Extispicy
Extispicy (from Latin extispicium) is the practice of using anomalies in animal entrails to predict or divine future events. Organs inspected can include the liver, intestines, lungs, or other major organs. The animal used for extispicy must often be ritually pure and slaughtered in a special ceremony.
The practice was first common in ancient Mesopotamian, Hittite and Canaanite temples. Later, soothsayers from Ancient Roman times used the entrails of a bull to determine the advisability of a particular endeavor and Etruscans used patterns seen in the livers of sheep to assess their future. There exists substantial evidence to indicate that this was the main form of divination within classical cultures.
Organ models and extispicy manuals in cuneiform script are widely found in archaeological excavations in the regions, showing the prevalence and significance of extispicy. Commonly, (in antiquity) the majority of the divination was wrought from viewing the intestines and the liver.
Although extispicy would commonly be viewed with skepticism by the modern mind, some 20th century scholars suggested that this technique was also a valuable and legitimate form of, essentially, autopsy, which might indicate internal disease tied to poor environmental factors, information that would be important to nomadic peoples.
Green Room
A green room is a room in a theater, studio, or other public venue for the accommodation of performers or speakers when not required on the stage. Its function is as a break/touch-up lounge so that performers do not have to go back to wardrobe/dressing rooms and are still easily accessible for their call. The first recorded use of the term was in 1701 but the origin of the term is unknown and is the source of many folk etymologies such as:
- The room was originally painted green to “relieve the eyes from the glare of the stage.” On the other hand, early stage lighting was by candlelight, so the “glare” might be apocryphal, a modern reference to electric stage lighting.
- It is sometimes said that the term green room was a response to limelight, though the name is merely a coincidence — “limelight” refers to calcium oxide, not to the fruit or color. Furthermore limelight was invented in 1820 and the term was used many years prior to that.
- Many actors experience nervous anxiety before a performance and one of the symptoms of nervousness is nausea. As a person who feels neauseous is often said to look “green”, so the “Green Room” is the place where the nervous actors wait.
- Some studies state that the green room was originally called the retaining room. The ensemble of a production would wait there for their appearance onstage, listening to the performance of the principal actors and critiquing their acting. When made aware of this practice, the leads began to call the retaining room the green room, mocking the (green) envy of these actors.
- In Restoration theatres, the main, seasoned actors waited for their entrances in the wings – or sometimes even at the sides of the stage – while the minor players, usually young, less experienced “green” actors, were banished behind the scenes. Hence, the backstage room was for the “green” players and came to be called the green-room.
- According to one theory, long before modern makeup was invented the actors had to apply makeup before a show and allow it to set up or cure before performing. Until the makeup was cured, it was green and people were advised to sit quietly in the green room until such time as the makeup was stable enough for performing. Uncured makeup is gone, but the green room lives on.
- In Shakespearean theatre actors would prepare for their performances in a room filled with plants and shrubs. It was believed that the moisture in the topiary was beneficial to the actors’ voices. Thus the green room may refer to the green plants in this stage preparation area.
Failure to thrive
Failure to thrive (FTT) is a medical term which denotes poor weight gain and physical growth failure over an extended period of time. Common usage refers to infancy. However, the term is also applied to geriatrics. As used by pediatricians, it covers poor physical growth of any cause and does not imply abnormal intellectual, social, or emotional development. Failure to thrive is weight consistently below the 3rd to the 5th percentile for age, progressive decrease in weight to below the 3rd to the 5th percentile, or a decrease in the percentile rank of 2 major growth parameters in a short period. The cause may be an identified medical condition or related to environmental factors. Both types relate to inadequate nutrition. Treatment aims to restore proper nutrition.
French Leave
French leave is “Leave of absence without permission or without announcing one’s departure”, including leaving a party without bidding farewell to the host. The intent behind this behavior is to leave without disturbing the host. The phrase was born at a time when the English and French cultures were heavily interlinked.
In French, the phrase “filer à l’anglaise” (English leave) means the same thing.
The term is especially used to mean the act of leisurely absence from a military unit. This comes from the rich history of Franco-English conflict; as Spain has a similar saying concerning the French, it may have come from the Napoleonic campaign in the Iberic Peninsula which pitted the French against an Anglo-Portuguese & Spanish alliance. The phrase has a perfect French and Italian equivalent in filer à l’anglaise and filarsela all’inglese, literally, “to take the English leave”.
Snowplow Game
In National Football League lore, the Snowplow Game refers to a regular-season game played between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots on December 12, 1982.
Playing in a heavy snowstorm at New England’s Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the two teams remained scoreless late into the fourth quarter. With 4:45 left to go in the game and on-field conditions worsening, Patriots coach Ron Meyer directed snowplow operator Mark Henderson to clear a spot on the field specifically for placekicker John Smith. Matt Cavanaugh held for the kick. Miami coach Don Shula protested furiously but the field goal was good and the Patriots won the game by the final score of 3–0. The game ball was awarded to all-pro linebacker Steve Nelson, who subsequently donated it to his alma mater, North Dakota State University. Snow plow driver Henderson also received a game ball from a gracious Meyer after the game.
Henderson, who was a convict on a work release program at the time of the game, was released from prison a few years later and currently works in the construction business. When he was being interviewed by a TV reporter about the controversy, Henderson jokingly replied, “What are they gonna do, throw me in jail?” The following year, the NFL banned the use of snowplows on the field during a game.
The incident is commemorated with an interactive exhibit at the Hall at Patriot Place within the Patriots’ current home, Gillette Stadium. The plow itself, a John Deere Model 314 tractor with sweeper attached, hangs from the ceiling at the exhibit.
NBC Chimes
The NBC chimes of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio network in the United States were the first ever audio trademark to be accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It consists of a succession of three distinct pitches: G3, E4, and C4 (middle C), sounded in that order, creating an arpeggiated C-major chord in the second inversion, within about two seconds time, and reverberating for another two or three seconds. The intervals of this progression are up a major 6th from G3 to E4 and down a major third from E4 to C4.
White Castle Building No. 8
White Castle Building Number 8 is a White Castle restaurant building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was one of the few prefabricated, portable buildings built by the chain, and is presently operated as a jewelry store.
The building, measuring only 28 feet by 28 feet, has had three different locations in Minneapolis. The restaurant was originally located at 616 Washington Avenue Southeast near the University of Minnesota campus in the Stadium Village neighborhood in 1936. In 1950, the building was moved to 329 Central Avenue Southeast when the owner of the Washington Avenue property refused to renew the lease. In 1983, White Castle officials opened a new, larger restaurant a few blocks away from the Central Avenue location.
In order to save a piece of the city's architectural history, the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission found a buyer willing to relocate the structure and save it from demolition. The building is now located at 3252 Lyndale Avenue South, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
via White Castle Building No. 8 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Cloud Factory
The Cloud Factory is an affectionate euphemism for a boiler plant which billows steam from below its twin stacks in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the 1988 debut novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Michael Chabon. Bellefield Boiler Plant, the actual name of the facility, is located in Junction Hollow (affectionately known as “The Lost Neighborhood” also in Chabon’s book) behind Carnegie Mellon University in the Oakland district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Built in 1907 to provide steam heat for the Carnegie, it was designed in the Romanesque Revival style by the architectural firm Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow. One of the smoke stacks measures 150 feet and the other more than 200 feet. The plant has burned both coal and natural gas but will cease using coal on July 1, 2009. Its steam system expanded in the 1930s to service the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. Today it pumps heat to most of the major buildings in Oakland. It is owned by a consortium made up of the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie, the City of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Pittsburgh Left
The Pittsburgh Left involves two cars facing one another waiting at a traffic light or other stop signal: one turning left and one going straight. The left-turning car will execute its turn through the intersection before the car going straight passes through the intersection, where normally it would yield. Permission to do so is either given by the car going straight, or sometimes taken by the left-turning car by starting through the left turn early enough so as not to obstruct the straight-going driver. This practice is seen as courteous, because a very small delay for the oncoming vehicle can eliminate a long delay for the left turning vehicle and those blocked behind it.
In practice, Pittsburgh drivers often make the Pittsburgh Left by anticipating the green signal after cross-traffic has stopped or cleared, but before the actual signal change. This practice is so common that straight-going drivers in the area are accustomed to pausing a moment before proceeding on green, for their own safety.
Ed: This is not really as prevalent as the article makes it seem. One day, while driving to the store, I had a straight-going driver beep at me and gesture that I should turn left in front of his car. So I did.
Behind The Sofa
“Behind the sofa” is a British pop culture phrase, used as a metaphor to describe the actions that a state of fear may drive a person to — e.g., a child hiding behind the sofa to avoid a frightening television programme. Although the phrase is sometimes employed in a serious context, its use is usually intended to be humorous and/or nostalgic, and to evoke a pleasant, safe fear in a domestic setting.
The expression originated from popular media commentary on young children being frightened by episodes of the BBC science-fiction television series Doctor Who, particularly during the 1970s. The apocryphal idea arose in the media that young children would hide behind furniture when especially frightening scenes were being shown, as they were unwilling to miss the programme altogether. The phrase is strongly associated with Doctor Who in the United Kingdom, so much so that in 1991 the Museum of the Moving Image in London named their exhibition celebrating the programme “Behind the Sofa”.
“Everyone remembers hiding behind the sofa,” journalist Sinclair McKay wrote of the programme during its thirtieth anniversary year of 1993. “Remember hiding behind the sofa every time Dr Who came on the television?” the Daily Mirror newspaper asked its readers in a feature article two years later. In a 2006 interview with Sky News, Prince Andrew, Duke of York said that he hid from Daleks behind a Windsor Castle settee while watching Doctor Who as a child. The Economist has presented “hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear” as a British cultural institution on par with Bovril and tea-time.
Apparently Bovril is a “thick, salty beef extract” that they mix with hot water and drink as tea, or used as beef broth for soup and stew.