Real Horosho

Jamie Hyneman, of Mythbusters fame, has a degree in Russian Linguistics (from Indiana University).

[blink blink]

I... did not expect that.

Weekend random

This weekend I learned two things--

First, that if you see the abbreviation "geth." in a German music score, it's an abbreviation for "getheilt" and means "divided."

Second, Cotswold makes a damned fine grilled cheese sandwich.

It's been an odd weekend.

To sleep, perchance to zzxxxnnnn...

A week or so ago, I switched out my alarm clock for my phone.  Yes, I'm becoming one of Those people.  For one thing, it lets me easily set different times for my alarm for the days where my morning schedule is different.  For another, instead of having to try tune the clock to an empty band to get static for white noise (something that's getting more and more difficult), I can now use an actual white noise app, that will generate (among other things) wave sounds, rainstorm sounds, fan noise, or my personal favorite, Airplane Cabin.  No, seriously.

And that leads in turn to the Thing I Learned.  You see, I've always felt like I had trouble falling asleep.  I turn off the light, lay down, and proceed to thrash and flop around for a while until I finally go out.  But now I have verifiable evidence!  The white noise app has a timer on it, and I can now say, much to my surprise, that a fair number of nights I have absolutely no recollection of the app shutting itself off after about 15 minutes.  So I'm falling asleep much faster than I thought.

Mew

Kitten heels supposedly got their name because the small thin heel resembles a kitten's claw.

Supposedly.

Also, I appear to be on a shoe kick right now.  So to speak.

Heels

It appears that my shoes, having more or less "a heel extending from the back of the shoe to the front of the shank and a tread formed by an extension of the sole," are technically wedges, despite being basically bog standard men's shoes.  I feel like either I or the dictionary definition are missing something, but there you go.

I'm a wedge wearer.

Barbie(tm)

For all of the flack that Mattel gets from the progressives and feminists, much of it admittedly well deserved, it's interesting to remember that when Barbie was first introduced, it was created and designed by women (primarily Ruth Handler, wife of one of the Mattel founders), and was one of a very few dolls on the market with an adult body-- in other words, that did not automatically cast the doll's owner in the role of a mother.  It was intended to be a doll that a girl could imagine herself as, that opened up a great deal of opportunity for unchecked imagination.  It's just too bad they've had so much trouble keeping the momentum of those initial ideas of empowerment.

Stoker

Bram Stoker (famous author of the famous book Dracula)'s first name is a shortened version of "Abraham", which is a piece of knowledge with very little value except for the fact that it's a good way to remember that it rhymes with graham, not with Brahms.

On the other hand, I would totally eat Brahms Crackers.  I imagine that they'd be like animal crackers, only you'd be biting the heads off of little composers instead of little animals.

Exhausted

And a tired old pun to boot.

Yesterday, I learned that our kitchen fan (which has of late been making horrible grinding motor-burning-out kind of noises) is only a kitchen fan by location, not by design.  It was actually a bathroom model, designed to vent air laden with moisture, but not much else.  Quoth the electrician (lightly paraphrased), "So how long has this been in here?  Four, five years?"  "Oh, no," says I.  "At least 13."  "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" he exclaimed.  "I would have expected it to expire years gone by, from all of the aerosolized grease that it has had to move!"

Of course, we had to replace it with another similar model (since the alternative would have required a great deal more money, time, and the ripping up and excavating of the kitchen ceiling), but at least now we know that if it lasts at least 5 years we'll have gotten our money's worth.

Glowy

The adhesive in the protective packaging for Breathe Right nasal strips (the paper sleeve, not the adhesive on the strips themselves) is the kind that glows in the dark when you peel it apart.

Weekend Roundup

This long weekend past afforded several opportunities to learn and try new things.  Here are two of them.  Tra la.

First, we broke and had to clean up our third (3rd) compact fluorescent light bulb, commonly abbreviated to "that goddam thing."  Three mercury spills is at least two too many, and we've had enough-- we're jumping ship.  One of the two table lamps received one of our precious stock of incandescents (cunningly stored in plain sight, a la The Purloined Letter, in a different lamp that doesn't get used much), and the other?  Ah, the other.  The other received a shiny new LED light bulb, rated at something like 800 lumens.  It cost 12 bucks, and I'm a little nervous, as reviews of other such bulbs suggest that their reliability... well, isn't.  But even if we end up having to replace it in 6 months (rather than the 20 years some have claimed), I think the piece of mind of not having to clean up mercury is probably worth it.

Secondly, on Sunday we took the dog and joined a (semi)local dog walking group for a roughly 4-5 mile hike.  Ok, not so much "hike" as "meander", but it was still nice-- especially for a couple of learning experiences.  We were on an isolated farm trail, away from roads and traffic, so we (somewhat nervously) let our slightly less than a year-old puppy Jet off of his leash for the first time in public.  Whereupon we learned the first thing-- he may not, in fact, have been named Jet because of his ebon hue.  He was likely named Jet because that's how goddam fast he was.  Holy CRAP fast.  30 mph?  Possibly more at full tilt?  (Greyhounds can go over 40, but I'm not sure he was quite that fast).  I'm pretty sure it'd take an Olympic sprinter to have a hope of keeping up with him in the full stretch.  This, amid our astonishment, also gave us a touch of concern, obviously, whereupon we learned the second thing-- when we called, he came right back.  Immediately.  This was astonishingly reassuring, and he spent most of the next hour or so off leash, running back and forth around the group, making friends and getting valuable experience interacting with other dogs.  Much love to Martha, the 9 year old lab who was willing to smack him around verbally and physically until he behaved.  (Side note-- we're beginning to suspect, based on some of his reactions, that his dam was a lab, and his father the shepherd).  He learned a lot about good behavior, and we learned that we could trust him off leash, at least in some circumstances.

Ikea names

IKEA (all caps, that's apparently important) has a certain... reputation?  Image?  I'm not entirely certain what to call it, but whatever it is, IKEA's definitely got it.  And what it is?  Is kind of silly.

Now, I should disclaim, I don't think there's any IKEA ware in our household.  I've certainly never shopped at an IKEA store, or ordered from their catalog.  I can't completely swear that this is also true for my wife, but I'm reasonably sure.  So I don't really have any opinion one way or another-- I really just haven't had to buy any furniture in the last, oh, dozen years or so, with the exception of a couple of Sauder bookshelves, which are sort of IKEA Lite.  Or IKEA LITE.  Anyway.

So what I've learned is that all of those names that have inspired such amusement actually have a rationale-- different categories of items have different types of names.  Bathroom fixtures, for example, are named after Scandinavian rivers and lakes, etc.  Beds and wardrobes are Norwegian place names.  Garden furniture are named after Swedish islands.  Bookcases are sort of split-- a bookcase "range" will have an occupation name, but an individual bookcase will probably have the name of a Swedish man (curtains have the names of Swedish women).  Supposedly, according to this short article from The Guardian a few years back, the founder of IKEA was dyslexic, and found common proper nouns easier to remember and recognize.

Not worth the effort

According to an article published a couple of months ago by some British statisticians, the average bank robber in the U.S. gets away with approximately 4,000 dollars.  So to make even a vaguely reasonable living, a hood would have to plan and execute (and avoid subsequent capture) 9 or 10 heists a year.  Doesn't really seem worth it.  Now, according to the same study, an equivalent British bank robber will do a bit better-- an average of nearly 20 grand.  Still, that's a couple of jobs a year for the rest of your life, and bank robbery usually doesn't come with dental.

You might get a company car, though, if you consider the getaway vehicle you carjacked.

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.

A Lion Coward

No, not the Cowardly Lion.

In heraldry, a lion (or presumably other some other beast, although all of the examples I found in a cursory search were leonine) coward is a representation of the animal with, as one might expect, its tail tucked down in between its legs, instead of curled up behind.  Here's an example of a lion rampant coward (LJ users, you'll probably have to look at the original sidebernie.blogspot.com version).

On the bright side, this seems to be a purely descriptive term, and (again, following only a cursory search) does not actually seem to suggest anything about the name associated with the heraldic symbology.  That's just what that particular form of lion is called, to distinguish it from (for example) a lion rampant, or a lion rampant regardant, or a lion passant crowned, or a lion passant guardant, ducally gorged, or a lion sejant guardant erect, or a lion rampant queue-fourché, or a tricorporate lion, etc. etc.  And that's just lions.  For some light reading, I recommend http://www.archive.org/stream/completeguidetoh00foxdrich#page/n5/mode/2up.  Very interesting for the flipping through of.

They have bodies!

The Easter Island Statues!  Those big heads!  Have BODIES!  How did I not know about this?

http://www.eisp.org/

Apparently the statues were carved as entire people, and then for some reason were buried neck deep.

I... bwah?  [am boggled]

Regain Rogaine

The hair "regrowth" medication minoxidil is marketed in the US (primarily) under the name Rogaine.  However, the original name pitched by the ad team was actually Regaine.  The FDA shot that name down, though, since they thought that it was possibly fraudulent marketing (making promises it couldn't always keep).  McNEIL-PPC, Inc., the owners of the trademark, was forced to change it for domestic distribution.  Outside of the US, it's still mostly marketed as Regaine, since the rules are different, and (I guess) McNEIL-PPC, Inc. always liked that name better.

Coins

I was looking through some old boxes the other day (searching, somewhat fruitlessly, for the bike computer manual on which I had recorded the code for the wheel size) and I found an old stash of foreign coins, and I discovered that a Mexican 5-peso coin from 1980 is slightly larger and heavier than a quarter, but not quite as large as the American half-dollar, and thus almost exactly the same size as the Canadian Loonie, a coin recommended as ideal for rolling across one's knuckles.  My skills develop apace, and there exists a possibility of a video in the indefinite future.

How to tell an anteater from an aardvark.

Parallel evolution is a curious thing, but these two (unrelated but very similar) creatures do have some distinguishing characteristics.  Most obviously and notably, the anteater has a streamlined, narrow head, curving smoothly to a very long, pointed snout.  They also have small ears.

The aardvark has much longer, sort of donkey-looking ears, and its face ends in a very pig-like large-nostriled blunt snout.

Cerebus was an aardvark, not an anteater.  Arthur is just a mess.  The blue aardvark in the Ant and the Aardvark was in fact a (poorly drawn) aardvark, so kudos to them.  Cardiff's famous anteater is an anteater.  And none of them are wombats, who have nothing to do with ants in general but are frankly much cuter.

Black Hills Gold

Texas...Turquoise?  Well, no.

Black Hills Gold isn't strictly speaking, any different from any other gold.  There's no unusual chemical or elemental composition (alloying notwithstanding, see below).

But Black Hills Gold Jewelry does have distinguishing characteristics-- to wit: firstly, it is jewelry, made from gold, that is manufactured in the Black Hills area of South Dakota.  Secondly, it uses a motif of grapes or grape leaves in its design.  Thirdly, it typically uses a combination of pure and alloyed gold for a combination of pink, gold, and a sort of greenish-white tricolor.

The story is that Black Gold Hills jewelry was first created by one Henri LeBeau, a French jeweler who set up shop in the Black Hills during the great gold boom of the 1800s.