The More You Know: The name "paternoster" comes from the first two words in the Lord's Prayer in Latin: "Our Father." This is because the cyclical shape of the elevator is similar to the shape of rosary beads used as an aid in reciting prayers.
Answer: To ward off the spirit of a real dick! Here's the legend of Jack of the Lantern:
Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for 1 year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised not to bother Jack for 10 more years.
Soon after, Jack died. God would not allow such an unsavory figure into Heaven. The Devil, upset by the tricks Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into Hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," and then, simply "Jack O'Lantern."
In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits.
And the English used beets, and Americans use pumpkins (because they grow here).
The More You Know: Biologically, pumpkins, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and all other things that grow on vines (tomatoes, wink) are classified as fruits, not vegetables. Peas are the seeds from inside the pods of the fruit of that plant.
There are 4 main types of pumpkin:
Cucurbita Moschata (the ones you eat)
Cucurbita Pepo (the ones you carve)
Cucurbita Maxima (the ones that get big enough to win county fair ribbons)
Why: Lindsay has been traveling around the world photojournalisting, and if I am to believe her current Facebook stats, she is now living in Tunisia. She recently wrote:
Just. Submitted. MA. Thesis. alhamdulillah! Now don't know whether to sleep or celebrate...
That word sure looks celebratory to me.
Answer: "Praise to Allah!" in Arabic! It's kind of like hallelujah, which means "praise to Yah." Let's talk about Hebrew:
In the Torah, God's name is written like this: יהוה (called the tetragrammaton, "four letters"). Those letters (R to L) are "yud, hay, vav, hay."
The Yehudim never say this word; when we see it in actual prayers, we pronounce it like "Adonai" ["my Lord"], but when we are just talking about ... prayers, we pronounce it like "HaShem" ["the Name"]. I don't know.)
יהוה ("Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay") is sometimes written as YHVH (and also YHWH, because of how people pronounce things these days). This is why some people say things like "Yahweh."
Latin interpretations use the four letters JHWH and JHVH, which is where we get the name Jehovah.
Shawn Corey Carter uses the four letters "H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A," which is where we get the name Jayhova.
Anyway, my point is that since Jews don't say much in the way of "Yah," alleluia and hallelujah are terms used pretty strictly by Christians and drag queens.
Source: the Wikipedias
The More You Know: Wait, what was I talking about? In everyday speech, alhamdulillah is used to mean something like "thank God," but it's also used in other situations, like after sneezing and as a response to "How are you?" (Alhamdu lillahi, "Thank God, I am fine").
Pictures of this very big-eyed person started popping up on 4Chan in late 2005. The photos there feature a range of looks, usually landing somewhere between Fiona Apple in the video for Criminal, to Genie the wild child.
Well, I don't know who that is.
Answer: She is Susan Wiley, a former feral child! Points of note:
Her dad Clark was a lunatic who sort of killed 1 or more of her older siblings.
She was born in April 1957 in Arcadia, CA.
For the first 13 years of her life, she spent most days locked in her dark bedroom strapped to a potty chair:
Clark had been told something along the lines that Susan was perhaps slightly retarded and might develop slowly and developed a strange compulsion that she must be "protected" from the outside world. Clark's idea of protection was to keep Susan shut in her bedroom most or all of every day, and tied into a straitjacket at night. She was also sometimes or often tied to a potty-chair and left that way for hours, all day, or even perhaps overnight at times.
Susan still wore diapers, couldn't talk, and was fed a substandard diet which stunted her growth. Her unusual diet consisted of "warm cereal, honey, milk and an occassional egg." When found, she weighed 59 pounds and was the size of a 7-8 year old. From years of confinement, her muscles had not developed normally, which caused her to walk in a peculiar way.
In 1970, when Genie was 13, her mother Irene took her out of the house and fled, but Social Services spotted the sickly-looking girl and took her in as a ward of the state. (Shortly after, Clark committed suicide by gunshot.) She had a vocabulary of about 20 words / phrases, mostly negative ("stop it," "no more"), and she also sniffed and spat a lot.
She was put into therapy and eventually learned to say more things, trust adults, dress herself, and even smile. She was also a subject of fascination and research for many scientists, some of whom even took her into their homes as a foster child.
Eventually, the National Institute of Mental Health - who was funding research on her - noted that she wasn't producing much scientific data, so they cut funding. She was put with several new foster families, many of which abused her and caused her to regress.
The More You Know: Today, Genie is 54 and lives in an adult foster care home in Southern California. This picture (with Irene) is from 1989:
(Note: When I found that picture, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty recent, just about 10 years ago." And a few hours later, I was all, "Holy shit, 1989 was 22 years ago." So, sorry I couldn't find anything newer. Sorry.)
Why: I got this rambling message from James about a conversation he had with Pablo. I'd ask him to transcribe it for me, but I imagine part/most of it was in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish. But my understanding is that Pablo was the one who wanted to know why we say "polka dot." I wonder if they have a term like that in Peru.
Answer: It comes from the dance! Kind of! But first: there isn't really such thing as a polka dot. Word Detective, go:
A single “polka dot” is not a “polka dot” at all, but merely a “dot,” and usually a pretty boring dot at that.
Rather, what makes a "polka dot" a polka dot is that it is among other dots of the same size and inside a pattern.
Secondly, the name polka means, yes, the dance, but also it's Polish for "Polish woman." The polka dance, incidentally, started in Bohemia. Many believe that “polka” may actually be a corruption of the Czech word pulka (“half”), referring to the short half-steps of in the dance. The dance craze spanned several decades in the 1800s and was so popular that it spurred an epidemic of naming things polka, like "polka hats" and "polka gauze." The patterns on these things were called "polka dots."
