5/10/13  Snoop Doggerel

"It's raining. It's pouring. The old man is snoring."

A silly old rhyme we used to chant as kids. I don't recall ever hearing it out of the mouths of adults. Where did it come from? Is this little bit of doggerel passed on from one generation to the next within the child community, as it were? I wonder. Just like, "Hey, Joe. Waddaya know? I just got back from the rodeo show."

doggerel (DAW ger-rul) noun, Verse of a loose, irregular rhythm or of a trivial nature.

A favorite use of the word was a description of rap music being rhythmic doggerel. I suppose you could say the same thing about a lot of pop music. Anyway, nothing more to add. Just an entry of a trivial nature. A rainy day activity of my own.

Filed under Word Definitions & Origins

5/3/13  On Two Cash Crops

Fifty percent of the world's pesticides and herbicides are used to grow one crop, and we don't even eat it. Cotton. You may be sporting cotton head-to-toe right now. T-shirt, shirt, underpants, socks, denim jeans could all be cotton. Even your baseball cap, should you be wearing one, might well be cotton. Go through your dresser drawers and closet. Cotton everywhere.

Could we do without cotton? Is there another plant that can make better, more durable cloth while using less pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, energy and water? Yep. Everything you wear made from cotton could be made from hemp. Hemp's long fibres make stronger, more durable cloth than cotton. Or a stronger yet softer fabric than cotton. Makes great rope, too.

Hemp grows fast, its dense foliage shades the ground inhibiting weeds so needs less herbicides. The shade also retains soil moisture. Add hemp's deeper roots and little to no irrigation is required. Cotton cultivation uses lots of fertilizers and growth regulators. On the other hand, hemp leaves the soil enriched. It's deeper roots break down aerating the soil while providing humus.

Better cloth, fewer chemicals, less energy and water. It's a wonder plant. Only one problem. In our infinite wisdom we have made hemp ilegal. I guess that's the price we're willing to pay, plus law enforcement costs, to rid ourselves of pot smoking. What's that? There are people smoking pot anyway? H-h-m-m-m...

Filed under Fun Facts & Trivia

4/29/13  Kerclack

Infrequently Answered Question #74: Why are marbles called marbles when they're made of glass?

A: Not all marbles are made of glass. Some modern marbles are plastic. In some places marbles are made of agate. In Australia they sometimes use balls of polished wood. In NYC they play marbles with steel ball bearings. In the Middle East they play with balls of baked clay or the knucklebones of sheep. All over in various times and places you'll find marbles made of all sorts of things other than marble. Though on rare occasions you'll find marbles were made of actual marble.

When I was a kid we called the little glass orbs marbles, and we called games played with them marbles. This isn't the case everywhere. You may have played ringer or immies or mibs. In England, Scotland and Ireland it's taw or boss or span. In Brazil children play gude. They play pallina di vetro in Italy. All over in various times and places you'll find marble games that are not called marbles.

So then, marbles aren't always called marbles and aren't always made of glass. Still, some are glass and called marbles. Why is rather hard to pin down. As are a lot of terms that go way back in the mists of time. Maybe it's because they have viens of color running through them, they're marbled. Maybe it's because they once were made of marble. No-one is really sure. At least I'm not. Here's a bit more about marbles if you care.

Less hard to trace are some old sayings that derive from marbles. Like, for keeps, knuckle down, for all the barbles, no backsies. These are explored in Quotes & Sayings.

Filed under Infrequently Answered Questions

4/25/13  Not Quotes or Sayings Exactly, Still...

Pop quiz. What sport do the following two phrases come from?

For keeps
Knuckle down

Why, from the grand old sport of... marbles? Okay, maybe marbles ain't exactly a sport, but it certainly is old. We're talking a couple thousand years old at least. Marbles have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs.

If you've ever played marbles you understand the meaning of for keeps, or play for keeps or for keepsies. Which means, as the phrase suggests, you get to keep whatever marbles you won during the game. It's gambling for kids, the high stakes of marbles. Outside marbles, for keeps means getting serious, it counts, for real, no backsies. When a contest is winner-take-all you're playing for all the marbles.

Knuckle down is a lot easier to explain with a picture than with verbiage. Look at the proper hand position for shooting marbles. The marble is cradled on the curled under index finger behind the thumb ready to be flicked. The knuckles are down. So when a player is bearing down for a shot they knuckle down.

Still, why are marbles called marbles when they're made of glass? That's another story. In fact, for terrycolon.com it belongs in Infrequently Answered Questions. And it will be there soon. (When this post becomes old, it will have been there already.)

Filed under Quotes & Sayings

4/22/13  Maybe There’s an App for That

How often have you been doing some chore and think, "There's got to be a better way"? You're not alone. Gadgets and gizmos are everywhere for doing all sorts of things. Gadget freaks love them, others find them of dubious value. Some work well, others are what you might call a bad improvement. Then there's the Japanese chindogu, the unuseless idea.

Chindogu is an invention that works, more-or-less, but which there really isn't any practical need for. Like cat mittens that are little dust mops so the cat cleans the floor as it walks around. Or a big curved hairbrush so you can comb your hair in one stroke. Then there's an apron with hooks so you can wear all your kitchen tools. Very handy. Or is it?

These inventions aren't quite Rube Goldbergian, they are not needlessly complex, they're just plain needless. Chindogu, inventions without necessity. If necessity is the mother of invention, these inventions are motherless. Which makes me wonder what the father of invention is and whether that can explain any of this nonsense.

Filed under Odds & Ends

4/18/13  Ye Oldest League

125 years ago yesterday the first national professional football (soccer) league was founded in Manchester, England. A grand total of twelve teams competed in the inaugural season of 1888-89, won by unbeaten Preston North End. Since then 64 different teams have won the coveted trophy. The champion champions are Manchester United with 19 titles, followed by Liverpool with 18, and Arsenal with 13. By the look of things Man U looks to be on track for number 20 this season.

However, the champion for staying power is Liverpool's cross-town rival, Everton who have only missed four seasons out of the top division. That's a record 110 seasons. A quick bit of math will tell you 110 plus 4 doesn't come out to 125. That's because league play was suspended for a total 11 seasons during the world wars. Though they've played the most games, 4,284 to date, Everton haven't got the most wins, only 1,746. That other Liverpool team, Liverpool, has the most victories at 1,800.

The league was all one division at first. The First Division lasted from 1892 to 1992. Now it's called the Premier League. Or rather the Barclay's English Premier League to be specific. Barclay's, as in the bank. Preston North End now play in the third division, called League One oddly enough.

The record for futility goes to Bolton Wanderers who have spent more seasons in the top division without winning a title than any other team. Still, one supposes they are more competitive than Birmingham City who have the all-time worst goal differential, a miserable minus 607.

So, Chicago Cubs fans take heart. It may be 100 years since your last World Series win, but at least the team itself hasn't been sent down to the minors. Relegated, as they say, from the Goldman Sachs National League to the Comerica AAA League.

Filed under The Casual Sportsman

4/13/13  Things to Come

We like to think technology will keep improving. Modernity will get moderner. Things will get better, cheaper, faster. But in some cases we've already reached the practical limit.

Take speed of communication. With cell phones, satellites and whatnot we can talk to someone on the other side of the globe almost instantaneously. Can't see how it could get any faster than that.

Take speed of travel. Air travel maxed out with the jet. Jet travel is actually slower today than it was 40 years ago. For one thing, the SST has been retired. Also, jet airliners fly slower today than in the 60s to save fuel. We build cars that go 100 mph, but but we don't commute that fast, do we?

For reasons other than technology things in the future might be different than imagined.

The old future looks less popular than before. The Star Trek future looks less likely than ever. The new future looks a lot like the 19th century. The future ain't what it used to be.

Filed under Odds & Ends

4/9/13 Name That Pet

See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Familiar with that? Do schools use the old Dick and Jane readers any more? I don't know. Are dogs named Spot any more? How about Fido, Rex, Rover, Lady, Lassie, and King? Below are the top ten dog names according to Petfinder.com, left column, and Petvr.com, right column.

Seems the old popular dog names are not so popular nowadays. As you can see, Buddy makes the top spot on the left, but is only number six on the right. Bailey is number two on the left, but didn't make the right-hand top ten at all. And what's with the popularity of Bella? I don't get that.

All the same, I don't imagine there's some official registry of all dogs and their names. Dogs don't get issued birth certificates generally speaking. If you try some other source you might get yet a different list.

None of these top ten dog names make the top ten names for cats, except for one. The most popular name for both male cats and male dogs is Max. Well, depending on who you ask.

Filed under Top Tens & Other Lists

4/6/13  Hoof and Mouth

Most folks don't deal with horses all that much these days. Still, sayings related to horses remain in the language. Hold your horses, the cart before the horse, horse of a different color, you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink. These make intuitive sense even now. Then there's some that are, well, weird. See a man about a horse.

I want to explore a few horse sayings. Two weird ones, and two that might not seem to be about horses but are.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Straight from the horse's mouth
Long in the tooth
Dead ringer

So we might ask, how does long in the tooth mean old. As we're on horse sayings, you might guess older horses have longer teeth. Or rather their teeth look longer. What actually happens is their gums recede with age exposing more of the tooth. Hence, long in the tooth.

If you've put two and two together you might now imagine why someone would look a horse in the mouth. To tell how old it is. Looking a gift horse in the mouth is akin to asking what a gift cost. Kind-of rude. In any event, beggars can't be choosers. Or maybe, since we're talking about teeth, don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Dead ringer goes back to American horse racing at the end of the 19th century. A ringer was a horse raced under the name of a look-alike horse to cheat the betting odds. Dead in this case means 'exact.' As in dead center, dead on, dead even. So a dead ringer is an exact or extremely close look-alike.

Straight from the horse's mouth also comes from racing. Bettors love tips on races, the more inside the better, like from jockeys and trainers. What source is more inside than the horse itself? Straight from the horse's mouth is a joking way to say you have inside information without revealing the actual source. "A little birdie told me, nod, nod, wink, wink." And a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

With all this talk about horses and mouths, we finish up with a talking horse, Mr. Ed. Did you know Mr. Ed had a stand-in stable mate? A look-alike named Pumpkin. Yep, a dead ringer for Mr. Ed.

Filed under Quotes & Sayings

4/3/13  Pants Split

Infrequently Answered Question #73: Why do men wear pants and women wear skirts?

A: I can guess what you're thinking, men need the extra crotch room more than women. You'd think so. And so you'd think it'd be the other way around, men in skirts and women in pants. But things happen for reasons that might not apply in modern times.

I'm not saying I have the definitive answer, pants and such were worn by different folks at different times in different places. We will look at one case were men went from skirts to pants. Or rather from skirt-like wear to pants-like wear.

The ancient Romans wore tunics and the more formal toga. These were dress-like, without pants, no separate leggings. Pants came in when they switched from war chariots to mounted cavalry. So it was all about practicality and avoiding chafing and whatnot while on horseback. The pants-wearing practice didn't spread beyond the cavalry to men in general until around the 8th century.

Since it was men riding horses, women retained skirt-like wear. This explains how it came about, but it doesn't really apply much any more. Now it's a tradition. But the skirt/pants split can explain why a girl's bike has a dipping frame. So they can ride a bike wearing a long skirt, which is not something you see much nowadays.

Filed under Infrequently Answered Questions

3/29/13  What's the Color?

Below are rows and columns of words, red, green, blue, in various colors, red, green, blue. Starting at the top left, say the color of the type of each word. In other words, don't read the word, read the color.

Did you find it gets harder as you go down? Did you hesitate more toward the bottom? That's because the words agree with their color at the top and less and less as you go down. At the bottom the words and colors don't match at all. Which is to say they are congruent at the top and incongruent at the bottom. This throws us off. We see both the word and the color. When they match there's no problem. When they don't we have to pause and think a little to ignore the word and think of the color. Not as easy as it might seem, eh?

Filed under Odds & Ends

3/26/13  Happy Birthday Everybody

The most common date for an American to be born is September 16th. The least likely is February 29th, unsurprisingly enough. I "borrowed" this birthday heat map from TheDailyViz which shows every day of the year by numbers of births.

At a glance an obvious overall pattern emerges. Fewer babies born in January, gradually increasing up through September, then tapering off back toward the end of the year. This makes intuitive sense, babies born in months with plentiful food. Harvest times. A sort-of biological clock held over from days of yore?

However, there are curious hot and cold spots that buck the trend. There's an uptick in December, with a cold spot at Christmas. There are cold spots right around Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. There's a hot spot on Valentine's Day, February 14th. It's like women somehow can avoid giving birth on certain holidays. While they can force the issue (pardon the pun) on Valentine's Day and right before New Year's where there's a hot spot leading up to December 30th.

Another thing you can see is a downtick across the board on the 13th of every month. Appears as if some women prevent giving birth on Friday the thirteenth. Whether this is for their own sake or so the kid won't have a Friday the 13th birthday is a question. As is are mothers aware they're doing this.

All this birthday blather brings up what you might call the birthday quandary. Which is, if you had a random group of 30 people, what are the chances two of them share the same birthday? 10 to 1? 5 to 1? 50-50? Here's the possibly surprising answer.

Filed under Fun Facts & Trivia

3/20/13  Do Elephants Never Forget Mice?

Infrequently Answered Question #72: Are elephants really afraid of mice?

A: There's plenty of animal folklore out there. Like cats always land on their feet, bulls are provoked by the color red, and elephants never forget. Another bit of elephant lore there. I have no personal experience with bulls or elephants, but I know first-hand cats have an uncanny ability to twist themselves in mid-air and land on their feet. But I seem to have drifted off the point.

On the face of it, it seems absurd that an elephant would be afraid of a mouse. What could a mouse possibly do to an elephant? It's like a cat being afraid of a fly or something. Ridiculous. How do such tales ever gain traction? I can't explain it.

Well, the Mythbusters tested this old bit of folklore and here are the results. If this video is right, elephants ARE afraid of mice. Or at least they shy away from mice. Hard to believe, but there it is in living color. I can't explain this either. All the same, I'll never forget it. Whether the elephants in the video will forget or not, I simply don't know.

Filed under Infrequently Answered Questions