Category: ThThTh

20 twenty things

The other day, when I was making my little jokes about 20/20 vision and losing my glasses (in a very 2020 way), I found myself pondering things about the number 20. And that pondering led to some enumerating, and that enumerating became a list. On this 20th day of the month, and in the tradition of my ThThTh lists (but breaking tradition since it’s not Thursday), I present a list of things around the theme of 20. And it seemed only right to have a list of 20 of them.

1) 20/20 vision: Normal vision. It is based on what row of an eye chart you can read from 20 feet. 

2) The 20-20-20 rule. To help with eyestrain. For every 20 minutes you find yourself staring at a screen, spend 20 seconds looking at something that is 20 feet away.

3) 20/20 hindsight. An expression meaning that things are clear in retrospect, typically after some misjudgment.

4) venti: size at Starbucks. It’s 20 ounces, and it means twenty in Italian. It’s sort of the “large” size, though there is also grande (which means “large” in Italian), but is smaller than the venti.

A 20-sided die. (image credit)

5) icosagon or 20-gon is a twenty-sided polygon

6) icosahedron: a polyhedron with 20 sides. The shape of a 20-sided die.

7) Twenty questions: a guessing game whereby one person thinks of a thing, and the second person tries to guess what it is by way of asking yes-no questions. The guesser wins if they name the correct thing before reaching the twentieth questions. (Experienced players know that it’s a good idea to narrow down the categories early on, rather than guessing one item in the universe of millions of things, i.e: Is it pants? This is the game for which “Is it bigger than a breadbox” and “is it smaller than a house” are frequent size-establishing questions.)

Mayan base 20 number system. (Credit: Bryan Derksen source)

8) Vigesimal: base 20 number system

9) a score: a term meaning the number twenty. Fairly infrequent, excepting in quotations of the Gettysburg Address. (“Four score and seven years ago…”)

10) XX: The Roman numeral for 20

11) 20th anniversary gift: china/porcelain

12) a dart board has 20 sections

Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com
US 20 dollar bills. Photo by Shane on Pexels.com

13) The (current) US twenty dollar bill. A frequent denomination distributed in ATMs in the U.S. Currently bears the face of Andrew Jackson.

For those who can’t wait for the new bills to be minted, stamps are sold to make the adjustment manually. (source)

14) Harriet Tubman 20 dollar bill. 2020 was supposed to be the year when abolitionist and historical bad-ass Harriet Tubman was supposed to replace Jackson on the 20 dollar bill. This has been put off, but many have taken the transformation into their own hands and used a stamp. (See image above.)

15) 20 is the smallest primitive abundant number.

20: The atomic number for calcium. (Image source.)

16) 20 is the atomic number of calcium.

17) 20/20: a new-oriented US TV program.18) Twenty (2015): a South Korea film.

19) Twenty (2017-2018) a webseries.

20) The Roaring 20s. A nickname for the decade of 1920 to 1929. Now that we are in another decade of the 20s, we can only guess what it will be nicknamed.

Some ’20s fashion illustrations. (Source)

 

Counting some more.

It’s two days after voting wrapped in the U.S. election, and the vote counting is continuing. This is a good thing, as every vote counts. The group organizing the Protect the Results event near me was meeting again this afternoon, so I headed back. But first I decided to add the Count to my sign.

With all the talk of counting, I’ve found myself getting some counting things stuck in my head. Like this song by Feist:

A Sesame Street version of Feist’s 1,2,3,4. All about counting.

And this song by Throwing Muses:

Counting Backwards, by Throwing Muses.

I was considering doing a full-blown ThThTh list (Themed Things Thursdays, that is), given that it’s Thursday, and my mind is making a list of things on a theme. But those things take a lot more time to put together than I have available for putting them together. So instead, I’ll list a few more things on the theme of counting that came to mind:

  1. Counting Crows: a band
  2. Everything Counts: a song by Depeche Mode.
  3. Counting one’s blessings: an expression about taking stock of the good things one has in one’s life
  4. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” A line from a poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning. (Sonnets from the Portuguese 43.)
  5. Counting your chickens before they hatch: an idiom meaning to plan on events coming to pass before being sure that they’ll happen. Very unwise to count chickens based on the number of eggs you have. Especially if you bought your eggs from the grocery store.
  6. Counting sheep: said to help put one to sleep when one is having trouble falling asleep. (This is supposed to be counting images of sheep in your head, versus having a bunch of sheep in your bedroom. Because probably sheep in your bedroom would keep you awake. And likely would also smell.)
  7. I also feel compelled to mention that the Count from Sesame Street has been getting some good meme love these last couple of days.

And now I should get to bed. Because if there’s one thing I can count on, it’s that morning will come, and I’ll need to get moving again.

Counting sheep: Said to help you fall asleep. Probably an occupational hazard for shepherds.

Having any counting things to add? Feel free to list them in the comments. :)

Who’s who?


With the excitement building for the new episodes of Dr. Who to start¹, there has been a lot of who-buzz. But Dr. Who is not the only Who who is out there. I offer you this list of whos: a sort of Who’s Who of Whos.

  • who: an English interrogative word a relative pronoun used to stand in for a person².
  • WHO: The World Health Organization
  • who: the sound made by a hooting owl
  • Dr. Who: A British sci-fi/fantasy TV show that has been on for decades, about The Doctor, a time-travelling alien who gets to have a new body every so often.
  • Whovians: Fans of Dr. Who (you know who you are)

  • The Who: A British rock band, originally formed in the 1960s
  • Who Are You? A hit song by The Who. (And the title track of the album “Who Are you?”)
  • Who am I? A 1998 Jackie Chan movie where he plays an amnesiac spy. (It features this very memorable fight scene with a man with very long legs and very good balance. [youtube])


  • Who dat? A phrase used to show support for the New Orleans Saints (a football team)
  • Who’s Who: a type of publication listing biographical information
  • Whoville: a fictional town (or possibly two towns of the same name) in two Dr. Seuss stories: Horton Hears a Who and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
  • Whos: Inhabitants of Whoville. Cindy Lou Who is one such Who.

  • Who’s on first? Abbott and Costello’s famous comedy routine of name/pronoun ambiguity. (If you don’t know it, you can read the full transcript. Better yet, watch this clip from the 1945 movie The Naughty Nineties on [youtube])

  • whodunnit: a nickname for a type of story where the reader (or viewer) tries to solve a mystery along with the protagonists

    • Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

  • “Guess who?” Something sometimes said by a person sneaking up behind another person, often while preventing that person from seeing by covering the eyes.³
  • The Guess Who: a Canadian rock band best known in the 60s and 70s
  • Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?: A 1967 drama/comedy movie starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn. (It’s not actually about dinner with a Canadian rock band, but about a family coming to terms with an interracial relationship.)
  • Who can it be now?: A song by Men at Work
  • Who’s that girl?: A song by the Eurythmics
  • “Who’s a good boy?” Something often said to dogs.Cf this Onion article:
    Nation’s Dog Owners Demand to Know Who’s a Good Boy

    With canine-cuddliness levels at an all-time high and adorability-boosting ribbons and chew toys plentiful at pet stores across the nation, no resolution to the good-boy-identity issue appears to be on the horizon.

  • “Who cares?” A question sometimes asked by someone who doesn’t⁴

Who’s got more whos?

—

¹Season 7, part 2 starts this Sunday, March 30th
² Prescriptive grammarians will say that who is only to be used in cases where the pronoun/interrogative is in the subject, or nominal, position, and that whom is what you must use in object positions. However, contemporary usage allows for use of who in object positions.
³ I’ve never enjoyed this game.
⁴ I care.

Whose whos are whose? (image credits):Horton Hears a Who!, Whoville from the 1966 animated movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas (based on the book), Who Dat, The Guess Who Greatest Hits album cover, The Who logo, Jackie Chan’s Who Am I?, Who’s On First? screenshot from youtube clip from The Naughty Nineties,Tardis, World Health Organization logo, and Introspective Pug.

Easy as pie

pi pie
My 2010 Pi Pie

Happy Pi Day! In celebration of Pi Day¹, and its auspicious landing on a Thursday, I offer to you this very large helping of pie-themed things. Mmmm, pie.

  • Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie: a line from the nursery rhyme Sing of song of sixpence²:

    Sing a song of sixpence
    a pocket full of rye
    four and twenty blackbirds
    baked in a pie

  • Little Jack Horner: Another nursery rhyme with pie.

    Little Jack Horner
    Sat in the corner,
    Eating a Christmas pie;
    He put in his thumb,
    And pulled out a plum,
    And said ‘What a good boy am I!

    • little jack horner wsatterlee 1882 king with pie 012

  • Can she make a cherry pie?: A line from the folk song Billy Boy.
  • pie in the sky: used to describe plans or hopes considered unrealistic and overly optimistic
  • “high apple pie in the sky hopes”: a line from the song High Hopes, a song sung by Frank Sinatra
  • as easy as pie: an expression meaning “very easy.” In my experience, pie is not the easiest thing in the world to make. It involves crust, an oven, preparation of ingredients.³
  • “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe,” a quote by Carl Sagan
  • As American as apple pie: an expression meant to describe something quintessentially American. Of course, many cultures have versions of apple pies.⁴ Apple pie has nevertheless achieved a place in American culture:

    Although apple pies have been eaten since long before the European colonisation of the Americas, “as American as apple pie” is a saying in the United States, meaning “typically American”.[14] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, apple pie became a symbol of American prosperity and national pride. A newspaper article published in 1902 declared that “No pie-eating people can be permanently vanquished.”[15] The dish was also commemorated in the phrase “for Mom and apple pie” – supposedly the stock answer of American soldiers in World War II, whenever journalists asked why they were going to war.[16]

    (From the Apple Pie Wiki Page⁵.)

  • American Pie: Don McLean’s signature song, first released in 1971. Bye-bye Miss American Pie… (I’m quite fond of this large-scale lip dub video version of the song produced by the city of Grand Rapids Michigan.)
  • American Pie (1999): a movie that includes various analogies of sex and pie.
  • pie-eyed: drunk
  • piebald: having patches of black and white (or other colors), especially describing the coat of an animal.
  • pie chart: a type of graph in which proportions of a whole (such as a whole data set) are depicted as wedges of a circle
    pie-pie-chart
  • piece of the pie: an expression meaning a share in something, such as a reward or credit.
  • mud pie: a pattie-shaped blob of mud, commonly made when playing in the mud
  • sweetie pie: a common term of endearment
  • cow pie: Not actually a pie made of cow (that would would be a beef pot pie), but a lump of cow manure. (Definitely not a term of endearment)
  • pie in the face: a bit of slapstick comedy, usually involving a whipped cream pie. Just like it sounds, it involves someone getting a pie in the face.
  • 10 banana cream pies: Sesame Street once featured a rather clumsy baker who would stand at the top of a flight of stairs, and announce the number of some sort of dessert he was holding, before falling and spilling all of them. He may not actually have used banana cream pies for 10, but the phrase seems to have stuck. (cf. the use on the show The Family Guy.)

Have more pies to bring to the table? Throw ’em in the comments.

¹ So-called, as the date (at least as it is written here in the US) is 3-14, is reminiscent of the number Pi’s initial 3 digits: 3.14. My past celebrations of Pi Day have included easy as pi, my personal gallery of Pi Pies, and a Pi-themed list.
²I was surprised to learn that this nursery rhyme was actual used by pirates to convey messages. This is the sort of thing that would usually send me to Snopes to check, but in this case Snopes is where I found it.
³ Toast is much easier to make.
⁴ I love tarte aux pommes as made in France. You know what was hard to get in France when I lived there, though? Doritos.
⁵Really. Apple pie has a Wiki page. So do pumpkin pie, pecan pie and cherry pie.
—
Images: Little Jack Horner and the king with the pie are both from Project Gutenberg.

Here be Dragons

With Chinese New Year on the way this Sunday, we have almost run out of the year of the dragon. I started putting this list together as the Year of the Dragon entered, but now am barely managing to post it before the Dragon departs.

Dragons are creatures that have appeared in the mythologies of many cultures in Europe and Asia, and they are featured in many a song and story, among other things. Here are a dozen arbitrarily chosen dragon things to usher out the Year of the Dragon:

  1. Custard the Dragon: A poem by Ogden Nash from 1936

    Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
    And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
    Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
    And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

  2. Puff, the Magic Dragon: A song by Peter, Paul & Mary that was inspired by Custard. (The dragon, that is. Not the dessert. But you never know. Sometimes if I eat dessert right before going to bed I get really weird dreams.)
  3. Dragonfire: A song written by Sandra Boynton in/on the book/album Dogtrain [mp3 sample]

  4. St George and the Dragon: a European legend of a man who slays a dragon.
  5. Smaug: the treasure-hoarding dragon from J. R. R. Tolkiens classic novel, The Hobbit.
  6. dragonfly: an insect that is neither a dragon nor a fly. Dragonflies are of the order odonata.
  7. dragonfruit: a thing that is neither dragon nor fruit. No, wait. It *is* a fruit. But I’m mostly sure it’s not a dragon.

    8. dragonfruit

  8. dragon dance: a Chinese tradition involving a large costume of a dragon, which is operated by multiple people. The dragon dance is often part of Chinese New Year celebrations.

  9. Dragon Ball: While it sounds like it could be a formal-dress version of a dragon dance, it’s actually a media franchise including manga, anime, and video games. But they do feature dragons who can grant wishes.
  10. Dungeons & Dragons: Sometimes known as D & D. A role-playing game, or universe of games. To be honest, I have no idea what role dragons play in any of it.
  11. Enter the Dragon (1973): Bruce Lee’s legendary martial arts movie. Bruce Lee does not actually enter a dragon in this movie. But he does enter a sort of dungeon, come to think of it.
  12. Here be dragons: A phrase associated with unexplored territories on old maps. Possibly this is based on only one such map, The Hunt-Lenox Globe. According to its wiki page,

    It is notable as the only instance on a historical map of the actual phrase HC SVNT DRACONES (in Latin hic sunt dracones means “here be dragons“.)

There are loads more great books, movies, legends, and things with dragons. I could easily add another few dozen dragons to the list, but we’d be well into the year of the snake by that time. Instead, I’ll wrap up and get to bed. But please feel free to add more dragons in the comments!

late-night line-up

Yesterday I crossed the finish line for my commitment to daily blogging, and even met a deadline for a conference submission. (Remarkably, I submitted the paper even though the deadline was extended, in part to accommodate confusion over date lines and timezones, since the conference organizers are in Shanghai, and probably most of those submitting papers are from timezones that are lagging behind. But they added several days, which may be overkill…) And now I’m trying to get things in line for another submission. The timeline is quite tight, since the deadline is Monday. As it is, I’m pretty wiped out from pushing myself for that last submission. I think I’ve been running on adrenaline the last few weeks, which is actually not a kind of line. And while I should be working on an outline for the next deadline, or some other more productive line of activities, I find myself goofing of online. And thinking up line things.

This list is but a scratch on the surface of all the things with line. (There sure are a lot of meanings of the word line, for a start.) If you have more line items to include in the line-up, drop me a line in the comments.

…three potato, four.

Here are the leftover potatoes from yesterday.

  • Here’s a potato riddle, courtesy of this post of potato jokes. (Yes, of course there are potato jokes.):

    A skin have I, more eyes than one. I can be very nice when I am done. What am I?

  • Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato: a picture book by Tomie dePaola based on an Irish folktale. Apparently not about small potatoes.
  • The Enormous Potato: by Aubrey Davis. Also a retelling of a folktale. Not actually sure whether it’s the same folktale.
  • How big is my potato? A website that allows you to calculate the size of your potato. I’m serious. There’s even a related blog.
  • potato battery: harness the power of the potato
  • meat and potatoes: the main substance of something. (Also can be used as a more literal description of someones dietary preference, as in “a meat and potatoes kind of guy.”)
  • potato prints: the results of a printmaking technique in which a design is carved in a flat sliced section of potato (usually a half of a potato) to make a stamp. The potato edge is then dipped in paint or ink, and pressed against paper (or other surface) to imprint the design.
  • The Prince Edward Island Potato Museum: “The only museum of its kind in the world.”
  • The Idaho Potato Museum: a potato museum in Idaho
  • Potato Museum: seems to be more of an organization than a location. The real-world location of the museum collection has moved around. They offer up many tidbits of potato goodness. I just lost about 15 minutes doing an online jigsaw puzzle of a potato.
  • For an encyclopedic yet entertaining post on potatoes, their origins, history and etymology, check out potato on polyglot vegetarian. Also find a load of potato poems.
  • Want more potato history? (And who wouldn’t?) You can investigate further with books like Potato (by Patrick Mikanowski), Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (by John Reader), and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (by Larry Zuckerman).

And if that’s still not enough potatoes, then there are these:

Okay. That was a lot of potatoes. I’m full now.

One potato, two potato…

It’s been some time since I’ve served up a ThThTh post, but the recent wave of tuber-related posts got my mind churning up a big heapin’ mess o’ potato-themed things. Plus it’s Thanksgiving Day here in the US, and potatoes are part of the feast tradition.¹

Dig in!

  • One potato, two potato: a “counting-out game.”

    One potato, two potato, three potato, four
    Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more

  • Mr. Potato Head: a classic plastic toy from Hasbro, shaped like a potato with re-arrangeable features and appendages. Was featured as an animated character voiced by in the Toy Story movie franchise.³
  • Viva la Papa! Long live the potato! I don’t know how true it is, but I remember that there was allegedly some confusion about the Spanish phrase meaning “the Pope,” (El Papa) and possibly some misprinted merchandise.
  • Green potatoes: are apparently somewhat toxic, according to Snopes. (Snopes was not able to help me about the la papa, el papa question, and had this to offer on the topic of potatoes.)
  • The Potato Famine: another name for the Great Famine, which occurred in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 when potato crops failed due to the potato blight.

    Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europeduring the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.

    Sinead can tell you more about it.

  • Famine, a song by Sinead O’Connor

    OK, I want to talk about Ireland
    Specifically I want to talk about the “famine”
    About the fact that there never really was one
    There was no “famine”
    See Irish people were only ALLOWED to eat potatoes
    All of the other food
    Meat fish vegetables
    Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
    To England while the Irish people starved

  • taters: a slang term for potatos.
  • tater tots: the children of potatoes.⁴
  • spud: a slang term for potatoes
  • Spuds MacKenzie: not actually a potato.
  • drop like a hot potato: an idiom meaning “suddenly stop associating with” whoever or whatever is likened to the hot potato. Example: She acted like she wanted to be my friend, but when she learned that I was only small potatoes , she dropped me like a hot potato.
  • Hot Potatoes: a song by The Kinks from 1972 [listen on YouTube]
  • mashed potatoes: what might happen to hot potatoes that have been dropped.
  • mashed potato: a dance step that was popular in the early 60s
  • small potatoes: an idiom meaning “insignificant.” (Small potatoes are really tasty for roasting, though.)
  • new potatoes: small young potatoes (that are not tater tots)

  • Potato-potahto: From the song “Let’s call the whole thing off” While the tomato/tomahto variation happens, it would seem that the potato alternation probably doesn’t exist outside of the song.
  • Potatoe: a mispelling of potato which achieved great fame when former Vice President Dan Quayle incorrectly corrected a kid at a spelling bee to add the e at the end.
  • couch potato: a term for someone who sits around a lot, especially on a couch. (This totally does not apply to me, as right now, I am sitting on a chair. Not a couch. The dent in the couch cushion in no way suggests that I spend too much time sitting there. Nope.)
  • Potato: a song. (Thank you Sally for bringing this potato to the table!)

Okay, it turns out I dug up too many potatoes. I decided to save away some of the extra potatoes. I’ll reheat them for you tomorrow…
—

¹They also go well with the ThThTh posts served up on Thanksgivings past: turkeys, bread, and utensils.²

² It’s ThThThThanksgiving.

³ I feel compelled to mention that this potato is being reused. Mr. Potato Head has already appeared in one of my ThThTh lists. Over 4 years ago.

⁴ Assuming that “children” is a term meaning “small cylinders made of shredded bits of the parents, who happen to be potatoes, which have been deep fried.”

image credits: Mr. Potato Head (Hasbro)The small poatoes were mine.

little Phoebe

A little list of Five Phoebe things.

  1. Phoebe is a name meaning “bright and shining,” originating from ancient Greek. The first Phoebe was a goddess in Greek mythology, one of the Titans (also spelled Phoibe)
  2. Many Phoebes have since made their appearance in fiction and life, such as Phoebe Snow, used in advertisements for the Lackawanna Railroad in the early 1900s:

  3. Phoebes are birds: “The genus Sayornis is a small group of medium-sized insect-eating birds in the Tyrant flycatcher family Tyrranidaenative to North and South America.” (wiki). They are named for their song, which is said to sound like “fee-bee” (Click here to hear some Phoebe chirping.)
    An Eastern Phoebe
  4. Phoebe is Saturn’s smallest moon, a satellite which was once a comet.
    Phoebe, moon of Saturn.

  5. Phoebe, or Little Phoebe, is a term meaning “five”

    little phoebe

    noun
    the cardinal number that is the sum of four and one

    In case this meaning seems completely obscure to you, as it did to me, it appears to have originated in the dice game, craps. Among the “Principal craps terms” listed under the heading for craps in Dictionary of the American West: over 5,000 terms and expressions from Aarigaa! to Zopilote, by Winfred Blevins are these terms for a roll of 5: “fever dice, little Phoebe, feebee, or just Phoebe”

This is all by way of saying that my own little Phoebe is five today.

Phoebe, five-year old girl.

Happy birthday, sweet Phoebe.

Image links: a roll of Phoebe with dice, Phoebe (moon), Phoebe (bird), and Phoebe Snow. (All 4 of these are public domain images. The image of Phoebe (child) is not.)