December 2011
Words
Security blanket
1. A small familiar blanket or other soft fabric item carried by a child for reassurance. 2. A form of harness for a baby’s crib. 3. All-encompassing military and political security measures.
Origin
The term ‘security blanket’, also known as ‘comfort blanket’, was coined by Charles Shulz for his Peanuts cartoon strip. That’s what most...
Taki's 35 years
Seeing as how man didn’t emerge from the caves until something like 6,000 years ago, thirty-five years is a mere bagatelle in the grand scheme of things. Still, man’s day-to-day folly is always more fun than grand schemes.
In September 1976 I went to Torino to buy a Fiat car for my daughter’s mother straight from Fiat’s principal shareholder Gianni Agnelli. He not only gave me a very good...
The fourth R
Traditionally, early elementary education focused on three academic tentpoles, known (somewhat ironically) as the “three Rs” — reading, writing, and arithmetic. While the “three Rs” term dates back to the early to mid 1800s and have been the topic of much debate in academic circles, the subjects involved are still the core academic areas focused on in ...
Higher things
On a television show, Eddie Fisher complained to George S. Kaufman that women refused to date him because he looked so young. Kaufman considered this and replied:
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to 24 times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed until the construction of the Mount...
Wrinkles
Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s
Cool inventions →
Swiss invasion
In 1815, Europe’s powers gathered in Vienna, Austria, in an attempt to draw long-standing, mutually agreed upon political borders which had blurred due to decades if not centuries of warfare. This group, called the Congress of Vienna, ended up agreeing to an act which not only rearranged Europe’s borders and territorial rights, but also did a few other things, such as condemn...
The WWI Christmas truce →
Words
Some rather common words have an unknown etymology:
A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries. Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a similarly inexplicable way (e.g. jaw, askance, tantrum, conundrum,...
Perfect pitch
In 1927, Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland, in Australia, designed an experiment to show his students how viscous a fluid could be. He poured hot pitch into a glass funnel, let it cool, and then waited. Eight years later, the first drop fell. After another nine years, the second one fell. The Pitch Drop Experiment is now the world’s longest-running lab...
Steve McQueen's turmoil
Steve McQueen, once the highest-paid actor in the world, whose talents seared the screen in such movies as Bullitt, The Great Escape, The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Getaway, Papillon, and The Towering Inferno: “Terrence Steven McQueen was the product of a one-night stand that stretched into a year and six months of misery between Terrence William ...
Christmas for Truman
Seven-year-old Truman Capote, abandoned by his divorced parents, is taken in by depression-poor cousins in the rural South. One of these cousins, a distant, elderly cousin, becomes his closest friend and only refuge - but she is only in his life for two more short years. As Christmas approaches, they make fruitcakes as presents for people they barely know:
“Imagine a morning in...
Caught
Gloria Grahame, who first came to fame in It’s a Wonderful Life, had a string of stormy romances and failed marriages during her time in Hollywood, including marriages to director Nicholas Ray and later to Ray’s son, Anthony, with whom she had an affair while still married to Ray. All of this took a toll on her career, as did a two-year hiatus after the birth of her daughter in...
The 10 top words of 2011
1. Occupy — The preferred verb of protesters occupies the top spot this year. Not only has “occupy” risen to fame because of the Occupy Movement (Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, etc.), it is also used in the context of the occupation of Iraq and the so-called “Occupied Territories.”
2. Deficit — Fiscal deficits are a growing and possibly intractable problem for many...
The daughters of 'em all
In the past decade, 26 novels have been titled with a variant of “The X’s Daughter.” Here’s are some examples: The Jailbird’s Daughter, by Irene Carr (2005) The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards (2005) The Preacher’s Daughter, by Beverley Lewis (2005) The Abortionist’s Daughter, by Elisabeth Hyde (2006) The Alchemist’s Daughter, by Katherine McMahon (2006) The...
