Word(s) for the Day-- #%(#

This post is for all of you out there who are still 13 years old, no matter how many years you've lived.

These are (I believe) all of the words from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged that refer to the "droppings/dung/excrement" of specific animals.  Not just generic euphemisms for poop; I have no doubt that would be another 80 or so*.  No, these are the entries that name specific creatures, or at least specific classes or types of creature, and their respective leavings.

album graecum (dogs/hyenas, especially when used in tanning)
argol (camels, especially as used for fuel)
buffalo chips  (buffalo, natch)
buttons (sheep)
casson (cattle)
cast (earthworms)
cow pat (cows)
cowshard (cows)
cowsharn (cows)
crottels (hares)
fiants ("fox, wolf, boar, or badger," which is delightfully specific and various at the same time)
frass (insects)
fumet/fewmet (deer, or dragons if you're a fan of Madeline L'Engle)
guano (bats)
horse apples  (horses, of courses)
horseshit (horses)
lesses ("beast of prey"; the OED has "the dung of a ‘ravenous’ animal, as a wild boar, wolf, or bear")
mute (bird)
ornithocopros (birds)
pellet (mouse or rabbit)
shard (cow)
spraints (the winner! Defined in its entirety as "otter's dung".)
whitewash  (birds)

*Remind me to share my list of English words that can be used to mean "snow" at some point.  I'm up to 78 of those so far-- far more than the Inuit (three or four base words plus modifiers).

Dem (bird) bones

Bird bones are hollow.  This is a previously known thing, and something that many people know about birds.  They have to fly, after all, so weight reduction blah blah blah.

But nature, being what it is, abhors a vacuum, or at least an unused empty space.

Many of these hollow spaces in the bones are actually filled with a number of small air sacs that are directly connected to the bird's respiratory system.  When I first heard this, my first thought was that this must mean that when a bird inhales, it could use its bones as auxiliary lungs!  As it turns out, it's a bit more complicated than that.  

When the bones are being formed, the connection to the respiratory system allows the sacs to inflate, moving bone material out of the way and forming the hollow cavities.  Once the bones are fully formed, the sacs retain their connection, but do not have the parabronchi (analagous to the mammalian alveoli) found in the lungs, so they cannot exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide.  Instead, they serve strictly to hold and move air around, ultimately giving the bird a greater "lung" capacity and higher efficiency.

Hot hot hot

A couple of heat-related tidbits today.

According to the FAQ on the Ferrarra Pan website, the heat in Atomic Fireballs comes not from the cinnamon, but more prosaically from good old-fashioned capsicum-- the spice in chili peppers.  Apparently a typical Fireball is about 3500 on the Scoville heat scale, putting it at about the level of a mild jalapeño.

In other news, the Lan Chi brand of Black Bean Sauce turns out to actually be Lan Chi Chili Sauce with Black Beans and Chili.  And Chili.  Yow.  I got a jar as a replacement for the Lee Kum Kee Black Bean and Garlic Sauce, which was for many years a staple of my stir-fry flavorings and has recent departed from the shelves of my local grocery store.  It's, um.  Not quite the same.  My mouth is still a little tingly an hour and change later.

Not really important

I just learned that Benedict Cumberbatch is going to be the voice of Smaug in the upcoming Hobbit movie(s) against Martin Freeman's Bilbo.

Pardon me while a squee like a little girl.

Squee!

Shotgun House

A "shotgun house" (or "shotgun shack") is a typically small house in which all of the rooms are arranged in a single line from one end to the other.  It's a bit like a railroad apartment only without the hallway running alongside.  They've become associated with the lower economic class, although they used to be popular middle class housing a hundred years ago.


Supposedly, or at least apocryphally, they got their name from their straight floor plan, one which would allow a (shot)gun to be fired straight through from one end to the other.  A more likely possibility is that the name is related to another sense of the word "shotgun," one that the OED defines as "made or done hastily or under pressure of necessity," as in "shotgun legislation" or "shotgun resignations;" probably at least somewhat related to the "shotgun wedding."  Still another theory derives it from a vaguely homophonic African term (the design probably originated in Africa) meaning "assembly place," although I personally find that explanation a bit dubious.


Two such houses, built alongside each other and sharing a single dividing wall, are naturally referred to as "double-barrelled."  A partial second story is also sometimes added, creating the "camel-back" shotgun house.

Cock-a-doodle-please-don't

We (I and my carpool buddy) drove into work the other morning.  He was doing the driving, which meant that I was doing the sleeping.  Division of labor, you know.  We pulled into the parking lot, I stretched, stumbled out of the car, grabbed my bag from the back seat, and was greeted by the somewhat unexpected sound of a crowing rooster.

That's right, the people in the house on the other side of the fence from the parking lot have apparently installed a chicken coop.  In the middle of downtown(ish) Springfield, Mass.  It's... I... what?  And my second coherent thought, after processing all of this, is, "There are a  lot of feral cats in this neighborhood.  I wonder how long it will last...?"

Well, if nothing else, I sure didn't need any caffeine that morning.

Word For The Day -- Crossfoot

In a spreadsheet, you have the traditional option of summing up a series of numbers in a column, but it will also offer you the option to sum up numbers arranged horizontally in a row.

Today I learned that this (in some circumstances) has its own name-- to wit: crossfooting, which you would already have guessed if you read the title of this post.

Hey, I'm not writing these to create suspense, you know.

So anyway, apparently the traditional summing of entries in a column is or at least was called "footing" in accountancy circles.  If you have several columns that break down figures into various categories, with a running total at the end, a good accountant will add up the individual column totals and check it against the running total.  So after you've footed down, you foot sideways in order to cross check your results.  Viola!  Crossfooting.

Newton's Eyeball

Before the famous experiment with the prism, before he discovered the rules of gravitation (although probably at about the same time that the apple apocryphally fell on his head), Isaac Newton performed a brief experiment in anatomical optics.  Paraphrasing from his own notes, he took a small knife (a bodkin), and pushed it into his eyeball as far back around the curve as possible, in order to see the effects it had upon his vision.

Now, to be fair, the accompanying diagrams do make it look as if A) the bodkin was blunt, possibly the "large needle" instead of the "dagger" sense, and B) although it's not clear, it might have been outside the eyelid.  Rather than something more last-act Oedipal, it may have just been an extreme version of rubbing your eyes hard in order to see the pretty lights.

Still, this is clearly a degree of dedication to scientific inquiry that is seldom equalled in this day and age, or frankly in any other.  Which, honestly, is as it should be.  I mean really.  A true scientist would poke the eyes of a random sampling of other people, careful not to hint at any potential expected outcome.  Hadn't he ever heard of a single-blind study?

Maine Fjords or, "Fjording for the Pines"

See, because there are a lot of pines, and lot of rivers you have to cross, and... you know, never mind.

Here's the thing.  Everyone's heard of fjords-- they're what the parrot was pining for.  They're in Norway.  Some sort of geological formation river thingie.  Right?

But if a particular arrangement of rock and water can occur in one place, why can't it occur in others?  There are a few such things that only really happen in one specific part of the world, but not that many, really.  Cenotes are mostly found in the Yucatan, for example, but there are very similar formations in Australia, and Cuba, and even Canada.

So.  A fjord, according to a popular American dictionary of enormous size, is "a narrow generally deep inlet of the sea between high cliffs or steep slopes (as on the coasts of Norway and Alaska)."  And right there, you have it-- Norway and Alaska.  Not just Norway!  I never thought of that!

And as it happens, there are bits of Maine coast that could easily qualify as well.  As we discovered somewhat to our chagrin a few weeks ago, up there on vacation, when we decided to try to bike along the coast a bit.  We're used to thinking of coast as flat, you know?  The water's flat, after all, and the coast has to meet it, so...  Turns out land can go upwards pretty sharply in some places.  And not just in The Land of Extraneous J's.  Who knew?

The Kosher pig?

According to traditional Jewish law, the pig is unclean basically because it has cloven hooves, like a cow, but does not chew its cud; the specifically allowed animals are all cloven hooved ruminants.

Well, a couple of years ago, they discovered a new form of pig that departs from the normal pig-type-- to wit, it has a single, non-cloven hoof.  Unfortunately, this is the wrong element of the rule to switch on.  Having a solid hoof and not chewing its cud just makes it even more unclean.  However, I see this as a sign of hope-- clearly, the forces of God or evolution or man (it's unclear whether the mulefoot pig was deliberately bred or not) are trying to bring the gift of bacon to all mankind.  A noble goal, to be sure.

Gin

I knew gin was flavored (mostly) with juniper berries, but I didn't know that it had a base of neutral spirits, which means that gin is more or less just flavored vodka.

Yeah, that's all I got today.  Oh, well.

Right on red

The other day, I finally got around to looking up something that I've been wondering about for a while.  The fellow that I carpool with consistently turns right through a red arrow at a certain stoplight on our route, and I had always thought that this was illegal.  So I found copies of some relevant drivers manuals online, and discovered the reason for my consternation.

In Minnesota (where I learned how to drive), a red arrow means that right turns on red are prohibited.  You do not turn until the light turns green.

http://driving-tests.org/minnesota/minnesota-drivers-handbook-online/ , page 61: "A red arrow means “stop.”
You must come to a complete stop at the stopline, before the crosswalk, or before entering the intersection. When the arrow turns green, you may proceed in the direction it indicates."

In Massachusetts, on the other hand, where I currently do most of my driving and where the aforementioned stoplight is located, a red arrow is exactly the same as a red light-- a right turn on red is legal after you've come to a complete stop unless specifically prohibited by signage.  The arrow is basically only there for the opposite situation, when it's ok to turn (green arrow) but not go forward (steady red circle).

http://www.mass.gov/rmv/dmanual/chapter4.pdf, page 81: "A steady red arrow means the same as a steady red, circular signal (see the preceding Steady Red section)."

You see an orc guarding a chest

It's a staple of old-school D&D-- your party is wandering through the dungeon, and you see a door.  What's behind it?  Why, it's a 10x10 room, with an orc guarding a chest.

I never really thought much about it.  For years, it was just sort of there.  But this weekend, whilst painting my bathroom ceiling (whose dimensions vaguely approximate the aforementioned room), the thought occurred to me, to wit:

Let's be generous, and have the orc stand over the chest.  Put them both in the corner.  Now, orcs are what, 5 feet tall?  Ish?  And humanoid in shape, so they'll have an arm span of about half that (see the Vitruvian Man).  Give them a short sword, and that's another 2 feet.  So the orc, by itself, with minimal room to swing a sword, already takes up about a third of the available space (roughly 14 foot diagonal).

A typical human fighter is closer to 6 feet tall, and uses a long sword.  So he will use up closer to half of the available space.

This means if the fighter obligingly wedges himself into the opposite corner (very gracious of him), the two of them will have just enough room to swing their swords at each other without overlapping.  If they're using fencing foils, that might work out, but can you imagine an old-school orc fencing?  Any sort of decent swinging/cutting hack-and-slash weapon and the visual starts to get a little silly.

And now that we've established that, here's the 64 gp question-- where, exactly, during all of this derring-do, are the wizard, the cleric, and the thief standing?!  Out in the hall, I guess.  Otherwise someone's going to be the recipient of an unfortunate elbow, if they're lucky.

Lobster!

Back from my Maine Vacation!  And what do you do when you're on vacation in Maine?  You eat lobster!  So... much... lobster.  I have to say, by the time we got back, I was really starting to crave a simple hamburger.  Or some chicken wings.  I mean, lobster's great and all, but yeesh.

On the other hand, by the third boiled/steamed lobster dinner, my technique was starting to get pretty polished, so why not share it?

First, address the lobster.  It's just come out of the cooker, so it's likely piping hot.  Actually, this would actually be a really good time to eat some of the coleslaw or other sides that came with the lobster-- dinner rolls and corn on the cob are both popular.  Burned hands are, in the words of the sage, Not Good Eats.  On the other hand, if you're feeling brave, any dismantling you accomplish now will speed the cooling process, so perhaps you might use some paper towels or napkins as an impromptu oven mitt and dive right in.

Grab the body of the lobster with one hand, and the curled up tail with the other.  Twist.  The tail should pop right off.  Be prepared for a certain amount of drainage at this point (and all along, frankly).  The lobster was cooked in water, after all, and some of it stayed in there.  Also, at the point where the tail joined the body, there will be a cavity, and it will probably be filled with a grayish or greenish "goop".  This goop is called tomalley, and it's basically the lobster's internal organs (liver, etc).  Some people love it, some hate it.  Frankly, it doesn't taste like much of anything to me, so I usually just ignore it, and if any of it sticks to the tail it will mostly wash off by dunking in the butter later.  There may also be bright orange stuff-- that means you got a female, and you're looking at lobster roe.  Again, your mileage may vary: eat or not as you like.

Anyway, the next step is to take off the big claws.  If you separate them close to the body, you'll get three segments-- the claw itself, and a couple of "knuckle" pieces.  You should be able to break these segments apart with your bare hands, with a little work.  You've now got 80 to 90 percent of the parts with meat off of the lobster, and they should be nicely cooled down to working temp, so let's get that meat out of the shells.

Pick the tail back up, and rip off the fins at the bottom end.  Make sure to get the entire fan of them.  This will leave a small hole in the bottom of the tail, and if you stick a finger into it, you should be able to push the entire tail section out of the shell in one huge piece.  Done!  Seriously, if you have trouble getting the tail meat out, you're doing something wrong.  Dunk in melted butter (or not) and eat, or set aside for later.

ETA:  I forgot to add-- if you're especially thorough about these things, you might want to devein the lobster tail before eating.  This is just like deveining a shrimp-- the digestive tract for the lobster runs along the back of the tail, and it's usually filled with whatever the lobster was eating in the trap.  If you take one tine of your fork, you can often find the opening at the large/body end of the tail section near the back of the tail, and just run it down the length, pulling outward a bit, splitting the back open in the process.  You might need to open it up a bit further with your fingers, but it should be pretty obvious.  Pull out the tube of grit.

Next, the knuckles.  If you've separated them all, you should be able to use the same basic technique and just poke the meat through with a fingertip, or maybe a disposable lobster fork if you want to try to be neat.

Finally, the claws.  This is often the only part where the cracker is really useful.  First, pull off the bottom part of the pincer, the long skinny piece.  There may or may not be meat in there, depending on size and shape, so look inside-- you may have to fork it out.  Next, take the cracker, and do some damage to the bottom part of the claw (where its "wrist" would be).  After a couple of solid breaks, you should be able to pull that part of the shell right off.  Do the same to the tip.  Then, once again, you can stick a finger or other implement in the tip hole and just poke the claw meat out in one big piece.  Sometimes you might not even need to break the tip, and can work it out from the base, depending on how much shell you removed from the bottom.

At this point, you can decide whether or not to work on the legs, or search for bits of meat in the gills.  It's more for entertainment purposes than for substantial meat, and in my opinion there really is no good technique for it.  Frankly, the most efficient method I ever saw involved taking a rolling pin to the legs and squeezing out the meat like toothpaste, but that's not really practical most of the time.

Enjoy!