But when they came to the smithy, Sindre laid a pig-skin in the furnace and requested Brok to blow the bellows, and not to stop blowing before he (Sindre) had taken out of the furnace what he had put into it. ... That was now a boar, and its bristles were of gold. ... to Frey he gave the boar, stating that it would run through the air and over seas, by night or by day, faster than any horse; and never could it become so dark in the night, or in the worlds of darkness, but that it would be light where this boar was present, so bright shone his bristles.

Then he gave to Thor the hammer, and said that he might strike with it as hard as he pleased; no matter what was before him, the hammer would take no scathe, and wherever he might throw it he would never lose it; it would never fly so far that it did not return to his hand; and if he desired, it would become so small that he might conceal it in his bosom; but it had one fault, which was, that the handle was rather short.

— The Younger Edda

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Because I triumph over those who fight with me,
I carry torn-off broken arms as a decoration.

I choose to symbolize my skill with the broken arms I carry. And I do not lie when I tell you that I have broken and dislocated many arms in my life. And whoever chooses to go against my art, will find me always ready to use that art against him

— Fiore Furlano de’i Liberi de Cividale d’Austria, Fior di Battaglia

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“Messiah” literally means “one who has been anointed with oil”, from Hellenistic Ancient Greek Μεσσίας (Messías), from Aramaic ܡܫܺܝܚܳܐ (məšīḥā), from Biblical Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ, “anointed”).

The Greek word “Christ” is just the literal translation of that, from Ancient Greek Χρῑστός (Khrīstós), proper noun χρῑστός (khrīstós, “[the] anointed [one]”)

Which is why some commenters have noted that the proper English translation of the name Jesus Christ would be “Oily Josh”.

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According to Diogenes Laërtius, the philosopher was named Aristocles (Ἀριστοκλῆς) after his grandfather. ... The sources of Diogenes account for this fact by claiming that his wrestling coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him Platon, meaning 'broad,' on account of his robust figure.

Seneca said, "[Plato] was the fortunate possessor of a strong and sound body (his very name was given him because of his broad chest)..."

That's right.

"Plato" was his wrestling stage name.

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A thagomizer is the distinctive arrangement of four to ten spikes on the tails of stegosaurid dinosaurs, believed to have been a defensive measure against predators.

The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name; the term Thagomizer was coined in 1982 by cartoonist Gary Larson in his comic The Far Side, and thereafter became gradually adopted as an informal term within scientific circles, research, and education.

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Before Robert Hooke observed them through microscopes (around 1665), people apparently thought that fleas and mosquitoes bite because they hate us. Hooke wrote of his observations:

One of these Gnats I have suffer'd to pierce the skin of my hand, with its proboscis, and thence to draw out as much blood as to fill its belly as full as it could hold, making it appear very red and transparent; and this without any further pain, then whilst it was sinking in its proboscis, as it is also in the stinging of Fleas: a good argument, that these creatures do not wound the skin, and suck the blood out of enmity and revenge, but for meer necessity, and to satisfy their hunger.

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By some sources, the word pie comes through Middle English pye, from Latin pīca (“magpie, jay”), from the idea of the many ingredients put into pies likened to the tendency of magpies to bring a variety of objects back to their nests, though this has its controversies.

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The avocado as you know it was a total accident:

All commercial, fruit-bearing Hass avocado trees have been grown from grafted seedlings propagated from a single tree which was grown from a seed bought by Rudolph Hass in 1926 from A. R. Rideout of Whittier, California. At the time, Rideout was getting seeds from any source he could find, even restaurant food scraps. The cultivar this seed came from is not known and may already have been cross-pollinated when Hass bought it.

In 1926, at his 1.5-acre grove at 430 West Road, La Habra Heights, California, Hass planted three seeds he had bought from Rideout, which yielded one strong seedling. After trying and failing at least twice to graft the seedling with branches from Fuerte avocado trees (the leading commercial cultivar at the time), Hass thought of cutting it down but a professional grafter named Caulkins told him the young tree was sound and strong, so he let it be. When the tree began bearing odd, bumpy fruit, his children liked the taste. As the tree's yields grew bigger, Hass easily sold what his family didn't eat to co-workers at the post office.

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Georgia Ann "Tiny" Thompson Broadwick was born to George and Emma Ross of Oxford, North Carolina on April 8, 1893. At birth she weighed only 3 pounds, and grew to only 4 feet 8 inches by adulthood, earning her the nickname “Tiny”.

At 12 Georgia married William Alsie Jacobs of Durham County, a man twice her age. They had one daughter, but were soon divorced. By 15 Georgia was working in a cotton mill, when she happened to see saw Charles Broadwick’s hot air balloon show at a local fair. She quit her job at the cotton mill and joined their act, making parachute jumps from the balloon and billed as “Tiny Broadwick” (it’s unclear if she married Charles Broadwick or became his adopted daughter).

Tiny was the first woman to parachute from an airplane, and helped convince the US Army that parachutes could be used to help pilots safely escape their planes in case of emergency. During this process she invented the ripcord.

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Roberta had heard that there were some Adventure-style games available for the Apple. Roberta bought some at a computer store in nearby Northridge in the San Fernando Valley, but she found them too easy. She wanted her newly awakened imagination to be as taxed and teased as it was before. She began sketching out an adventure game of her own.

She started by writing out a story about a 'mystery house,' and things that happened in it. The story had much to do with Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians — another inspiration was the board game 'Clue.' Instead of just finding treasures as in Adventure, this game would have you do some detective work. Roberta mapped out the story just as she mapped out an adventure game when she played it. Along the way, she devised puzzles, character traits, events, and landmarks. After a couple of weeks she had a stack of papers with maps and dilemmas and plot turns and twists and she flopped it down in front of Ken and said, “Look what I did!”

Ken told Roberta that her little stack of papers was very nice and she should run along and finish it. No one really wanted to use a personal computer as a game machine — they were for engineers who wanted to figure out how to design circuits or solve triple-x exponential equations.

— Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy

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If Intellect perceives & converses ‘in climes beyond the solar road,’ they probably call this planet, not earth, but Shakespeare. In teleology, they will come to say, that the final cause of the creation of the earth was Shakespeare.

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The Gravity Research Foundation is an organization established in 1948 by businessman Roger Babson (founder of Babson College) to find ways to implement gravitational shielding. ... Thomas Edison apparently suggested the creation of the Gravity Research Foundation to Babson, who established it in several scattered buildings in the small town of New Boston, New Hampshire. Babson said he chose that location because he thought it was far enough from big cities to survive a nuclear war. Babson wanted to put up a sign declaring New Boston to be the safest place in North America if World War III came, but town fathers toned it down to say merely that New Boston was a safe place.

In an essay titled Gravity - Our Enemy Number One, Babson indicated that his wish to overcome gravity dated from the childhood drowning of his sister. "She was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom," he wrote.

The foundation held occasional conferences that drew such people as Clarence Birdseye of frozen-food fame and Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the helicopter. Sometimes, attendees sat in chairs with their feet higher than their heads, to counterbalance gravity.

Babson's success as an investor was based on unorthodox views of the operation of markets. According to biographer John Mulkern, Babson attributed the business cycle “to Sir Isaac Newton's law of action and reaction.... (with a) pseudoscientific notion that gravity can be used to explain movement in the stock markets.”

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East-wind rushing, West-wind roaring,
South-wind crying, North-wind howling,
Blow one day and then a second,
Blow the third from morn till even,
When the fire leaps through the windows,
Through the door the sparks fly upward,
Clouds of smoke arise to heaven;
With the clouds the black smoke mingles,
As the storm-winds ply the bellows.

— RUNE X, ILMARINEN FORGES THE SAMPO, The Kalevala

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The first dubbed episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus were broadcast in Japan in 1976. The first few installations baffled the audiences, but then it suddenly took off, becoming the top rated show in Japan.

The literal translation of the Japanese title was “The Gay Dragon Boys Show”.

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The evening work in the Institute’s library was often interrupted by Bohr, who would say that he was very tired and would like to go to the movies. The only movies he liked were wild Westerns, and he always needed a couple of his students to go with him and explain the complicated plots involving hostile Indians, brave cowboys, and desperados, sheriffs, bar maidens, gold-diggers, and other characters of the Old West.

His theoretical mind showed even in these movie expeditions. He developed a theory to explain why although the villain always draws first, the hero is faster and manages to kill him. This Bohr theory was based on psychology. Since the hero never shoots first, the villain has to decide when to draw, which impedes his action. The hero, on the other hand, acts according to a conditioned reflex and grabs the gun automatically as soon as he sees the villain’s hand move. We disagreed with this theory, and the next day I went to a toy store and bought two guns in Western holders. We shot it out with Bohr, he playing the hero, and he ‘killed’ all his students.

— George Gamow, Thirty years that shook physics

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Therefore a good literal translation for "stoics" would be something like "porchies".

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1590s, of obscure origin despite much 19c. conjecture; in early use "a jumbled mix of liquors" (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.)

Indeede Beere, by a Mixture of Wine, it enjoyes approbation amongst some few (that hardly understand wherefore) but then it is no longer Beere, but hath lost both Name and Nature, and is called Balderdash (an Utopian denomination) [...]

— 1637, John Taylor, Drinke and Welcome

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— “Station Squabble” by Sam Rowley of the UK, winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award 2019 from London’s Natural History Museum

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Please leave monitor ON
Room PC for the next class
Do not move the podium

— Whiteboard Message in an NYU classroom

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