Tweeting in Kuskoy, Turkey
via youtube.com
Words
via youtube.com
A stunning film from Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante to accompany Radiolab's Words episode. With an original score by Keith Kenniff.
Radiolab's Words episode: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2010/0...
Everynone: http://everynone.com/
Keith Kenniff: http://www.unseen-music.com:
Diphthongs & Triphthongs
via paulmeier.com
Click and Hold the buttons to see and hear the actions of the Diphthongs & Triphthongs. Have some fun and click combinations in quick sequence !
Some Interesting History...
Where did Piss Poor come from??? They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery... if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor".
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot... they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low...
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot... they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low...
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they ere starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath Water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance. Hence, "a thresh hold".
(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat".
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !
So . . . get out there and educate someone! Share these facts with a friend !
Via John...Thanks !
10 Obsolete Units of Measurement
Do you ever wonder if someday, things that we say and use every single day will be totally obsolete? I’m not talking technology – of course something bigger and better than the cell phone will eventually come along, and desktop computers are already practically becoming a thing of the past. I’m talking about things that seem unchangeable, like units of measurement. Can you imagine “inch” and “kilometer” being completely foreign words to your grandkids? It could happen – these 10 units of measurement certainly didn’t stand the test of time, and maybe ours won’t either.
1. The atom. Not the unit of matter – obviously we’re still using that. The atom used to actually refer to time – the teeniest, tiniest unit of time, to be exact. In some medieval writings, the atom was referred to as 1/564 of a momentum, which is 15/94 of a second.
2. Dessiatin. In tsarist Russia, “dessiatin” referred to about 2.7 acres.
3. Peck. My grandma used to sing a song that went, “I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.” It was a long time before I figured out that what in the heck that meant – a bushel I knew, of course, but a peck? And “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?” How much is that? It’s an old type of dry measurement that equals out to about eight dry quarts. Two pecks make a kenning and four pecks equal a bushel. The term is still used from time to time, especially in agriculture (apples, specifically), but for the most part, you’re not going to hear it in day-to-day conversation.
4. Hobbit. And it’s not the size of a fictional clan of diminutive people with large, ugly feet, either. The Hobbit was a form of measurement used in Wales before the Winchester measure was introduced. The problem was, hobbits (or hobbets) seemed to differ based on what was being measured. One document shows that a hobbet of beans was 180 pounds, a hobbet of barley was 147 pounds, and a hobbet of wheat was 168 pounds.
5. League. Of course we all know 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but do you know what that’s actually measuring? Me neither. Actually, it depends on where you were. In English, it usually meant about three miles. In ancient Rome, it meant about 1.5 miles. And in general, it referred to how far a person or horse could walk in an hour. Not very precise, was it?
6. A lot. From the middle ages to just about 100 years or so ago, if you said you had “A lot” of something, you were actually referring to a specific unit of measurement as opposed to a vague term meaning “many” like we use it today. A lot was a European unit of measurement meaning 1/30 or 1/32 of a pound, depending on the value of a local pound at the time.
7. Spat. A spat was equal to about one billion kilometers. One of the only places you would use a spat to measure something, of course, is in space. “Spat” actually comes from the Latin word “Spatium” – space.
8. Pood. Until it was declared obsolete in 1924, a pood was a unit of measurement that basically meant 40 Russian pounds. It’s apparently still used occasionally for agriculture purposes. There’s an old Russian saying that translates to, “You never know a man until you have eaten a pood of salt with him.” Which… ew.
9. Faggot. Scrabble and language aficionados probably already know that a faggot refers to a bundle of sticks, which is probably where the British slang word for cigarette came from. But long ago, it used to refer to a specific amount of sticks. One short faggot of sticks was a bundle that was about 2 feet wide by 32 inches long, one long faggot of sticks was about two feet wide and four feet long, and a faggot of iron was two feet wide by one foot long.
10. Poncelet. This was basically what “horsepower” was before metric horsepower came along. The Poncelet measured an amount of power – specifically, how much it took to get something that weighed 100 kilograms at the rate of one meter per second.
via mentalfloss.com
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