced backlash after debuting “Bells to Blossoms,” an updated version of the classic ad (the company confirmed that “Bells to Blossoms” was not a replacement for the original, saying it intended to air both versions during the holiday season). 

 

4. Corona Extra’s “O’ Tannenpalm”  // 1990

 

Corona’s 32-year-old beer commercial adds a tropical twist to Christmas. A palm tree decorated with festive string lights dazzles in the darkness while a person off-screen whistles the tune of “O’ Tannenbaum” (also known as “O’ Christmas Tree”). It’s a peaceful commercial, but it was actually quite stressful to film, thanks to all the alligators lurking nearby. “We had to have alligator wranglers scoop the alligators and keep them out of the way. The cameraman was petrified, so we promised him he could go out there and set up the shot, and then escape,” Mike Rogers, the advertisement’s creator, once explained.

 

5. Campbell’s Soup’s “Melting Snowman”// 1993 

 

This cozy commercial was a staple of the ‘90s and aughts. As the shivering snowman huddles over a bowl of steaming hot soup, he slowly melts to reveal a young boy ready to tuck into his dinner. According to The Drum, the commercial was created to evoke the warm feelings both parents and kids feel on a snowy day.

 

6. Coca-Cola’s “Northern Lights” // 1993

 

Polar bears have popped up in Coca-Cola advertisements since the 1920s, but they didn’t appear on television until 1993. In this commercial—which is admittedly more about winter than the holiday season—they admire the Northern Lights while sipping icy bottles of soda. Ken Stewart, the commercial’s creator, was inspired by his Labrador retriever, who, as a puppy, resembled a fluffy polar bear. The Arctic beasts have since been featured in other Coca-Cola commercials, with admittedly better animation as the years went on.

 

7. M&M’s “Faint” // 1996

 

Santa can withstand a lot of magical things—flying reindeer, elves, traveling the world at an impossibly fast speed—but the existence of talking candy was simply too much for jolly Old Saint Nick to handle in this 1996 M&M’s commercial. In 2017, the company aired a sequel to the original ad, which showed Yellow attempting to save Christmas while Red and Santa were rendered incapacitated by the shock of their encounter. 

 

 

Source: Classic Christmas Commercials Guaranteed to Fuel Your Holiday Nostalgia

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ALTERNATIVE LYRICS

Did you know.... First published in English in 1780, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (actually the 12 days after Christmas) is thought to have originated in France as a children’s forfeit game with ever more elaborate gifts added to the collection, verse by verse, as a test of memory. Whatever its origins may be, however, as the carol grew in popularity throughout the 19th century, numerous versions and variations of its lyrics began to emerge. Some of these differences still survive in different versions sung today: The traditional “five gold rings” are sometimes described as “five golden rings,” and while some performances describe what “my true love gave to me,” others say the gifts were “sent to me.” But these kinds of subtle differences are nothing compared to some of the gifts in the song’s earlier incarnations.

 

1. “A Very Pretty Peacock”

One early version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was recorded by the Scottish poet and artist William Scott Bell in 1892. Although most of Bell’s lyrics are identical to what we sing today, in his version each verse concludes not with “a partridge in a pear tree,” but with a considerably more ostentatious “very pretty peacock upon a pear tree.”

 

2. “Four Canary Birds”

In the original 1780 version, the “four calling birds” are instead described as “four colly birds.” Colly—literally “coaly”—is an old English dialect word meaning “soot-black.” By the mid-19th century, however, the word colly had largely fallen out of use, leaving several Victorian editions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to come up with their own replacements. “Colour’d birds” and even “curley birds” were used in some editions, while an exotic “four canary birds” were added to the lyrics of one version. The now standard “four calling birds” first appeared in the early 1900s.

 

3. and 4. “Eight Hares A-Running” and “Eleven Badgers Baiting”

In 1869, an article appeared in an English magazine called The Cliftonian that described a traditional Christmas in rural Gloucestershire, southwest England. The author of the piece wrote that he had heard some local carol singers singing a curious Christmas song, which he noted for the “peculiarity and the utter absurdity of the words.” After outlining the first two of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” he went on to explain that the carol “proceeds in this ascending manner until on the twelfth day of Christmas the young lady receives … [an] astounding tribute of true love”—among which are “eight hares a-running” and “eleven badgers baiting.”

 

5., 6., 7., and 8. “Seven Squabs A-Swimming,” “Eight Hounds A-Running,” “Nine Bears A-Beating,” And “Ten Cocks A-Crowing”

One of the earliest American versions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was listed in The American Journal of Folklore in 1900. Credited to a contributor from Salem, Massachusetts, and dated to “about 1800,” there are no pipers, drummers, maids, or swans here (and lords and ladies had a number change). Instead, in their place are “ten cocks a-crowing,” “nine bears a-beating,” “eight hounds a-running,” and “seven squabs a-swimming.”

 

9., 10., and 11. “Ten Asses Racing,” “Eleven Bulls A-Beating,” and “Part of a Mistletow Bough”

An edition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” included in Folk Songs From Somerset published in 1911 discarded the “pipers piping” and “lords a-leaping” in favor of “eleven bulls a-beating” and “ten asses racing.” In fact, not even the partridge in the pear tree made the final cut here: In its place was a “part of a mistletoe bough.”

 

12. and 13. “Ten Ships A-Sailing” and “Eleven Ladies Spinning”

In an 1842 edition of Specimens of Lyric Poetry, out went the “ten drummers drumming” and the “eleven lords a-leaping” (downgraded to only nine lords, still a-leaping) and in came “ten ships a-sailing” and “eleven ladies spinning.” Not only that, but this edition also explained in a footnote how “The Twelve Days of Christmas” might once have been used: “Each child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake. The accumulative process is a favourite with children.”

 

14. and 15. “A Bull That Was Brown” and “An Arabian Baboon”

An alternative Scots version of “The Twelve Day of Christmas” was reported in use in Scotland in the first half of the 19th century before finding its way into a collection of Popular Rhymes of Scotland published in 1847. Although there are a handful of similarities between this version and the version we’d sing today (“ducks a-merry laying” and “swans a-merry swimming” both make an appearance), relatively little of what we’d recognize remains intact. “The king sent his lady on the first Yule day,” is the new opening line, and many of the gifts are given in sets of three rather than as part of a larger 12-part sequence—but it’s what the gifts themselves are that is the most striking. Alongside the swans and ducks, the king sends his lady “a bull that was brown,” “a goose that was gray,” “three plovers,” “a papingo-aye” (an old Scots dialect word for a parrot, although occasionally translated as peacock)—and, just when things can’t get any stranger, “an Arabian baboon.”

 

 

Source: Alternative Lyrics From Old Versions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SIGN LANGUAGE

Did you know... The human impulse for interaction by way of signals and gestures is a basic one; some scientists even believe that visual languages predate spoken ones. But if the simplicity of gesturing enables us to connect with a toddler, then it may be another basic impulse — creating art — that explains how we progressed from pointing and smiling to the wondrous intricacies of sign language. Read on to learn more about the evolution of this highly stylized and expressive form of communication, and how it continues to make its presence felt in the world today.

 

1. There Are More Than 300 Different Sign Languages Across the World

As distinct languages with their own grammatical rules and evolving lexicon, sign languages exist mostly independently of the spoken dialects in the same territories. In other words, American Sign Language (ASL) is considered its own language independent of American English, and people who use ASL, British Sign Language (BSL), and Australia's Auslan sign language are often unable to understand each other the way the speaking residents of their countries can. Altogether, there are more than 300 sign languages used by approximately 72 million deaf or hard of hearing people around the world. There's also International Sign, which is used to bridge communication gaps at global events such as the World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf and the Deaflympics, but it lacks the complexities of a true language.

 

2. Medieval European Monks Developed Their Own Sign Languages

Beginning around the eighth century CE, European monastic orders developed their own sign languages to help abide by the Benedictine rule of maintaining silence away from prayer exercises. St. Bede was the first to develop manual signs to represent the alphabet, while Anglo-Saxon monks circa 11th-century England had a list of 127 signals referring to regularly used items such as books, food, clothing, and tools. Following centuries of effective monastic communication, Spanish Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de León is credited with creating the first school for the deaf, in the 16th century.

 

3. American Sign Language Emerged in the Early 19th Century

After taking an interest in the well-being of a young, deaf neighbor in Connecticut, seminary graduate Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled to Europe in 1815 to learn more about educational methodology for this overlooked section of the population. He spent about four months studying French Sign Language (FSL) at the Parisian school for the deaf, after which he convinced one of its teachers, Lauren Clerc, to return with him to Connecticut. Together, they opened the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford in 1817, and FSL merged with the signs its students brought to the classroom to become the basis of American Sign Language.

 

4. Speech Supporters Attempted to Stamp Out ASL

By the late 19th century, a philosophical divide regarding the means for properly educating deaf students had emerged. "Oralists," led by inventor and elocutionist Alexander Graham Bell, championed the teaching of speech and lip-reading exercises, and sought to do away with the "manualists" who advocated for signing. By the early 20th century, the oralists had largely succeeded in the United States; most non-hearing teachers were fired, and students who were caught signing on school grounds could face punishment. Regardless, ASL maintained its relevance within the Deaf community, and eventually returned to classrooms following a more thorough reexamination of its benefits in the 1960s.

 

5. Body Language Plays a Key Role in ASL
ASL students will of course attempt to memorize the manual alphabet and as many of the approximately 10,000 signs as possible, but there's far more to mastering the language than replicating gestures. Some signs can be either a verb or a noun, depending on the size of the gesture and whether or not it's repeated. Additionally, the speed and direction of the delivery can alter the meaning of a sentence. And when it comes to expressing emotion, the eyes, mouth, and body movements go a long way toward making sure the point is received.

 

6. Chimpanzees and Gorillas Have Learned to Communicate With Sign Language

Around the time that ASL was again being recognized by educators in the 1960s, researchers realized they could use sign language to communicate with certain primates. The first was Washoe, an African-born chimpanzee who learned approximately 250 signs and even taught many of them to an adopted son. She was followed by Koko, a western lowland gorilla who learned more than 1,000 signs and allegedly responded to a sizable number of spoken English words as well. However, the question of just how much these animals "understood" ASL is a source of debate, with critics contending that Koko learned to use certain signs simply because she was rewarded for doing so — and while she mastered the use of individual signs, she was not actually fluent in the language.

 

7. American Businesses Must Provide an ASL Interpreter if Requested

Deaf and hard of hearing individuals gained an extra measure of consumer protection with the passage of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, which mandates the provision of "auxiliary aids and services" by government operations and businesses. This means that anyone in need of an ASL interpreter at a doctor's office, restaurant, retail store, theater, hotel, museum, or library is legally entitled to one, at no personal cost, if effective communication for the service cannot otherwise be maintained. The law also specifies that a friend or family member is generally not considered an appropriate interpreter, unless an emergency requires it or the person using ASL requests it (and their friend or family member agrees).

 

8. ASL Performers Can Be the Star of the Show

As exemplified by Justina Miles' performance during pregame and halftime festivities of the 2023 Super Bowl, ASL interpreters have made a splash at high-profile concerts and sporting events in recent years. These star-making turns are orchestrated by experienced performers like Amber Galloway-Gallego, who runs her own agency dedicated to these interpreters. With the focus always on the hard of hearing fans who rely on the service, Galloway-Gallego tries to select the most appropriate signer for a show — i.e., a fan of the artist's music — and encourages the interpreter to remain true to the lyrics, no matter how explicit. Performers can take up to two weeks to prepare for a concert, the effort often yielding some impressive results.

 

 

Source: Eye-Opening Facts About Sign Language

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EGGNOG

Did you know.... The egg in the word eggnog needs no explanation, but here’s one anyway: Egg is a foundational ingredient in the festive beverage, usually made by combining egg yolks with some other additives (milk, sugar, alcohol, spices) and whisking in beaten egg whites. The path to eggnog’s second syllable isn’t quite so linear—but there are a few old-fashioned words that may have played a part in its provenance.

 

The Noggin Theory
Before the word noggin became slang for head, it described a small drinking container like a cup or mug. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term dates at least as far back as the late 16th century.

 

 

By the mid-17th century, people had started using noggin to describe what you might find in a noggin itself: a modest quantity of liquor. As CulinaryLore points out, Robert Louis Stevenson even mentioned the word in Treasure Island, first published in the early 1880s: “Jim, you’ll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won’t you, matey?” Billy Bones says to Jim Hawkins, before offering him “a golden guinea for a noggin.”

 

The Nog Theory
At that point, the term eggnog had already entered the lexicon, first written in an 1825 novel by John Neal. It’s possible that it came straight from noggin—after all, eggnog did contain spirits, and you’d likely be sipping it from a small drinking vessel. But it’s also possible that the word nog itself factored into the coinage of eggnog.

 

 

Beginning in the late 17th century, nog showed up as a word of its own, referring to a potent type of beer that usually hailed from Norfolk, England. While today’s eggnog traditionally contains liquor—be it rum, bourbon, or whiskey—the medieval milk drink that inspired it, posset, could also contain ale or wine. That said, it’s not exactly clear where the word nog originated: It very well may have stemmed from noggin. So even if eggnog was inspired by nog, there’s a good chance that noggin is still part of its origin story.

 

The Grog Theory
Another theory posits that grog is actually the key to solving the mystery. In 1740, British admiral Edward Vernon ordered his sailors to start diluting their rum with water so they wouldn’t guzzle their whole ration in one sitting.

 

 

The sailors had taken to calling the admiral “Old Grog” because he often wore grogram—a rough silken fabric—and they co-opted the word grog for the watered-down drink. (Treasure Island happens to mention grog several times, too.) The term caught on, and it’s been suggested that eggnog is actually a truncation of egg-and-grog. Whatever the case, ordering a glass of egg-and-grog these days will likely confuse your server much more than asking for nog.

 

 

Source: How Did Eggnog Get Its Name?

 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - "BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE" MUSIC SONG CONTROVERSY

Did you know.... Once a piece of art is released into the world, people are free to debate its meaning and merits until the end of time. This is especially true if the work in question is a holiday song that pops back into the public consciousness each December. If the song is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—a ’40s-era American standard that some modern listeners hear as a misogynistic depiction of sexual misconduct—it’s cause for an annual barrage of controversies, radio bans, and think pieces. In recent years, arguing about the intention behind “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has become nearly as popular as listening to the song itself. And actually, the two activities are connected. In December 2018, as debates about the lyrics in the context of the #MeToo movement reached a crescendo, the song cracked the Top 10 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart for the first time ever.

Some Enchanted Evening
For a song that provokes such strong feelings, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” began fairly innocently. Broadway legend Frank Loesser wrote the ditty in 1944 and performed it with his wife, Lynn Garland, at a housewarming party in New York City that same year. It was meant to amuse guests and send them on their way at the end of night, and by all accounts, people loved it.

 

 

 

“We had to do it over and over again, and we became instant parlor room stars,” Garland remembered. “We got invited to all the best parties for years on the basis of ‘Baby.’” What were people responding to? On its face, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a light and flirty song about a romantic evening shared by a man and a woman. Or, as the original sheet music puts it, a “wolf” and a “mouse.” The man would like the woman to spend the night, and every time the woman makes an excuse and heads for the door, he’s ready with a reason why she should stay. “The neighbors might think …” the woman sings. “Baby, it's bad out there,” the man shoots back. “Say what’s in this drink?” she asks. “No cabs to be had out there,” he counters.

 

"Baby" Goes to Hollywood
In 1948, much to Garland’s chagrin, Loesser sold “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to MGM. The following year, the song appeared in the film Neptune’s Daughter, where it serves as the soundtrack to a pair of comedic scenes involving two couples. In the first, Ricardo Montalbán pursues Esther Williams, reinforcing the song’s traditional gender dynamics. In the second, Betty Garrett pushes hard for a sleepover with Red Skelton, flipping the whole thing on its head. Again, audiences ate it up, and in 1950 “Baby, It's Cold Outside” won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

 

 

 

The year the film came out, numerous well-known duos recorded the song, including Doris Day and Bob Hope, Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark, and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan. The song was quickly entering the cultural firmament—but not without controversy. As a June 1949 story in TIME magazine revealed, NBC radio initially deemed the lyrics “too racy” and banned the song. The article doesn’t specify exactly what NBC found objectionable, but it was likely the suggestion of sex, not a perceived lack of female consent.

 

Turn-of-the-Century Turning Point
Over the next 50 years, virtually every entertainer with the temperament to record Christmas music took a turn with “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., Ann-Margret, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Vanessa Williams, and Tom Jones all got into the wolf-and-mouse game. As Rolling Stone noted in 2020, the song passed through the decades without raising many eyebrows. A search of the New York Public Library’s archives turns up little to no published criticism of the lyrical content.

 

 

 

The turning point came in the 2000s—after the Will Ferrell/Zooey Deschanel duet in 2003’s beloved Elf—as listeners began to reexamine “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” through a 21st-century lens. In 2004, Canada’s National Post published a satirical article arguing that the song should be banned from the airwaves. “In sum, the man gets the girl drunk amid her protestations so he can take advantage of her,” the story reads, foretelling future interpretations of Loesser’s lyrics. Bloggers Drew Mackie and Brad Hicks wrote similar pieces in 2005 and 2006, respectively. In a 2007 Funny or Die video, comedians Tess Rafferty and Nic DeLeo create a super-dark visual accompaniment for the song. Their version is more about a serial killer than it is a sexual predatory, but as Rafferty told Refinery29, the video was inspired by realizations about the original lyrics. “We started calling it ‘the date rapey’ song,” Rafferty said. “I thought it was kind of funny that this thing was sitting out here in the open and no one was talking about it.” From there, the takes came fast and furious. Washington City Paper and Cracked both poked fun about the dark ways the lyrics could be construed. By 2012, the tune was being discussed by highbrow news and opinion sites like Salon, which took stock of the intensifying “Baby” brouhaha and branded the song “icky at best, at worst reprehensible.”

 

There’s Bound to Be Talk
As pundits lined up to condemn the song, some critics took the opposite point of view. In December 2010, the feminist magazine Persephone published a story by Christie Lauder, a.k.a. Slay Belle, titled “Listening While Feminist: In Defense of ’Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’” In the piece, Lauder argues that context is crucial to understanding the song.

 

 

 

Back in the ’40s, when “Baby” was written, it was considered scandalous for an unmarried woman to spend the night with her boyfriend. As Lauder points out, there’s nowhere in the lyrics where the woman says she doesn’t want to stay over. All of her excuses have to do with what other people—including her father and her “maiden aunt”—will say if she doesn’t come home.

 

“They are having an intimate time together and he’s far less constrained by societal expectations, so he can ask her to stay,” Lauder writes. “It’s always assumed that she’ll turn him down. Except that she doesn’t want to.”

 

Lauder also tackles the song’s most infamous lyric: “Say, what’s in this drink?” Many modern listeners who find the song problematic interpret this as the man drugging the woman’s cocktail. But as Lauder explains, “What’s in this drink?” was a common joke in movies of the time. People would use the phrase when they were acting out of character and wanted something to blame for their behavior. “But the joke is almost always that there is nothing in the drink,” Lauder writes. “The drink is the excuse. The drink is the shield someone gets to hold up in front of them to protect from criticism.”

 

“Baby” Rebooted
The conversation surrounding “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” grew louder in 2018, as the #MeToo movement gained momentum. That December, many radio stations around the United States banned the song, though some reversed course after complaints from listeners. NBC News spoke with Susan Loesser, daughter of the song’s author, who said that her late father never intended anything sinister with the lyrics. She added that he would be “furious” about the song getting axed from radio playlists.

 

The same month, Salon’s Erin Keane seemed to roll her eyes in a piece titled “The ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ Fight Is Back—But Why?!” As Keane saw it, debating a 70-year-old song was counterproductive—especially in light of larger issues facing women around the world. She wrote that bickering over the song “feels less like settling unfinished business and more like wishful thinking for a disagreement that feels more theoretical, at stake merely a chirpy song we only had to endure one month out of the year.”

 

At this point, it was perhaps inevitable that a major pop star would rework “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for the 21st century. Enter John Legend, who teamed up with comedian Natasha Rothwell to write new lyrics emphasizing consent between the man and woman. When the woman says her mother will worry, the man replies, “I’ll call the car and tell him to hurry.” When the woman ponders having one more drink, the man responds with, “It’s your body and your choice.” Legend recorded the song with Kelly Clarkson, his fellow judge on The Voice, and promptly faced a backlash from some defenders of the original version, including Deana Martin, daughter of Dean Martin, whose recording of “Baby” is among the most enduring.

 

“He should write his own song if he doesn’t like this one, but don’t change the lyrics,” Deana told Good Morning Britain. “It’s a classic, perfect song.”

 

It should be noted that Legend has no issue with Loesser’s original lyrics. “The song was supposed to be silly!” Legend told The Guardian, defending his reboot. “It wasn’t supposed to be preachy at all.” Nevertheless, Legend acknowledges that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has become a “proxy war” in a fight for women’s rights that he vehemently supports. His revised “Baby” was a joke, but also not.

 

Legend and Clarkson’s “Baby” actually wasn’t the first attempt at modernizing the lyrics. In 2014, video blogger Dara Laine served up a feminist-approved rendition, wherein the man—played by John Weselcouch—immediately backs off when the woman sings “I really can’t stay.” The pro-consent lineage continued in 2021 with a scene in the Netflix film Love Hard, wherein actors Nina Dobrev and Jimmy O. Yang charmingly tweak all of the potentially troublesome lyrics.

 

At the same time, plenty of singers continue to cover the original. Over the last five years, Avril Lavigne, Willie Nelson and Lee Ann Womack, and Fantasia and CeeLo Green have all given the old chestnut a go.

 

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” probably isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the controversy. Expect more parodies, more online outrage, and maybe—just maybe—more substantive conversations about the very real issues underlying the discourse.

 

Source: The Complicated, Controversial History of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SECRET LANGUAGES

Did you know.... From clandestine codes understood only by women to local argots developed in geographically isolated communities, the world is filled with enigmatic languages and jargons. Join us on a linguistic journey as we shed light on some of the cryptic methods people have used to converse throughout history. Here are the stories, origins, and unique features of six little-known secret tongues from across the globe.

 

1. Boontling (Boonville, California, USA)

Deep in the forests of Northern California’s Mendocino County, the small community of Boonville in the Anderson Valley holds an unusual linguistic status for an American town: It has its own specialized jargon. Settled in the late 19th century, Boonville didn’t have a working railroad for its first 50 years or so, and its residents’ isolation resulted in a jargon or argot called Boontling (from boont, a resident of Boonville, and ling, meaning “language”).

Based on English grammar and syntax, Boontling mixes in bits of Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, and Pomoan (spoken by the Native Pomo tribe), along with abbreviations and eponyms, and grew to include over a thousand distinct words and phrases. A few examples include bosh (“deer,” from bishe, the Pomoan word for “deer”), doolsey (“candy,” from dulce, Spanish for “sweet”), and zeese (“coffee,” for the initials of Zachariah Clifton, who had a reputation for making super-strong coffee on local hunting expeditions). Boontling speakers were once widespread in the Anderson Valley and the jargon was even taught in schools, but today, fewer than 100 people still harp a slib of the ling.

 

2. Pitkern (Pitcairn Island, U.K.)

The Pitkern language’s origins date back to 1790, with the historic mutiny on the British naval ship HMS Bounty. After its nine original mutineers and 18 Tahitians established residence on Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific — one of the world’s most remote inhabited places — they burned the ship, effectively trapping themselves on the island. It didn’t take long for the group to begin speaking a pidgin language. The Pitkern language comprises words from Tahitian and the various English dialects spoken by the mutineers, including Scottish, Geordie, and West Country dialects, along with an early Caribbean patois. Eighteenth-century British English is still recognizable in some Pitkern phrases, such as About ye gwen? (“Where are you going?”), as well as a few nautical terms, e.g., all-hands (“everyone”). Ama’ula, meaning “clumsy, slovenly, awkward, or ungainly,” comes from the Tahitian word uma’ura, meaning “ignorant person” or “ignorance.” Pitkern has no standardized spellings, so it can sometimes be difficult to trace the words’ etymologies. Today, there are fewer than 50 Pitkern speakers alive. Pitkern is also very closely related to the Norf’k language, which derives from Pitkern and is named after the nearby Norfolk Islands.

 

3. Nüshu (Hunan Province, China)

Nüshu is an ancient script and language that was developed and used exclusively by ethnic Han, Yao, and Miao women in a small area of Jiangyong County in Hunan Province, China. Created and passed down from mother to daughter, Nüshu literally means “women's script” or “women's writing” in the Xiangnan Tuhua group of languages. The script consists of highly stylized depictions of standard Chinese characters, some of which are styled similarly to italicized letters in many European languages, while other characters are modified with dots, virgules, or arcs. It was traditionally used for writing poetry, songs, and personal communication, allowing women to express their thoughts and feelings in a predominantly male-dominated society. Linguists disagree on when Nüshu was developed; some believe it dates to the Song dynasty (960–1279), while others trace it all the way back to the Shang dynasty, between 1600 BCE and 1046 BCE. Standard written Chinese is logographic, meaning it uses characters to represent phrases, but Nüshu script is phonetic, with each of its 600 to 700 characters representing a single syllable. The use of Nüshu remained relatively unknown outside of the region for centuries, but the language eventually gained attention from 20th-century scholars and researchers, and efforts have since arisen to document the script, thanks to its unique cultural and linguistic significance.

 

4. Klezmer-loshn (Central and Eastern Europe)

Klezmer-loshn was a jargon — sometimes referred to as an occupational cryptolect — spoken in the Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe prior to the 20th century. The jargon was used primarily by the klezmorim, the communities’ professional musicians, who played a key role in traditional Jewish celebrations and events, particularly weddings. Literally translating to “musician's tongue” in Yiddish, klezmer-loshn was often utilized on the road during and after performances to discuss business plans — or just for some privacy among outsiders. The jargon is a mixture of Hebrew, Yiddish, and local European languages spoken in the regions where the klezmorim performed, as well as some totally original word coinages. It also includes expressions specific to klezmer musicology. Links between klezmer-loshn and Yiddish are apparent in words like lash, from the Yiddish word lazh (“bad,” “ugly”); svizn, from the Yiddish word svidn (“sit”); or tentlen, from the Yiddish word tintlen (“write”).

 

5. Caló Chicano (Southwestern USA)

Caló or Pachuco is a slang or argot spoken by Chicano communities in the Southwestern United States, along the border of Mexico in cities such as El Paso, Texas. It emerged among Mexican American and Chicano youth as part of the zoot-suit pachuco culture of the 1930s and ’40s, later spreading to Los Angeles and other American metropolitan areas. Also called Pachuco or Caló Chicano, to set it apart from the earlier Caló jargon spoken in Spain among Romani communities, from which it began, Caló incorporates elements from modern Spanish, archaic Spanish, English, and various Indigenous languages. It was also influenced by the slang of the criminal underworld of the early 20th century. It’s characterized by puns, idioms, and rhyming slang, and has been compared to both African American Vernacular English jive slang and Cockney slang spoken in the East End of London. Examples like ¿Qué te pasa, calabaza? (“What’s up with you, pumpkin?”) and Nel, pastel (“Nay, cake”) can be compared to rhyming slang phrases in English like “See you later, alligator.” Words and phrases from Caló are often spoken by Cheech Marin’s eponymous character in the Cheech and Chong films of the 1970s. The Caló slang and its attached pachuco subculture was so prevalent in El Paso that it’s responsible for the city's nickname, "Chuco Town.”

 

6. Thieves’ Cant (Elizabethan England)

Also called flash, rogues’ cant, or peddler’s French, thieves’ cant is a perfect cryptolect, a secretive jargon created so that others wouldn’t know what the speakers were talking about. Thieves, naturally, didn’t want others to know what they were plotting, so they developed this jargon as a way for those involved in illicit activities to communicate without being understood by outsiders. The origin of thieves’ cant is somewhat murky, as it evolved over centuries, but its use can be traced back to 16th-century England at latest. The language was either spoken aloud or written in code to further prevent authorities and outsiders from deciphering messages. The jargon fell into disuse after the 19th century, but some words and phrases from thieves’ cant still survive in many modern English dialects. Some examples are phony (originally “fawney rig,” a name for a common bait-and-switch ruse involving a fake ring, probably from the Irish word for ring, fáinne), as well as the slang words “mug” (when referring to a criminal, as in mugshot), “shiv” (from chiv, the Romani word for “knife”), and “tip” (as in “to give money to,” possibly from the English word “tap”). References to thieves’ cant also survive today in various forms of popular culture, including the Dungeons & Dragons series of role-playing games.

 

Source: Amazing Secret Languages from Around the World

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - OBSOLETE CHRISTMAS WORDS

Did you know.... Nog. Tidings. Wassail. Every time Christmas rolls around it brings with it its own vocabulary of words you barely hear the rest of the year. But while words derived from ancient English ales (like the nog in eggnog) and Middle English greetings (wassail is thought to derive from a Germanic phrase meaning “good health”) are one thing, some choice festive words—including the ones on this list—haven’t stood the test of time, and are basically unknown outside of the dustiest corners of the dictionary.

 

1. Ninguid

Ninguid, derived from Latin, refers to a landscape that’s snow-covered. And if that’s what your walk to work looks like over the festive period, you might also need to know that to meggle is to trudge laboriously through snow.

 

2. Peck-of-apples
This Lincolnshire word for a fall on ice is one to you’ll want to keep handy as you slip and slide around this holiday season.

 

3. Crump
That crunching sound you make walking on partially frozen snow is called “crumping.”

 

4. Hiemate
Hibernate is sleeping throughout the entire winter; hiemate is to spend winter somewhere.

 

5. Yuleshard
As another word for the festive period, Yule comes via Old English from jol, an ancient Scandinavian word for a series of end-of-year festivities. A yuleshard—also called a yule-jade (jade being an insult once upon a time)—is someone who leaves a lot of work still to be done on Christmas Eve night.

 

6. Yule-Hole

 

A yule-hole is the (usually makeshift) hole you need to move your belt to after you’ve eaten a massive meal.

 

7. Belly-Cheer
Dating from the 1500s, belly-cheer or belly-timber is a brilliantly evocative word for fine food or gluttonous eating.

 

8. and 9. Doniferous and Oblation
If you’re doniferous, then you’re carrying a present. The act of offering a present is called “oblation,” which originally was (and, in some contexts, still is) a religious term referring specifically to the presentation of money or donation of goods to the church. But since the 15th century it’s been used more loosely to refer to the action of offering or presenting any gift or donation, or, in particular, a gratuity.

 

10. and 11. Pourboire and Present-silver
Speaking of gratuities, a tip or donation of cash intended to be spent on drink is a pourboire—French, literally, for “for drink.” Money given in lieu of a gift, meanwhile, has been known as present-silver since the 1500s.

 

12. Toe-Cover

A cheap and totally useless present? In 1940s slang, that was a toe-cover.

 

13. Xenium
A gift given to a houseguest, or a gift given by a guest to their host, is called a “xenium.”

 

14. Scurryfunge
Probably distantly related to words like scour or scourge, scurryfunge first appeared in the late 18th century, with meanings of “to lash” or, depending on region, “to scour.” By the mid-1900s, however, things had changed: Perhaps in allusion to scrubbing or working hard enough to abrade a surface, scurryfunge came to mean “to hastily tidy a house” before unexpected company arrive.

 

15. Quaaltagh
Quaaltagh was actually borrowed into English in the 1800s from Manx, the Celtic-origin language spoken on the Isle of Man—a tiny island located halfway between Britain and Ireland in the Irish Sea. It was on the Isle of Man that festive tradition dictates that the identity of the first person you see (or the first to enter your house) on Christmas or New Year morning will have some bearing on the events of the year to come. And in Manx culture, the person you meet on that early-morning encounter is called the “quaaltagh.”

 

16. Lucky-Bird
We’re more likely to call them a “first-footer” these days, but according to old Yorkshire folklore, the first person across the threshold of your home on New Year’s morning is the lucky-bird. And just like the quaaltagh, tradition dictates that the identity of the lucky-bird has an important bearing on the success of the year to come: Men are the most fortuitous lucky-birds; depending on region, either dark-haired or light-haired men might be favored (but dark-haired is more common). Other regional variations claimed the man had to be a bachelor, had to bring a gift of coal (though by the 1880s whisky was increasingly popular), and/or had to have a high arch on the foot. People with a suitable combination for their region could “become almost professional,” according to the Leeds Mercury Weekly Supplement.

 

17. Apolausticism
Derived from the Greek word for “to enjoy,” apolausticism is a long-lost 19th-century word for a total devotion to enjoying yourself.

 

18. Hogamadog
According to the English Dialect Dictionary, hogamadog is another word for “The huge ball of snow” you get by “rolling a snowball over soft snow.”

 

19. Crapulence

Once all the festive dust and New Year confetti has settled, here’s a word for the morning after the night before: crapulence, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, is an 18th-century word for “sickness or indisposition resulting from excess in drinking or eating."

 

Source: Long-Lost Words To Revive This Christmas

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ROSE PARADE

Did you know... An American holiday tradition since January 1, 1890, Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses Parade — often just called the Rose Parade — is a beloved part of New Year’s Day observances. Whether you’ll be one of the hundreds of thousands of spectators lining the sidewalks along Colorado Boulevard in Southern California, or one of the estimated 50 million people watching from home, here are six fun facts you may not already know.

 

1. The Rose Parade Started to Show Off the Weather

In 1888, blue bloods (and blue-blood wannabes) from the East Coast founded Pasadena’s very exclusive Valley Hunt Club, an English-influenced invitation-only establishment that held rabbit shoots and staged debutante balls for its wealthy members. Two years after the club’s founding, it held the first Tournament of Roses to promote Southern California’s abundant sunshine and year-round blooms. “In New York, people are buried in snow,” Professor Charles F. Holder reportedly announced at a club meeting. “Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.”

 

2. The First Rose Parade “Floats” Were Just Horse-Drawn Carriage

The first Tournament of Roses featured a small procession of pony carts and horse-drawn carriages that were lavishly covered in local blooms. A few thousand people gathered to watch the parade, which was followed by chariot and foot races, jousting, polo, and tug-of-war. The event was a success, but modest compared to today’s spectacle of pageantry and pomp. Marching bands and motorized floats were added in subsequent years, and the games were expanded to include ostrich races and bronco busting demonstrations. (There was even a race between an elephant and a camel.) After five years, the event outgrew its original organizers, and in 1895, the Tournament of Roses Association was formed to take charge of the parade and related festivities.

 

3. Football Was Added in 1902

In 1902, the organizers decided to go even bigger by hosting a college football game after the parade. The matchup saw California’s Stanford go up against Michigan — only to lose 49-0 in a defeat so lopsided that football disappeared from the festival for more than a decade. It was permanently reinstated in 1916, and in late 1922, a few months before the 1923 game, the Rose Bowl Stadium opened its gates for the first time. Its namesake Rose Bowl Game has been played there almost every year since, except in 1942 and 2021, and has been a sellout attraction since 1947.

 

4. It’s Never on Sunday

For the first three years, the parade was held on January 1. But in 1893, New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday. Organizers worried that the procession would interfere with religious services or scare horses tied up outside local churches, so they decided to move the parade to the following day, Monday, January 2. That precedent stuck, and to this day, the Tournament of Roses takes place on January 1 — unless January 1 falls on a Sunday, which happened most recently in 2023. In its 130-plus-year history, the parade has been canceled outright only four times, during the World War II years of 1942, 1943, and 1945, and in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

5. There Are (Almost) No Cars Allowed

Automobiles are a no-no at the Tournament of Roses Parade, with four exceptions. Cars are permitted for the parade’s grand marshal, the mayor of Pasadena, the Rose Bowl Game Hall of Fame inductees, and the Tournament of Roses president. And these aren’t your average sensible sedans: In 2022, the Tournament of Roses president rode in a 1967 Crown Firecoach fire engine, while Grand Marshal Levar Burton traversed the 5.5-mile route in a 1923 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost.

 

6. There Are Literally Millions of Flowers on the Floats

The Rose Parade floats have come a long way since that first 1890 procession. Today’s motorized floats can be upwards of 100 feet long and 16 feet tall — and every visible inch must be covered in natural materials, such as seeds, bark, moss, and, of course, flowers (sometimes tens of thousands of them). Construction on the floats starts months in advance, and decorations may be added as early as mid-October, but most of the natural materials are saved for the final week before the parade. Live flowers in water-filled vials are added last, by volunteers working around the clock leading up to the morning of January 1. All told, more than 80,000 volunteer hours go into the planning of the parade and the construction of the floats.
 

 

Source: Fun Facts About the Rose Parade

Edited December 26, 2023 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PET SLANG WORDS

Did you know..... For centuries, dogs were dogs and cats were cats. They did things like bark and drink water and lay down—actions that pet parents didn’t need a translator to understand. Then the internet arrived. Scroll through the countless Facebook groups and Twitter accounts dedicated to sharing cute animal pictures and you’ll quickly see that dogs don’t have snouts, they have snoots. Cats, meanwhile, come in a colorful assortment of shapes and sizes ranging from smol to floof. Pet meme language has been around long enough to start leaking into everyday conversation. If you're a pet owner (or lover) who doesn’t want to be out of the loop, here are the terms you need to know.

 

1. Sploot

You know your pet is fully relaxed when they’re doing a sploot. Like a split but for the whole body, a sploot occurs when a dog or cat stretches so their bellies are flat on the ground and their back legs are pointing behind them. The amusing pose may be a way for them to take advantage of the cool ground on a hot day, or just to feel a satisfying stretch in their hip flexors. (That said, according to Animal Wellness Magazine, “it’s not a normal position. Sometimes, dogs who ‘sploot’ their legs do so because they’re in pain. If your dog frequently lies this way, and his breed (or mix of breeds) is predisposed to hip dysplasia, visit the vet to rule out the condition, along with any associated secondary arthritis.”) Corgis are famous for the sploot, but any quadruped can do it if they’re flexible enough.

 

2. Blep

If you’ve ever caught a cat or dog poking the tip of its tongue past its front teeth, you’ve seen a blep in action. A blep is subtle and often gone as quickly as it appears. Animal experts aren’t entirely sure why pets blep, but it’s been suggested that in cats it may have something to do with the Flehmen response, in which they use their tongues to “smell” the air.

 

3. Mlem

Mlems and bleps, though very closely related, aren’t exactly the same. While blep is a passive state of being, mlem is active. It’s what happens when a pet flicks its tongue in and out of its mouth, whether to slurp up water, taste food, or just lick the air in a derpy fashion. Dogs and cats do it, of course, but reptiles have also been known to mlem.

 

4. Floof

Some pets barely have any fur; others have coats so voluminous that hair appears to make up the bulk of their bodyweight. Dogs and cats in the latter group are known as floofs. Floofy animals will famously leave a wake of fur wherever they sit and can squeeze through tight spaces despite their enormous mass. Samoyeds, Pomeranians, and Persian cats are all prime examples of floofs.

 

5. Bork

According to some corners of the internet, dogs don’t bark—they bork. Listen carefully next time you’re around a vocal doggo and you won’t be able to unhear it.

 

6. Doggo
Speaking of doggos: This word isn’t hard to decode. Every dog—regardless of size, floofiness, or derpiness—can be a doggo. If you’re willing to get creative, the word can even be applied to non-dog animals like fennec foxes (a.k.a. special doggos) or seals (otherwise known as water doggos). The usage of doggo saw a spike in 2016 thanks to the internet and by the end of 2017 it was listed as one of Merriam-Webster’s “Words We’re Watching.”

 

7. Smol

Some pets are so adorably, unbearably tiny that using proper English to describe them just doesn’t cut it. Not every small pet is smol: To earn the label, a cat or dog (or kitten or puppy) must excel in both the tiny and cute departments. A pet that’s truly smol is likely to induce excited squees from everyone around it.

 

8. Pupper
Like the word doggo, pupper is self-explanatory: It can be used in place of the word puppy, but if you want to use it to describe a fully-grown doggo who’s particularly smol and cute, you can probably get away with it.

 

9. Boof

 

We’ve already established that doggos go bork, but that’s not the only sound they make. A low, deep bark—perhaps from a dog that can’t decide if it wants to expend its energy on a full bark—is best described as a boof. Consider a boof a warning bark before the real thing.

 

10. Snoot
Snoot was already a dictionary-official synonym for nose by the time dog meme culture took the internet by storm. But while snoot is rarely used to describe human faces today, it’s quickly becoming the preferred term for pet snouts. There was even a wholesome viral challenge dedicated to dogs poking their snoots through their owners’ hands.

 

11. Boop

 

Have you ever seen a dog snoot so cute you just had to reach out and tap it? And when you did, was your action accompanied by an involuntary “boop” sound? This urge is so universal that boop is now its own verb. Humans aren’t the only ones who can boop: Search the word on YouTube and treat yourself to hours of dogs, cats, and other animals exchanging the love tap.

 

12. Beans (or Toe Beans)

The internet loves to refer to the paw pads of cats and dogs using the terms beans or toe beans. The latter phrase has more than 700,000 tags on Instagram.

 

13. Zoomies

If your dog goes absolutely wild, zinging all over the place, after they’ve pooped or had a bath, you’ve experienced the zoomies—or, if you want to use the actual scientific term, a Frenetic Random Activity Period (FRAP). “There is no known specific cause of FRAPs in dogs,” veterinarian Dr. Pamela J. Perry told Cornell’s Richard P. Riney Canine Health Center. “However, they appear to be a way to release pent-up energy, or perhaps, to alleviate stress. ... FRAPs also can occur whenever a dog becomes very excited (e.g., when an owner returns after a long absence).” Zoomies aren’t limited to dogs, either: Cats—even big cats—also experience them, as do elephants, horses, ferrets, rabbits, and more.

 

 

Source: Sploot 101: 13 Animal Slang Words Every Pet Parent Should Know

Edited December 27, 2023 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - RING IN THE NEW YEAR

Did you know.... These days, you can say you’re “ringing in” the New Year with plenty of things that don’t ring: a toast, a kiss, an ambitious New Year’s resolution, a Harry Potter marathon, an entire sheet cake to yourself, and so forth. When the phrase originated, however, it involved something that actually rang: bells.

 

As Mic reports, communities used to bid adieu to the old year and welcome the new one by ringing bells, often in churches. The tradition may have grown out of other occasions where bells marked an end—“passing bells,” the bells that tolled when someone died—or celebrated a beginning (like wedding bells). Alfred, Lord Tennyson referenced the custom in part of “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” a lengthy elegy written after the sudden death of his friend (and his sister’s fiancé) Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Here’s the second stanza from the section known as “Ring out, wild bells”:

 

“Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

 

Decades before hordes of revelers started flocking to Times Square to watch the ball drop, which first occurred in 1907, they congregated farther downtown at Wall Street’s Trinity Church. There—now home to the graves of Alexander Hamilton and several relatives—they rang in the New Year with a veritable concert put on by the church’s official bell ringer, James E. Ayliffe. As the New York Herald reported in 1860, “there floated from the high church tower the stirring music of eight bells chiming in changes and making the air redolent with harmony. This was followed by ‘Hail Columbia,’ ‘Yankee Doodle’ and some sweet selections from ‘La Fille du Regiment.’”

 

 

According to Trinity Church’s archives, the earliest mention of the tradition is from the minutes of an 1801 meeting where parishioners allotted eight pounds “to the Persons who rang the Bells in New Years day.” It might have been going on long before that, considering the church got its first bell back in 1698.

 

In short, ringing bells was once a central part of the holiday. The fact that it’s faded from memory—and ring in the New Year makes little sense if you don’t know the phrase’s history—may help explain why so many people now say “bring in the New Year” instead.

 

 

Source: Why Do We ‘Ring In’ the New Year?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MARLON BRANDO (actor)

Did you know... He was an irresistibly compelling actor who exploded from the stage in A Streetcar Named Desire and the screen in On the Waterfront and The Godfather, before seemingly rejecting the ability and beauty that had made him so famous. But even in a career marked by as many disappointments as triumphs, Marlon Brando was never anything less than an original character. Here are nine facts about the life of a Hollywood icon who raised the bar for all the leading men who followed.

 

1.  A Teenage Brando Was Expelled From Military School

The youngest child of a strict father and an alcoholic mother, and hamstrung by dyslexia, Brando acted out in school. According to Peter Manso's biography, Brando orchestrated an endless series of pranks while accumulating just six of 15 possible credits over three years at Libertyville (Illinois) High School, forcing his dad to arrange a transfer to Minnesota's Shattuck Military Academy. But the disruptions continued in Shattuck's hallways, with Brando at one point hiding the dining room silverware before he was kicked out at the end of his second year. Amazingly, the cadets who were often the butt of his jokes threatened to boycott classes over what they felt was an unfair expulsion, and Brando later framed the letter of support they wrote to him.

 

2. He Nearly Blew the Opportunity for His Breakout Stage Role

After witnessing Brando's impressive audition for A Streetcar Named Desire in August 1947, director Elia Kazan gave the magnetic young actor money to take a bus to Massachusetts for a further tryout with playwright Tennessee Williams. Brando instead spent the cash on party supplies, before hitchhiking his way to Massachusetts a week later. Upon reaching Williams' home, Brando smoothed over any bad feelings about his late arrival by fixing a blown fuse and broken toilet. A quick read for the part sealed the deal, and Brando was on his way to revealing his preternatural talent to the world.

 

3. He Directed One Feature Film

Taking on an outsized role in the production of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando drove out original helmer Stanley Kubrick and took over double duty as director and star of the Western. That worked out fine for his artistic sensibilities, but Brando's habit of letting the camera endlessly roll as characters improvised their way through scenes took its toll on time and budget constraints. After viewing the costly, 4.5-hour director's cut, producer Frank P. Rosenberg complained, "That's not a picture. That's just an assemblage of footage." One-Eyed Jacks was whittled down to 141 minutes, and while the still-meandering final product has its admirers, the experience was apparently off-putting enough to discourage its star from returning to the director's chair.

 

4. Brando Owned an Atoll in French Polynesia

After frolicking in the tropical locale of Tahiti during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Brando decided to take a slice of paradise for himself by buying the nearby atoll of Tetiaroa in 1966. Although the initial plan was to build a hotel as part of what would become a self-sustaining community, Brando preferred using the property as a private retreat for himself, family, and friends, though he neglected to put in the time and money needed for its upkeep. He steered clear of Tetiaroa following a tragedy involving his son and a daughter's boyfriend in the early 1990s, and a section of the atoll was leased to a developer after the actor's death in 2004. That area now boasts the Brando Resort, the sort of exclusive vacation destination its namesake was reluctant to develop while still alive.

 

5. He Spontaneously Created Vito Corleone’s Persona During a Screen Test

Although Paramount Studio executives were loath to cast Brando in The Godfather (1972) following his string of poorly received films, director Francis Ford Coppola convinced them to at least consider a screen test. He subsequently brought a camera to Brando's home, upon which the just-awakened host, realizing this was his audition, quickly slipped into his interpretation of Mafia boss Vito Corleone. Suggesting that Corleone should "look like a bulldog" and talk in a peculiar way, Brando stuffed tissues into his mouth and began acting out the character, even delivering that now-famous mumbling when answering a phone call. The once-leery execs were floored by the footage, paving the way for Brando's highly celebrated comeback.

 

6. Brando Surprised Sacheen Littlefeather With His Plan for the 1973 Oscars

In one of the more infamous moments of his career, Brando sent actress and activist Sacheen Littlefeather to the 1973 Academy Awards to decline his Best Actor Oscar over "treatment of American Indians today by the film industry." Littlefeather, who had struck up a friendship with the actor via their shared passion for Native American rights, reportedly wasn't aware of the full scope of Brando's plan until the afternoon of the Oscars telecast. She then waited as Brando worked on a lengthy speech, leaving her barely enough time to make it to the ceremony, and endured harassment in the parking lot before making it back to the safety of the actor’s home. According to Manso's biography, Brando was happy with her effort, although he later noted that he'd "probably handle it differently" were he to do it all over again.

 

7. He Was Close Friends With Fellow Star Jack Nicholson

While Brando and Jack Nicholson made for a fun pairing in the 1976 Western The Missouri Breaks, the two were far closer than your typical co-stars. The actors shared a driveway as Los Angeles-area neighbors for about 30 years, and at one point even lived together while Nicholson was going through a divorce. Nicholson helped care for Brando toward the end of his life, after which he penned a heartfelt obituary in Rolling Stone magazine. He also purchased the late actor's mansion with the hope of making it available to Brando's children, but reportedly turned it into a garden when none of them showed any interest in the property.

 

8. Brando Received Four Patents For a Drum Tuner

An enthusiastic percussionist with an ear for Afro-Cuban music and an innovative mind, Brando devoted much of his final years to developing a new and improved conga drum. Collaborating with a custom drum parts maker and a patent attorney, Brando obtained four patents for his drum tuner, a single lever and linkage system designed to replace the five or six bolts normally used for the purpose. He even produced a few working prototypes, but was unable to get the design licensed before his passing.

 

9. More Than 300 Hours of Confessional Audio Tapes Were Found After His Death

Although Brando published an autobiography in 1994, that book provided only a partial reveal of a celebrity who increasingly shunned the spotlight. Additional insights arrived around 20 years later, when a production team gained access to more than 300 hours of audio footage of the actor waxing on his troubled upbringing, his own struggles as a father, his relationship with fame, and much more. Producers also found rudimentary 3D scans of Brando's head, and used updated technology to match some of the audio with his animated, talking face. The result was the 2015 documentary Listen to Me Marlon, a life story narrated solely by the enigmatic star, between old film and interview clips, that marked one final posthumous screen performance.

 

 

Source: Irresistible Facts About Marlon Brando

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - "AULD LANG SYNE"

Did you know.... Every New Year’s Eve, after the champagne has been popped, the ball has dropped, and everyone is feeling very merry indeed, revelers queue up the same song they’ve been queuing up for decades. You know the one—it makes you cry, even though you don’t understand it and know almost none of the words.

 

A handful of options pop up when you search for the meaning of “auld lang syne”: “times/days gone by,” “old time’s sake,” “long long times/ago,” and even “once upon a time” among them. The most common consensus is something like “for old time’s sake,” which is about as direct an interpretation as you can get, as the word-for-word translation is “old long since.” The line about “for auld lang syne” is essentially, “for (the sake of) old times.” (For the record, it never says the totally nonsensical “for the sake of auld lang syne.”) Beyond the words themselves, there’s even less agreement about exactly how the tune came to be a New Year’s Eve tradition.

 

For Old Time’s Sake
The song originated as a poem, but it probably wasn’t written by Robert Burns as is commonly believed—at least not entirely. The poet was simply the first person to write down an old Scottish folk song (it bears more than a passing resemblance to “Old Long Syne,” a ballad that was printed by James Watson in 1711). Burns himself said, “I took it down from an old man,” and whether it was transcribed or co-authored, it’s safe to say that the “Auld Lang Syne” we know today is some combination of an old poem and Burns’s creative input.

 

 

In any case, Burns sent a copy of the poem to a friend in 1788 and wrote: “There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians!” Later he contributed it to the Scots Musical Museum.

 

Five years later, Burns wrote to James Johnson, who was assembling a book of old Scottish songs: “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man.”

 

It’s unclear whether Johnson linked Burns to the song in his credits, but by the time the book was published in 1796, the poet was dead. He’d never know that those words would eventually help secure his own cultural immortality.

 

Name That Tune
The words aren’t the only element that evolved over the years; it’s believed that the original tune is different than the one we drunkenly hum along to today. Originally, the song had a more traditional folk sound, one that can be heard in (of all things) 2008’s Sex and the City movie. This version is still performed today, but with much less frequency than the New Year standard. The melody we all know was used at the suggestion of music publisher George Thompson.

 

 

How then did a Scottish folk song with a murky provenance and nothing at all to do with New Year’s Eve become associated with the holiday? It’s largely thanks to bandleader Guy Lombardo. In 1929, Lombardo and his band played “Auld Lang Syne” as transitional music while performing at New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel during a New Year’s Eve broadcast. It was played just after midnight, and heard over radio and television airwaves.

 

A Global Tradition
Today, “Auld Lang Syne” is one of the most recognizable songs around the world, where it’s played at funerals, at celebrations, and as a warning that closing time is approaching at stores throughout Japan.

 

 

 

To impress your date this New Year’s Eve, learn the correct words here—and don’t worry too much about the meaning. As Sally Albright says in When Harry Met Sally...: “Anyway, it’s about old friends.”

 

 

Source: A Brief History of “Auld Lang Syne”

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DRY JANUARY

Did you know.... The holidays are over, the Christmas tree is destined to become mulch, and the decorations are bound for the basement. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the next several weeks will be like something out of Narnia, where it’s “always winter and never Christmas.” It’s enough to make one reach for a drink ... unless, of course, you don’t. That’s where Dry January comes in.

 

What is Dry January?
Participating in Dry January means that no booze at all is to pass your lips for the entire calendar month of January. December 31? Wear a beer helmet and drink your height in tallboys if you like. February 1? Enter as many “drink all the shots in the world” contests as you want. But while the calendar says “January,” you just say “no” to any and all alcohol.

 

Who started Dry January?
Dry January was started by a British woman named Emily Robinson. She signed up for a half-marathon in February 2011 and decided to stay away from alcohol for the month of January in order to prepare. As well as feeling better in general, she found that her friends were oddly fascinated by the idea of a fully sober month. So she decided to do it again the next January, and took a job with the charity Alcohol Change UK. The first proper Dry January came in 2013, with the full force of the charity behind it and plenty of media coverage. More than a decade later, the trend has become massively widespread—along with its Southern Hemisphere equivalent, Dry July. 

 

What’s the point of Dry January?
The hope is that people who embrace Dry January will feel a lot better by the end of the month. There are many reported health benefits associated with abstaining from alcohol, even for a month: weight loss, improved sleep, increased energy, and lower blood sugar are just a few of them. Also, booze isn’t cheap, so participants in Dry January can both save money and become motivated to put more cash aside going forward. On top of that, there are also psychological benefits to testing your willpower and feeling more comfortable about your relationship with alcohol. 

 

And these benefits are ongoing: a study in 2014 found that, six months on, 72 percent of participants had maintained reduced levels of excessive drinking. 

 

How popular is Dry January?
In just over a decade, Dry January has become incredibly popular, both formally—meaning signing up and registering online as a participant—and informally. In the UK, there were 3000 official participants during the event’s first year; the tenth annual event counted 130,000 official abstainers. Informally, there were more than 2 million people taking part in Dry January just two years after it began.

 

Dry January has become so popular, in fact, that beer companies often plan advertising campaigns around their alcohol-free offerings to help those customers going booze-free feel like they can still go out and socialize without alcohol. In the U.S., the number of people who take the pledge in January is thought to be in the millions.

 

 

Source: A Brief History of Dry January

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SOUND

Did you know... Sound pervades our experience — so much so that we’re never without it. Even in the quietest, most soundproofed chambers, the decibels of our heartbeat and our breath reach our ears. However, sound isn’t as simple as it may seem. It’s not as substantive as things we touch, but it can still elicit deep emotion and even physical pain. These six amazing facts will make you rethink what you know about sound and the role it plays in your life.

 

1. Sound Travels Faster in Water Than in Air

If you’ve ever heard your own echo, you know the speed of sound is pretty fast — around 761 miles per hour. But because sound is created via vibrations through a medium, that medium can influence a sound’s speed. In water, the speed of sound is much faster, clocking in at a whopping 3,355 mph. That’s because denser materials have more neighboring particles that can bump into one another and carry sound, and water has 800 times more particles than air. This is especially useful for animals like the blue whale, whose call at 180 decibels is louder than a jet plane and can travel up to 1,000 miles. However, 3,355 mph is by no means sound’s speed limit. When traveling through a diamond, the hardest material on Earth (which means lots of particles), sound travels at an incredible 40,000 miles per hour.

 

2. Technically You Can Transmit Sound in Outer Space (Just Not Very Far)

The tagline for the 1979 film Alien is pretty scientifically accurate: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Because space is a near-perfect vacuum, very few particles fill its immense void. To put that into perspective, a coffee mug filled with “outer space” would contain only 300 particles. Fill that same mug with air from Earth, and it’d hold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 particles. And since sound needs a medium to travel, it’s true that no one would hear you scream in space. But that doesn’t mean sound can’t travel in space at all — it just can’t travel very far. In a 2023 study at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, scientists “tunneled” sound between two crystals across an extremely short distance in a vacuum (like the length of one sound wave). So while space is certainly inhospitable to sound, it can exist in some very specific instances.

 

3. The Body’s Smallest Bones Help Transform Sound Into Electrical Signals

The human ear is a wonder of biological engineering that uses membranes, fluids, hairlike stereocilia, and very tiny bones to transform sound into electrical signals that our brain can interpret. It all starts when a sound vibrates the membrane separating the inner and outer ear, called the eardrum, which then employs your body’s smallest bones to transfer that energy into waves in fluid located in the cochlea (a spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear). These three bones — the malleus, incus, and stapes — are known as the ossicles and are incredibly small. (The stapes, the smallest of them all, only reaches a height of 3.5 millimeters and a width of about 2.4 millimeters.) Once the ossicles create these vibrations in the cochlea, hairlike stereocilia transform these waves into electrical signals and send them along our auditory nerve. This whole process takes around 10 milliseconds to complete.

 

4. Sound in Air Technically Can’t Be Louder Than 194 Decibels

Scientists measure sound using decibels (named in honor of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell), which is the measure of sound pressure in a medium. Because the decibel system is a logarithmic scale, something that is 20 decibels (such as a ticking watch) isn’t twice as loud as something that’s 10 decibels (breathing) — it’s actually 10 times as loud. While the human ear begins experiencing auditory pain at around 125 decibels, being exposed to lower decibel levels for longer periods of time can be just as damaging. At 194 decibels, you’re hearing a truly ear-splitting noise; beyond that threshold, sound traveling through air stops technically being sound. When a sound gets too loud, the wave itself essentially creates ambient air pressure that forms a vacuum. This transforms sound into more of a shock wave and less of a sound wave. To use a dramatic example, in 1883 an Indonesian volcano called Krakatoa erupted, creating the loudest “sound” in recorded history at an estimated 310 decibels. The resulting shock wave traveled around the world four times before finally dissipating.

 

5. Whips Crack Because They’re Breaking the Sound Barrier

On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1 aircraft, but humans have actually been breaking the sound barrier since Roman times — they just weren’t sitting in a cockpit. Whips have been around for thousands of years, and their telltale (and terrifying) crack is actually the sound of the whip breaking the sound barrier. When someone cracks a whip, the motion travels the length of the whip and quickly speeds it up. Scientists used to think the whip’s tip broke the sound barrier, but research in 2002 showed that it was actually a loop traveling the length of the whip that produced the deafening crack. But you don’t need to be Indiana Jones to pull off this impressive feat of acoustic physics; cotton bedsheets have also been known to produce sonic booms of their own.

 

6. Some People Can Actually “See” Sound

For most people, sound is a strictly auditory experience, but for some with a condition known as synesthesia, sounds are a much more visual thing. Broadly speaking, synesthesia (which in Greek means “perceive together”) simply means experiencing one sense alongside another. So you might see a word but taste a type of food, or hear a sound but also see a color. This is largely caused by two different parts of the brain being activated by the same stimuli. Of course, these experiences are internal to the mind and not an accurate representation of sound’s physical properties. The cause of synesthesia is genetic — in 2018, researchers from the University of Amsterdam identified specific genes that make some predisposed to this sensory mix-up by creating “hyper-connected neurons.” While some with synesthesia report having trouble focusing due to these misfiring stimuli, most live healthy and happy lives — and even say their synesthesia gives them a richer experience of the world.

 

 

Source: Amazing Facts About Sound

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - AIRPLANE ETIQUETTE

Did you know.... Air travel used to be a fancy occasion with comfortable seats and dapper dress, but those days are long gone. Modern airports are exhausting, plane seats are tiny, and the journey is rarely fun. But there are ways we can make flights a little more bearable, or even enjoyable, for those around us — after all, we’re all in it together until we reach our destination. A little bit of consideration for our fellow passengers can go a long way. Next time you board a plane, follow these 10 tips for a nice flight.

 

1. Do a Little Homework in Advance

Before you leave, look up current security guidelines for the airport, carry-on limits for your flight, and other pertinent information. It will save everybody, including yourself, time in the long run, and it’ll help you avoid unexpected faux pas — like holding up the line — at security or your departure gate. This doubly applies if you’re traveling with something like a stroller or a fragile item.

 

2. Stow Carry-On Suitcases Wheels First and on Their Side

Everyone has to share the overhead bins, so try to take up as little space as possible. If your suitcase will fit on its side, place it that way; doing so will help more luggage fit in the bin. If your carry-on has wheels, they should go toward the back of the bin — with the handle facing out — so you don’t struggle with them when you go to take down your suitcase at your destination. And if you have a small bag that will fit under the seat in front of you, keep it out of the bin to save that space for someone else.

 

3. Don’t Shoot the Messenger

If you’re told your flight is late or that your bag won’t fit in the overhead bin, try to face the unwelcome news with calm and grace — getting heated won’t change the outcome and will only make the airline employee’s job harder and your fellow passengers uncomfortable.

 

4. Check Before Reclining

Reclining airplane seats, especially in economy class, is a hot-button issue. Some people are firmly in the anti-recline camp, but others think there’s a little wiggle room here. Regardless, never recline more than absolutely necessary, and check with the person behind you before you lean back, so you don’t launch everything on their tray table into their face. Even staunch recline opponents will concede that a little is permissible on long-haul and red-eye flights.

 

5. Middle Seat Gets the Armrests

If there’s one thing etiquette experts can agree on about air travel, it’s that the person in the center seat — unquestionably the least desirable one in the window-middle-aisle configuration — gets the armrests if they want them. It’s a small consolation prize for not having the view of the window seat or the ease of egress of the aisle.

 

6. Use Headphones

Wearing headphones for your in-flight entertainment should go without saying, but since everything has a speaker on it now, it’s worth mentioning. Don’t disturb your neighbors with your music or movies, and if you’re using wireless headphones, double-check that they’re fully connected.

 

7. Watch Your Intoxication Level

It’s fine to enjoy a drink when you fly — that’s what beverage service is for — but imbibe with caution. It can be difficult to gauge whether you’ve had too much when you’re confined to a seat. Strictly speaking, drinking at high altitudes doesn’t make you drunker, but alcohol can exacerbate the disorienting effects of flying. Check in with yourself and don’t get carried away.

 

8. Address Child Issues With Car

Nobody wants to be seated near a screaming baby on an airplane, but nobody wants the baby to stop screaming more than their parents do. If you’re a child-free passenger, stop to consider whether a parent has control over something before airing your concerns. Nobody can reason with an infant, especially when experiencing painful changes in cabin pressure for the first time, but parents do have an obligation to intervene if their kindergartener is kicking the back of your seat. Just be kind when you ask. (One etiquette expert suggests that kids are less likely to kick in their stocking feet.)

 

9. Pack Unobtrusive Snacks

It’s smart and frugal to pack your own food to bring on a plane, but it’s rude to grab a tuna salad sandwich in the terminal and take it with you. Packed food should be as tidy and unsmelly as possible for the sake of both your fellow passengers, who have to share your air, and the flight attendants who have to clean up after you. After all, you can’t exactly crack a window.

 

10. No Bare Feet

Flying is notoriously uncomfortable, but bare feet should not come out on the plane. If you’re expecting to remove your shoes, wear socks. It’ll keep your bare feet from touching the ground at security anyway.

 

 

Source: Lofty Airplane Etiquette Tips

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - AUSTIN TEXAS SLANG

Did you know... 

You may know Austin, Texas, as the Live Musical Capital of the World that’s devoted to keepin’ itself weird—but you might not be familiar with the city’s many slang terms. Whether you’re planning on merely visiting or are contemplating relocating to ATX, here are the words and phrases you need to know to sound just like an (increasingly endangered) local.

 

1. Local
This term might seem like a no-brainer (and it is), but it’s still important, because the people who were born and raised in Austin take great pride in that fact—especially given that Austin attracts so many new residents that it was named the second-fastest growing city in the U.S. in 2022. If you can’t be a local, it’s definitely beneficial to know one: They can tell you which dive bars have the best food trucks, which watering holes are the best to swim in, the best places and times to park downtown, and so much more. When you befriend a local, you’ve befriended someone who will only ever want the best for you when you’re in their town.

 

2., 3., and 4.  ATX, Bat City, and City of the Violet Crown

Austin has a few nicknames you’ll want to know: ATX is one of them, and the city is lovingly known as Bat City to some. To find out why, just line up on Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge (a.k.a. Congress Bridge) at sundown from the spring until the fall—you’ll catch a glimpse of 1.5 million bats that live underneath it as they take off in search of their nightly meal. You might also hear Austin called “City of the Violet Crown,” a nickname dating back to the 1890s that was used by O. Henry in his short story “Tictocq.”

 

5. SXSW

These four letters might be why you first heard of Austin, or might even be the reason you plan on going there. SXSW stands for South by Southwest, an annual event founded in 1987 that’s “best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture,” according to its website. SXSW takes over nearly the entirety of downtown Austin for more than a week in the middle of March. Locals may groan about the traffic it creates, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile event. A scroll through SXSW’s historic timeline is filled with a who’s who of pretty much anyone from whatever world you’re interested in, whether it be film, music, tech, or business.

 

6. ACL Music Festival

You’ve heard that everything is bigger in Texas, and events don’t get much bigger than the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which takes place every year in the historic Zilker Park (more on Zilker below). The festival, founded in 2002, was inspired by the Austin City Limits television concert series and features nine stages where musical groups from all genres perform for around 450,000 fans over the course of two weekends. Headliners like Guns N’ Roses, Outkast, Pearl Jam, and so many more have graced the stages—so for attendees, the most difficult part is choosing whom to watch, and when. It wouldn’t be an Austin event without amazing food: Each year, the ACL festival builds a food court inspired by Jazz Fest in New Orleans featuring area restaurants, and in 2023, debuted an area devoted entirely to dessert.

 

7. Zilker Park
New York City has Central Park, Austin has Zilker Park. Founded in 1917, the 316-acre park is nestled right next to Lady Bird Lake (that moniker was bestowed upon the reservoir in 2007 after the death of Lady Bird Johnson, so you’ll also hear some resideNts refer to it as Town Lake) near the downtown area. Whatever it is you want out of a day at the park, Zilker has it: Barton Springs Pool provides a year-round place to swim or sunbathe on the grass; there’s a nature and science center as well as a botanical garden; there’s enough space to host frisbee and volleyball tournaments (among other sports) and a disc golf course; and, of course, several picnic areas and a playground. Zilker Park is one of those places that define Austin and the experience of what it’s like to live there.

 

8. COTA

Austin is making its way into the sports scene, and it’s doing it with more than just the University of Texas Longhorns. The racing league Formula One (F1)—which is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.—named Austin its first location for an American race in 2010. Circuit of the Americas, or COTA, opened in 2012, and since then, it’s hosted not only the annual F1 race on its 3.41-mile-long track, but concerts by acts like the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Bruno Mars, and Taylor Swift, among others. And because it would be silly to build such a huge venue for one annual racing event and a few concerts, COTA also hosts races for NASCAR and IndyCar, as well as events like car shows and Bike Night, where bicyclists can get their wheels on the track. During the holiday season, visitors can drive part of the track at a light-filled winter wonderland event called “Peppermint Parkway.”

 

9. Light the Tower

 

While professional sports are slowly making their way into the central Texas region, the Texas Longhorns still reign supreme in the state capitol. Starting in 1937, the normally white UT Tower in the heart of the University of Texas at Austin campus has been illuminated with orange light to celebrate achievements both athletic and academic, an event called “Light the Tower.” Other configurations incorporate special effects or mark memorial services.

 

10. Q2

 

In 2021, Austin became home to the soccer club Austin FC, the city’s first professional major league sports team. Q2 is the corporate sponsor for the $260-million stadium that lights up neon green every time one of the Verdes scores a goal. Even opposing players love the stadium: A 2022 survey of players by the MLS Players Association revealed Q2 was their “preferred place to play,” according to KXAN.

 

11. and 12. SoCo and SoLa
Location, location, location. Where you are in Austin is important, but almost as important as knowing where you are is knowing how to say where you are. Here’s a handy guide for the pronunciations and nicknames of some of Austin’s neighborhoods so you can fit in with the locals:

Manchaca Road: “MAN-shack”
South Lamar: “SoLa”
South Congress: “SoCo”
Burnet Road: “BURN-it”
Guadalupe Street: “Guad-a-LOOP”
Manor Road: “MAY-ner”

 

13. Sixth Street

Sixth Street is Austin’s answer to Bourbon Street in New Orleans or Beale Street in Memphis. It isn’t just its own world—it’s actually three worlds, depending on where you are. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Dirty Sixth: The heart of the Austin nightlife is located between I-35 and Congress Avenue. Dirty Sixth is where the streets are blocked off on the weekends and you can walk from club to club, or bar to bar. The street pizza from Roppolo’s is great when the options are limited, but it’s always a fun time on Dirty.
• West Sixth: This area of Sixth Street stretches from Congress to the Mopac Expressway (just Mopac if you’re local [PDF]). There’s still a burgeoning nightlife on this side of Congress, but you’ll notice that there are fewer college kids there—and more “tech bros.” It’s a slightly older demographic than what you’ll find on Dirty Sixth, and a slightly more refined experience.
• East Sixth: Located on the other side of I-35, East Sixth is where you’re more likely to find some locals or longer tenured transplants as well as amazing food trucks, quiet dive bars, maybe a cornhole game. It’s easy, and even relaxing to spend a day here going from bar to bar.

 

14. “The Stars at Night …”

 

The easiest way to tell a local from a transplant? Walk into any public space in Austin—or anywhere in Texas, for that matter—and yell, “The stars at night / are big and bright …” and wait for the three claps followed by “deep in the heart of Texas!”

 

 

Source: Austin Slang Terms You Should Know

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MEMORY

Did you know.... Philosophers and scientists agree: Memories help shape who we are. A lifetime of experiences, cataloged and stored in our brain, helps form internal biographies that orient us throughout our lives — but memory is more complex than a simple chronological record. Different kinds of memories help us achieve different things, and many facets of memory continue to baffle scientists. These seven facts explore the fascinating world of memory, the role it plays in our lives, and some of the mysteries that still surround this psychological process.

 

1. There Are Many Types of Memories

Human memory is too complex to be described by just one type — so experts use four categories. Long-term memory is likely the category that comes to mind when you think of “memories,” since this type holds important biographical information. This mental category can be further divided into semantic memory, the stuff that helps you recall bits of trivia and other learned skills, and episodic memory, which keeps track of the vital moments of your life. Another type of memory is sensory memory, which is initially triggered by one of the senses but is incredibly fleeting (interestingly, experts believe all memories first form as sensory memories). There’s also short-term memory, the one that’s supposed to keep track of your keys. Finally, there’s working memory, which helps the brain hold onto small tidbits of information in order to perform cognitive tasks. Some categorize working memory as a type of short-term memory, but it typically lasts longer and is mostly confined to the manipulation of information.

 

2. The Brain Can Store 2.5 Petabytes of Information

With the average life span of a U.S. citizen in the upper 70s, that’s a lot of time (and a lot of memories) for the brain to process and store — but amazingly, our minds are more than up for the task. Scientists estimate that the human brain can store upwards of 2.5 petabytes of information. A petabyte equals a million gigabytes, so that is a lot of storage space. According to Scientific American, that amount of information is equivalent to recording your television for roughly 3 million hours (which would take roughly 342 years nonstop). It’ll be a while before the iPhone can match the amazing memory-storing power of the human mind — brought to you by millions of years of evolution.

 

3. Dreaming Is the Result of the Brain Organizing Memories

Theologians and philosophers since time immemorial have tried to make sense of dreams, and the ability to interpret dreams appears in religious texts and pagan myths alike. When a person sleeps, they fluctuate among light, deep, and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, and it’s during this last phase — which accounts for roughly one-fourth of our sleeping hours — that the brain consolidates memories. If you look at the activity of a person’s brain when in REM sleep, it fires as if it’s awake, but the chemicals in the brain — such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and histamine — are blocked so we don’t injure ourselves by physically acting out our dreams. Research shows that during REM sleep, dreams are a reflection of a biological process wherein the brain strengthens neural connections to important experienced events while ditching the inessential information — all while preserving the integrity of current memories and adding new information. You can kind of think of your brain as a very large filing cabinet, and every night, your brain has to add new files to its ever-growing record system while simultaneously not upsetting its organized methodology.

 

4. Babies Form Memories (We Just Don’t Remember Them)

Ask anyone to describe their very first memory, and one thing is common — no one remembers their first two years. Scientists sometimes call this biological phenomenon “childhood amnesia,” an inability for older children and adults to recall their earliest years on Earth. But this doesn’t mean babies don’t form memories at all — studies in the ’80s and ’90s found that within the first few months, infants could form memories that aided in learning and completing simple tasks. The problem is that babies don’t form episodic memories (see above), a form of long-term memory that helps us remember details from specific events. When we’re between the ages of 2 and 4, our brain’s hippocampus — the region responsible for tying fragments of information together — begins to make the necessary neural connections for episodic memory, which is why your very first memories lie somewhere within these toddler years.

 

5. Some People Can Recall Every Day of Their Lives

Those blessed with a good memory can still usually conjure only a fuzzy picture of the past, but for people with hyperthymesia (also known as “highly superior autobiographical memory”) — a condition that gives the brain the remarkable ability to remember every single day of a person’s life since adolescence — memory is both a blessing and curse. In a famous 60 Minutes interview in 2010, one person with hyperthymesia described her exacting recall as effortless, saying, “It’s almost as automatic as if you say, ‘What is your name and where do you live?’” Name any date, and they’ll almost immediately tell you what day of the week it was and what they did that day. But a superhuman memory means remembering things best left forgotten. The first person to ever be identified with this condition, Jill Price, has described the experience as haunting, telling the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2008, “I’ve been through hell in my life.” As of 2021, only 60 or so people have been diagnosed with the condition, but their superhuman memories give scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study the still-unknown marvels of the human mind.

 

6. We Don’t Know If Photographic Memory Exists

While hyperthymesia is real, there is no existing evidence that a “photographic memory” — that is, the ability to recall any previously glimpsed image and examine it in precise detail — actually exists. The belief in this kind of memory may have grown out of the biological fact that humans are generally better at recalling visual material than other forms of information. The only known example of a condition similar to photographic memory is something called “eidetic memory,” when someone can hold an incredibly detailed and accurate image in their mind but only for a short time. Strangely, this incredible ability is relatively common in young children and virtually absent in adults, leading scientists to believe that this snapshot memory plays some role in cognitive development in early childhood.

 

7. Smell Triggers Particularly Strong Memories

Unlike our other senses, our sense of smell is more directly hardwired into the parts of the brain that deal with memory. Instead of electrical signals being sent to the thalamus as in other senses, smell bypasses this region of the brain and instead travels to the olfactory bulb, which is directly connected to the hippocampus and amygdala — areas of the brain associated with processing memory and emotion. These strong connections are likely why smell can elicit such powerful memories throughout our lives. A study in 2017 found that one part of the olfactory bulb in particular — known as the piriform cortex — is responsible for depositing scents in our long-term memory. This cortex links up with other regions of the brain to determine whether a smell earns a spot in the filing cabinet of our mind. Often, these memories take us back to our childhood, as the recollections tend to be associated with the first time we smelled a certain scent, allowing us to relive those early years, if only briefly.
 

 

Source: Amazing Facts About Memory

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CAT OR NOT?

Did you know... In the animal kingdom, the order Carnivora has two suborders. Caniformia, which means “dog-like,” includes dogs, of course, but also bears, skunks, raccoons, seals, and walruses. Feliformia, meaning “cat-like,” includes cats in the family Felidae as well as non-cats in other families. Here are a few you may not be familiar with.

 

1. Fossa

 

The fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) is the largest carnivore in Madagascar, where they eat lemurs and other small animals. As a female fossa matures, she goes through a stage of “masculinization,” in which her genitals elongate and resemble a spiny penis. Fossas are considered a vulnerable species and are protected in reserves, but are still hunted and eaten in some communities. Because they are widespread and claim a large individual territory, it is hard to get meaningful numbers on their population. Some consider them vermin due to their tendency to prey on chickens and small livestock.

 

2. Falanouc

The falanouc (Eupleres goudotii) also lives in Madagascar and belongs to the same family as the fossa, but resembles a mongoose more than its cousin. Its teeth are different from most of its taxonomically close relatives because the falanouc eats mainly insects and earthworms.

 

3. African Civet

 

There are more than a dozen species of civet in Africa and Asia belonging to several genera. What they have in common is their anal musk glands, which they use to mark territory and attract mates. Civets look like cats with the elongated bodies of otters or weasels. The African civet (Civettictis civetta) is the most common species and the one from which chemists traditionally obtain musk for use in perfumes—though synthetic Civetone is used more frequently today. African civets are found in the savannah, forests, and rainforests of Africa. They have masked face markings like a raccoon.

 

4. Mongoose

 

The name mongoose refers to 29 species in the family Herpestidae, which live in southern Europe, southern Asia, and in Africa. They are famous for their ability to fight snakes. The mongoose has receptors for acetylcholine that reject the neurotoxins in snake venom, much like snakes themselves have. Therefore, they are immune to snake venom. Another distinctive trait is the mongoose’s horizontal pupils, which give them a wider field of vision in front and behind them. This pupil shape occurs more frequently among grazing animals.

 

5. Linsang

 

There are four species of linsang: two in Africa, and two in Asia. The Asiatic linsang (genus Prionodon) comes in two flavors: banded (P. linsang) or spotted (P. pardicolor). That describes their body markings; both have long striped tails. The banded linsang resembles a weasel or ferret, with a longer tail and more catlike teeth, and lives in the rainforest canopies of Southeast Asia.

 

6. Binturong

 

The binturong (Arctictis binturong), also called the bearcat, is found in Southeast Asia. It looks and moves like a small round bear, and is a distant relative to genets, palm civets, and linsangs. Despite belonging to the order Carnivora, the binturong eats mostly fruit. They will also eat meat, eggs, fish, and insects when the opportunity arises. Binturongs spend most of their time in trees, which is made easier by their ankles, which can turn 180 degrees, and their prehensile tails, which can grip like a fifth limb.

 

7. European Genet

 

The European genet (Genetta genetta) is often mistaken for a cat, although it is more closely related to the mongoose. A couple dozen species range throughout Africa and Europe. In 2014, a camera trap caught a genet hitching a ride on a buffalo and a rhinoceros in South Africa. It was determined that it was the same genet, and it had made a habit of riding other animals on different occasions.

 

8. Meerkat

 

We all know meerkats (Suricata suricatta) for their charming habit of scanning the horizon for danger as if they were posing for the camera, and because of a Disney character named Timon. Meerkats are mongooses in the family Herpestidae. What sets them apart is their tendency to live in clans of 20 to 50 animals, and that habit of standing on their back feet in order to see across the African plains. Meerkats are social and loyal to the group, often babysitting and even nursing each other’s young.

 

 

Source: Close-But-Not-Quite Cats

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ELECTRICITY

Did you know.... The modern world runs on electricity. This subatomic movement of electrons between atoms crisscrosses along millions of miles of transmission and distribution lines throughout the U.S., powering everything from our cars to our toasters. Although humans have been witness to electricity’s awesome power in the form of lightning since time immemorial, scientists have only truly probed the nature of electricity in the last few centuries — and completely transformed society in the process. These eight facts explore the history of electricity, how it's integrated into our everyday lives, and what the future of this vital resource holds.

 

1. Human Study of Electricity Goes Back to the Seventh Century BCE

Although electricity powers many modern inventions, the concept of electricity is an old one. The Greek thinker Thales of Miletus experimented around 600 BCE with static electricity by rubbing an amber (known in Greek as elektron) against hemp or cat fur and noting the attractive forces produced against materials such as dust. Today, scientists call the phenomenon of friction causing a differential charge between objects the “triboelectric effect.” After Thales’ time, electricity remained largely a curiosity until electrostatic experiments made a comeback in the 17th century, when Isaac Newton’s onetime lab assistant Francis Hauksbee created an “electrostatic engine” and reignited interest in a hair-raising marvel that had fascinated the Greeks so many centuries ago.

 

2. Benjamin Franklin Coined the Term “Battery”

Benjamin Franklin is a towering figure in American history, but his revolutionary efforts are rivaled by his extensive contributions to the study of electricity. Of course, Franklin’s most “electrifying” episode is his famous kite-flying adventure (though the kite was never struck by lightning, and only picked up ambient electric charge from a passing storm; some historians have even questioned whether the experiment ever actually happened). Franklin’s interest in electricity far exceeded this well-known experiment, however. He helped develop the idea of positive and negative charge as it relates to “electric fire,” as he called it. He also coined the term “battery” to describe a group of connected Leyden jars, a kind of 18th-century proto-capacitor (true batteries didn’t arrive until the early 19th century). Similar to how military artillery functions together to form a battery, so too did these individual Leyden jars, working together, attain a greater electric charge.

 

3. The U.S. Electric Grid Is the Largest Machine in the World

The world is full of some truly massive machines (ever laid eyes on NASA’s rocket-ferrying crawler-transporter?), but none comes even close to the largest machine in the world — the U.S. electric grid. With the creation of the first U.S. power station on September 4, 1882, the country quickly electrified, and stations popped up throughout cities and suburbs. But it wasn’t until 1967 that these power stations became truly interconnected. Thomas Edison’s first New York power plant, Pearl Street Station, initially powered only 400 lamps and served a measly 82 customers. Today, the U.S. electric grid actually contains three self-contained grids — the eastern, western, and Texas interconnections — composed of 7,300 power stations that service more than 100 million American homes. That’s a pretty impressive expansion from Edison's initial 400 lamps.

 

4. The Electricity In Your Home Was Generated Milliseconds Ago

Although the U.S. grid has incredible power generation capacity, the ability to store that energy is less robust. Although engineers are designing ways to store energy (especially renewable energy for when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow), most electricity is generated on demand, meaning the power flooding your home was likely generated many miles away only milliseconds ago. In many cases, electricity isn’t generated directly, but is instead a secondary energy source. Primary energy sources include things like coal, natural gas, wind, and nuclear fission, which create steam that turns turbines or manipulate turbines directly (in the case of wind). These turbines use the underlying principle of electromagnetic induction, which transforms kinetic energy into electrical energy. So more likely than not, the light filling your room or powering your television was steam only milliseconds ago.

 

5. The Human Body Contains Electricity

Although electricity makes the artifice of our technological world possible, it’s also an important biological process. For example, electric fish (think electric eels) motivated early electrical pioneers such as Italian inventors Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani to investigate both biological electricity as well as the means to create it artificially. In the human body, electricity is the main ingredient of the nervous system, which sends electrical impulses throughout the body, traveling between 156 and 270 miles per hour. Our very cells are purposefully designed to transfer electricity and it’s vital to our health that they do so, as our very heartbeats require electrical impulses to time them correctly. In fact, all living things produce an electric field.

 

6. There Are Roughly 8 Million Lightning Strikes on Earth Every Day

Without a doubt, humanity’s very first shocking run-in with electricity likely happened observing lightning during a storm. Lightning forms when the attraction between the negative charge in the bottom of a cumulonimbus cloud and the positive charge on the ground becomes so great that they connect in an explosive display of electricity. Although people typically think of lightning striking the ground, these impressive arcs of light can also dance within a cloud or between two clouds as well. Lightning strikes can travel around 270,000 miles per hour while briefly superheating the surrounding air to a blistering 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit — five times hotter than the sun. Although some 40 million lightning strikes hit the U.S. every year (and roughly 8 million lightning strikes happen around the world per day), the chances of getting struck by lightning are roughly one in a million.

 

7. The First Electric Car Was Invented in the 1870s

Electric cars aren’t some new fad. In fact, the first EVs were invented during the dawn of the automobile itself in the mid-1800s. Most point to Scottish inventor Robert Anderson as the first person to build an electric car, in 1832, though its crude design made an impractical replacement for the reliable horse and buggy. By the end of the 19th century, U.S. inventors including Iowa’s William Morrison had begun developing more reliable electric cars, and about one-third of all vehicles on the road were electric in that era. Although electric vehicles had distinct advantages over gasoline cars as they were quiet and pollutant-free, the discovery of oil in Texas spelled the end of the U.S.’s short-lived electric car era. It would be decades later, during the midst of a climate crisis largely perpetuated by those early EVs’ gas-guzzling competitors, that electric cars would once again rise in popularity.

 

8. Electricity Could One Day Come From Artificial Suns

Glimpsing the future of electricity on Earth also means doing a little bit of stargazing. For nearly a century, scientists have investigated the energy-producing physics that power the sun and all other stars in the known universe. This process, known as nuclear fusion (not to be confused with fission, which powers current nuclear reactors), occurs when two light elements, such as hydrogen or helium, fuse together under immense heat and pressure, which produces tremendous amounts of energy. In December 2022, scientists for the first time produced more energy than they put into a fusion system, a nuclear milestone known as “ignition.” In 2025, an international collaboration of universities and governments hopes to ignite the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) megaproject, which will essentially create electricity via an artificial, terrestrial-bound sun. If only Thales could see us now.

 

 

Source: Amazing Facts About Electricity