ProudLib72

ProudLib72's Journal

May 28, 2019

Have You Ever Wanted to Change Your Name?

If so, how old were you? What made you want to change it? What did you want to change it to (if you actually had made a choice?)

May 26, 2019

How Many of You Have Come Across Stamped Money?

Not specifically the Tubman $20, just any bill with a stamp on it. What was the message?

Here is an article about stamping bills: Stamping Out Andrew Jackson on the $20 Bill Won’t Be So Easy
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/andrew-jackson-harriet-tubman-dollar-stamp/

FWIW I cannot remember ever having any stamped bills. Bills that have been written on, yes, but not stamped with a message.

May 22, 2019

Since When Did The Lounge Start Making More Sense Than GD?

Oh yeah, ever since the very presidential howler monkey climbed into the the Oval Office and began flinging poo.

/

Good grief!

May 18, 2019

The English Word That Hasn't Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years

One of my favorite words is lox,” says Gregory Guy, a professor of linguistics at New York University. There is hardly a more quintessential New York food than a lox bagel—a century-old popular appetizing store, Russ & Daughters, calls it “The Classic.” But Guy, who has lived in the city for the past 17 years, is passionate about lox for a different reason. “The pronunciation in the Proto-Indo-European was probably ‘lox,’ and that’s exactly how it is pronounced in modern English,” he says. “Then, it meant salmon, and now it specifically means ‘smoked salmon.’ It’s really cool that that word hasn’t changed its pronunciation at all in 8,000 years and still refers to a particular fish.”

...snip...

The word lox was one of the clues that eventually led linguists to discover who the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where they lived. The fact that those distantly related Indo-European languages had almost the same pronunciation of a single word meant that the word—and the concept behind it—had most likely existed in the Proto-Indo-European language. “If they had a word for it, they must have lived in a place where there was salmon,” explains Guy. “Salmon is a fish that lives in the ocean, reproduces in fresh water and swims up to rivers to lay eggs and mate. There are only a few places on the planet where that happens.”

...snip...

n his book The Power of Babel, Columbia University linguist John McWhorter wrote, “Everything about a language is eternally and inherently changeable, not just the slang and the occasional cultural destination, but the very sound and meaning of basic words, and the word order and grammar.” It’s nice to know, though, that some words never change—lox being one of the most surprising.

http://nautil.us/blog/the-english-word-that-hasnt-changed-in-sound-or-meaning-in-8000-years?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I recommend reading the entire article. I snipped to capture just those sections about "lox", but the article is more about the spread of Indo-European language.

May 17, 2019

Silly Bullsnake Story

So I took Ellie to the park by the lake yesterday. She likes this particular park because there is the perfect wading hole for her at one end of the lake. Yes, she is part lab. No, she does not swim. She gets in just far enough that she can lay down and get her back wet. Her little tail just flicks so hard!

Anyway, we were coming back to the parking lot when we saw a man stopped ahead on the trail. He was looking at something, scrutinizing it. About thirty feet away I could see it was a snake. I've dealt with enough snakes to know a bull snake from a rattler from thirty feet away. This fellow was a decent sized one, maybe four feet long, all stretched out in the sun. The man saw me approaching and shouted out, "There's a snake!" As I got closer, he said, "He's going to get run over" (there were some bicycles going past.) I picked up the snake and placed him in the grass out of harm's way. Then the man asked, "How did you know it wasn't a rattle snake?"

Now here's the thing: the man was standing well within five feet of the snake. His little dog was off leash, wandering around. If he didn't know for sure it wasn't a rattle snake, why the hell was that close and not afraid for his dog?

Sometimes people baffle me with their behavior.

May 16, 2019

Women's Healthcare Meme (Be Sure to Steal it and Use it Often)

Found this yesterday scrolling through at twitter thread. I think it's pretty damned appropriate.

May 14, 2019

Saw One of These Little Cats on My Bike Ride Today

Out for a mountain bike ride around noon. I was chugging up a steep section of trail when I happened to notice a woman walking down the trail holding a leash. Well, nothing particularly interesting about that, except her dog was running ahead of her. Then I noticed who was on the other end of the leash. A Bengal cat! Now that's the kind of awesome weirdness that makes me want to ride my bike more often!

PS: Yes, she had to pull the cat out of the way. Evidently cats, no matter the size or coloring, behave as if the world belongs entirely to them.