Curiously, the word 'wow' has been around since the early 1500s, originating possibly in Scottish English (reference here). i honestly thought it was way more recent than that.
Really been enjoying the NewYorker's coverage of the 2015 World Track and Field Championships as a back-and-forth conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompson. They've been particularly sensitive to the current doping scandals plaguing the sport.
i've recently been cat-sitting a very fluffy Persian cat, whose nose does not protrude at all from his face. Turns out, that is a selected trait, "The Persian breed standard is, by its nature, somewhat open-ended and
focused on a rounded head, large, wide-spaced round eyes with the top of
the nose leather placed no lower than the bottom of the eyes ". This also means that he snores, poor baby. While i haven't tried this myself, it turns out that many people have asked if a person can eat pet food. Short answer, FDA regulations require that pet food be free of pathogens, but most pet foods are made from scraps, offal and filler (like ash), so maybe stick to the more expensive pet foods? Research also turned up this account of a woman who vowed to eat pet food for 30 days to promote her pet store.
Wisconsin has an official Cow Chip Throwing contest, occurring in Sauk City each year. Some friends and i were passing through in route from a state park when we saw a fully booked hotel sign, welcoming participants. This raised a few questions, including the origin/aging of the chips in question. Looking into it, there are official rules posted, "Contestants must select their chips from the wagon-load provided by the officialMeadow Muffin Committee. To alter, or shape in any way, chips selected from the wagon (except in rare instances where a loose fragment may be removed, provided the removal does not render the chip less than 6 inches in diameter) subjects the contestant to a 25-foot penalty. Decision of the Chip Judge will be final " That same website also provides lyrics to song parodies highlighting the chips in question. Fun fact, the record chip throw is 248 feet, by a gentleman from Sauk Prairie in 1991 (though, he has won the event 11 total years). Wow.
While on that same drive, we heard a song on the radio referencing 'burritos' in a manner that made it seem unrelated to the tortilla-wrapped food. The question at hand became, 'Does the food name mean 'little donkey', and the answer is yes. As for as the origin of the food itself, i've noted that while you can find them in the San Antonio-proximal area where i grew up, they're more of a gringo item there. Wikipedia agrees that the origins of this foodstuff have been lost in the mists of time, but most seem to involve California; "The precise origin of the modern burrito is not known. It may have originated with vaqueros in northern Mexico in the nineteenth century farmworkers in the fields of California's Central Valley, in Fresno and Stockton the Southwestern United States or with northern Sonoran miners of the 19th century". Alternately, "another creation story comes from 1940s Ciudad Juárez, where a street food vendor created the tortilla-wrapped food to sell to poor children at a state-run middle school. The vendor would call the children his burritos, as burro is a colloquial term for dunce or dullard. Eventually, the derogatory or endearing term for the children was transferred to the food they ate," along with other creation stories.
While looking around online the other day, i came across a mention of a game called "Poohsticks", which apparently was first mentioned in the childrens' classic book The House on Pooh Corner, and requires sticks and a bridge over a flowing stream. It's played by having a group of competitors line up along a stream, each dropping a stick into the water, then racing downstream via bridge to see whose stick comes out from under the bridge first.
Stone Mountain is a theme park in GA that semi-masquerades as a nature park. The place is named for quartz monzanite dome rising 1686 feet. Surprisingly, it also features the largest bas-relief carving (3 acres!) in the world, unfortunately of the Confederates Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, carved beginning in 1916 and finished at the surprisingly late date of 1972. When i was last in Atlanta, someone had mentioned that it had excellent hiking (and nothing else), and upon driving out to investigate, i was distressed to note both the theme park and the carving.
Kicked up a series of really interesting photography tricks via COOPH's youtube channel, including 'funky tips' and 'simple hacks'.
Given the upcoming start to fantasy football season (ach, Jordy Nelson), i really liked this fivethirtyeight post on how Madden scores are generated, by a single dude in a cubicle at a video game company, and how much goes into one of these scores, " Each player in the game is graded in 43 categories — many of which were added when Madden transitioned from the sixth generation of consoles to the seventh. There are also nearly 20 new player-tendency tags, known as “traits,” that control specific player behaviors ". It opens with this amusing anecdote, "Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, for instance, was upset. “I
want to talk about my speed,” Moore remembers Newton saying as he
clambered into Moore’s cubicle last April.
Despite leading all NFL quarterbacks in rushing yards
in 2013, Newton ranked as only the ninth-fastest QB in the league,
according to Moore — hence Newton’s unhappiness. But as Moore wheeled
around from his den of screens, he was confronted by not only Newton,
but also an enormous boot on Newton’s foot, the result of recent ankle surgery.
“Yeah,” Moore said as Newton hobbled toward him, “let’s talk about your speed.”
Eventually, Newton was pleading with Moore to not make him slower. "
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
dissertation v/s thesis, thickskinned, zimbabwean dollar, music vocabularies, cattycorner
There doesn't seem to be much of a distinction made between the terms 'thesis' ("a proposition stated or put forward for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or to be maintained against objections" ) and 'dissertation' ("a written essay, treatise, or thesis, especially one written by a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy."). Even wikipedia isn't much help here: "A thesis or dissertation is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings. In some contexts, the word "thesis" or a cognate is used for part of a bachelor's or master's course, while "dissertation" is normally applied to a doctorate, while in other contexts, the reverse is true", though it notes that in the US, at least, a thesis generally refers to a MS and a dissertation refers to a PhD.
Had a bit of a debate with a (male) friend about the thickness of human dermal tissue as related to being male or female (ie, whether men are literally thicker-skinned). Turns out, he was correct, at least in mice: " In fact, the major difference is that the dermis in the male is much thicker than in the female whereas the epidermis and hypodermis are thicker in the female, thus resulting in total skin that is 40% thicker in the male ", somewhat attributed to the effects of the hormone androgen. Dermis refers to basal, inner layer of skin cells, and epidermis is the outermost layer (see here).
We were sitting around a reading the other night when Patricia noted in a magazine article about the Zimbabwe dollar inflation at 79.6 billion percent in mid-Novermber of 2008. This was met with googling, to determine if that was indeed the case -turns out, yes. Further, from the Zimbabwean dollar wiki article, "In the Guardian, on 18 July 2008, a report on Zimbabwe's inflation, said that an egg costs Z$50 billion (GBP 0.17, USD 0.32), and it showed adverts for prizes of Z$100 trillion in a Zimbabwean derby and Z$1.2 quadrillion ($1,200,000,000,000,000.00: approx. £2,100; $4,200) in a lottery.". As of 2009, the currency was devalued, and Zimbabwe now employs foreign currency, including US and Australian dollars, South African Rand, UK pounds sterling, Botswana pula, Indian Rupee, euro, Chinese yuan and Japanese yen.
Having noted on several occasions the simplistic language used in most top 40 hits, i was happy to see this recent study concerning working vocabularies of musicians. It looked at the 100 most lyric-dense songs of 93 musicians. Unsurprisingly, hip-hop artists and rappers top the list, with Eminem having a vocabulary of 8818 words, followed by JayZ at 6899 words. As far as non-rap goes. Bob Dylan came in at 4883 words. On the opposite end was Kenny G, with 809 words.
Apparently, the Queen of England was a notable breeder of Corgi dogs.
i was hanging out at the Farmers' Market a few weeks ago when fierce chickens came up in conversation. i referenced the Russian folk tale figure Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged house. In short, old world fairy tales are terrifying.
A friend recently linked this Madison police report of someone being arrested for slapping a police horse (also featuring Madison's tradition of 'Hippie Christmas'). Why would a person ever think that would end well? Other things the probably won't end well: here is a petapixel article titled "This new shotgun shell is for shooting down drones", and includes the note, "As you might expect, this new ammo is generating quite a bit of controversy. Over atAmmoLand, which published the press release, many commenters are pointing out that it’s a felony to shoot down drones, even if it’s hovering over your property". Yikes.
This NYTimes article covers known health risks of sugar versus artificial sweeteners. In short, sugar fuels lots of maladies including the obesity epidemic, but there aren't a lot of known caveats to using artificial sweeteners outside of phenylketonuria. The questions seem to arise when studies are based on various rat and mouse models, which are predisposed to things like bladder cancer and some correlative-but-not-causitive cases with brain tumors.
Was reading an article a little while ago that used the word 'cattycorner' (meaning something in a diagonal), when i mentally noted what a strange word it is, and wondered over the difference between it and 'kittycorner'. Looking into it, these are regional dialects for the word 'catercorner', the origins of which have been lost to time but much speculated upon. From the wikitionary, " cater- + corner, where cater- is of disputed origin. Liberman argues that this is a prefix meaning “crooked, angled, clumsy”, of North Germanic origin; compare cater-cousin. The verb cater (“move diagonally, place diagonally, cut diagonally”) is attested from 1577 (Liberman proposes this as a backformation from cater-), and in 19th century Lancashire dialect, cater-cornered refers both to stone blocks that are out of square, and people who walk twisted (with one side in front of the other), especially if partially paralyzed. Further awkward and clumsy are of Scandinavian origin, and Old Irish cittach (“left-handed, awkward”) is cognate to cater-words, also suggesting a Scandinavian origin. ". Also of interest is this article which further describes cat-derived words, including cattywompus (when something is crooked, etc).
Had a bit of a debate with a (male) friend about the thickness of human dermal tissue as related to being male or female (ie, whether men are literally thicker-skinned). Turns out, he was correct, at least in mice: " In fact, the major difference is that the dermis in the male is much thicker than in the female whereas the epidermis and hypodermis are thicker in the female, thus resulting in total skin that is 40% thicker in the male ", somewhat attributed to the effects of the hormone androgen. Dermis refers to basal, inner layer of skin cells, and epidermis is the outermost layer (see here).
We were sitting around a reading the other night when Patricia noted in a magazine article about the Zimbabwe dollar inflation at 79.6 billion percent in mid-Novermber of 2008. This was met with googling, to determine if that was indeed the case -turns out, yes. Further, from the Zimbabwean dollar wiki article, "In the Guardian, on 18 July 2008, a report on Zimbabwe's inflation, said that an egg costs Z$50 billion (GBP 0.17, USD 0.32), and it showed adverts for prizes of Z$100 trillion in a Zimbabwean derby and Z$1.2 quadrillion ($1,200,000,000,000,000.00: approx. £2,100; $4,200) in a lottery.". As of 2009, the currency was devalued, and Zimbabwe now employs foreign currency, including US and Australian dollars, South African Rand, UK pounds sterling, Botswana pula, Indian Rupee, euro, Chinese yuan and Japanese yen.
Having noted on several occasions the simplistic language used in most top 40 hits, i was happy to see this recent study concerning working vocabularies of musicians. It looked at the 100 most lyric-dense songs of 93 musicians. Unsurprisingly, hip-hop artists and rappers top the list, with Eminem having a vocabulary of 8818 words, followed by JayZ at 6899 words. As far as non-rap goes. Bob Dylan came in at 4883 words. On the opposite end was Kenny G, with 809 words.
Apparently, the Queen of England was a notable breeder of Corgi dogs.
i was hanging out at the Farmers' Market a few weeks ago when fierce chickens came up in conversation. i referenced the Russian folk tale figure Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged house. In short, old world fairy tales are terrifying.
A friend recently linked this Madison police report of someone being arrested for slapping a police horse (also featuring Madison's tradition of 'Hippie Christmas'). Why would a person ever think that would end well? Other things the probably won't end well: here is a petapixel article titled "This new shotgun shell is for shooting down drones", and includes the note, "As you might expect, this new ammo is generating quite a bit of controversy. Over atAmmoLand, which published the press release, many commenters are pointing out that it’s a felony to shoot down drones, even if it’s hovering over your property". Yikes.
This NYTimes article covers known health risks of sugar versus artificial sweeteners. In short, sugar fuels lots of maladies including the obesity epidemic, but there aren't a lot of known caveats to using artificial sweeteners outside of phenylketonuria. The questions seem to arise when studies are based on various rat and mouse models, which are predisposed to things like bladder cancer and some correlative-but-not-causitive cases with brain tumors.
Was reading an article a little while ago that used the word 'cattycorner' (meaning something in a diagonal), when i mentally noted what a strange word it is, and wondered over the difference between it and 'kittycorner'. Looking into it, these are regional dialects for the word 'catercorner', the origins of which have been lost to time but much speculated upon. From the wikitionary, " cater- + corner, where cater- is of disputed origin. Liberman argues that this is a prefix meaning “crooked, angled, clumsy”, of North Germanic origin; compare cater-cousin. The verb cater (“move diagonally, place diagonally, cut diagonally”) is attested from 1577 (Liberman proposes this as a backformation from cater-), and in 19th century Lancashire dialect, cater-cornered refers both to stone blocks that are out of square, and people who walk twisted (with one side in front of the other), especially if partially paralyzed. Further awkward and clumsy are of Scandinavian origin, and Old Irish cittach (“left-handed, awkward”) is cognate to cater-words, also suggesting a Scandinavian origin. ". Also of interest is this article which further describes cat-derived words, including cattywompus (when something is crooked, etc).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)