311 Stream of Consciousness Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
Why do we indent paragraphs when we write,

Marcia Smith 0:03
And what animal breaks its own bones to use as weapons?

Bob Smith 0:07
Gee whiz, answers to those and other strange questions coming up in this episode of The Off Ramp with Bob

Marcia Smith 0:14
and Marcia

Bob Smith 0:15
Smith, I Hey, welcome to the Off Ramp. a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy. Yes, and I’m looking at you, Marcia,

Marcia Smith 0:40
Day and night, night and day,

Bob Smith 0:42
And take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. This is a podcast devoted to lifelong learning, with questions every week to stump one another. All right, Marcia, if you’re a writer who indents paragraphs

Marcia Smith 0:56
I am a writer who indents paragraphs,

Bob Smith 0:58
Then you’re old school.

Marcia Smith 0:59
Yes.

Bob Smith 0:59
How old school is that style? How far back does that style go?

Marcia Smith 1:03
Oh, that’s a good question. I’ll just take a stab. Middle 19th century.

Bob Smith 1:08
No, it goes back to the Middle Ages.

Marcia Smith 1:10
Of course it does.

Bob Smith 1:12
That’s why the first letter of a chapter sometimes looks a little fancier.

Marcia Smith 1:16
Oh, that big letter, yes.

Bob Smith 1:18
Or maybe it’s some artwork there.

Marcia Smith 1:20
I should have known that the Bible, right? All indented.

Bob Smith 1:23
The answer goes back to the medieval job title that sounds like it belongs in a monastery, because it did. The Rubicator. What is a Rubicator?

Marcia Smith 1:33
I want one for Christmas.

Bob Smith 1:34
Doesn’t have a motor in it, and it won’t clean your house, or it won’t puree your food either. Before printing, manuscripts were copied by hand, and the main scribe wrote the text in black ink, line after line, page after page, But the color – the red initials, the blue flourishes, the gold leafing, or the first word that was bigger and more colorful than the rest. That was the work of another specialist, called a Rubicator, a special scribe. The word comes from Rubica, Latin for red ochre. And because the rubicator worked after the main scribe, the first scribe had to leave blank spaces at the start of important sections, and those empty gaps became the indentation many of us still use today. It’s where all that fancy stuff was put in, books, even printed books.

Marcia Smith 2:21
Yeah.

Bob Smith 2:21
The Rubicator would come in.

Marcia Smith 2:22
I should have known that.

Bob Smith 2:23
That’s the space that became the indentation we still use today.

Marcia Smith 2:26
All right, Bob, what animal breaks its own bones to use as weapons?

Bob Smith 2:31
Breaks its own bones to use as weapons? Is this a last-ditch effort to stay alive? It breaks its bones and then it dies?

Marcia Smith 2:38
No, it’s just an everyday thing if it’s under attack.

Bob Smith 2:41
Really

Marcia Smith 2:42
Yeah.

Bob Smith 2:42
Okay. I have no idea. I will say it’s some kind of marine animal. What is it?

Marcia Smith 2:46
It’s the Hairy Frog. How did you not know this?

Bob Smith 2:51
I went to school with him. Hairy Frog.

Marcia Smith 2:53
Yeah.

Bob Smith 2:53
Okay.

Marcia Smith 2:54
It’s also known as the Wolverine Frog. When threatened, the hairy frog deliberately breaks its own toe bones.

Bob Smith 3:02
What?

Marcia Smith 3:02
Forcing the sharp claw-like bone fragments through the skin of its toes to create formidable weapons.

Bob Smith 3:09
Oh my goodness.

Marcia Smith 3:10
Yes, that’s why he got that name of Wolverine, because it’s like Wolverine in X-Men. The frog can then kick its foes to inflict painful lacerations.

Bob Smith 3:21
Gee whiz!

Marcia Smith 3:22
The triggered bones eventually move back into place on their own – and without any known retracting mechanism – and the toe wounds heal over,

Bob Smith 3:31
And then it becomes just a little simple Hairy Frog we all love.

Marcia Smith 3:35
It just heals over until the next time somebody makes the mistake of messing with the Hairy Frog.

Bob Smith 3:40
Good Lord, a very fierce animal. Okay, I’ve got a couple questions for you on animals, Marcia.

Marcia Smith 3:46
All Right.

Bob Smith 3:47
how do dogs pose a danger to street lights?

Marcia Smith 3:51
Well, they pee on them all the time, and they can short circuit it?

Bob Smith 3:55
No,

Marcia Smith 3:55
That’d be pretty hard to get through that.

Bob Smith 3:57
Dog urine contains salts and ammonia that can be corrosive to metals, and street light poles in high traffic dog walking areas have fallen over [

Marcia Smith 4:03
Because of corrosion?

Bob Smith 4:06
Yeah, they’ve been weakened by repeated dog visits.

Marcia Smith 4:09
Wow,

Bob Smith 4:10
dog urine is so strong it weakens the metal, and experts recommend if you can have your dog go on a fire hydrant. Those are made of much more resistant cast iron metals.

Marcia Smith 4:19
Okay, yeah. Buster, our beagle used to like fire hydrants. Okay, Bob, you know what a mortar board is?

Bob Smith 4:25
Yes of course.

Marcia Smith 4:26
What is it?

Bob Smith 4:26
It’s when you graduate, you have a little hat with a mortar board in it.

Marcia Smith 4:30
Yes, where did it get that name?

Bob Smith 4:32
That’s a good question, but I bet that came from the Middle Ages and the guilds that were builders/ And they used mortar boards for paste and cement to mix on a mortar board,

Marcia Smith 4:42
That’s my guy, you nailed it.

Bob Smith 4:44
Wow,

Marcia Smith 4:45
Yeah. First called a mortar board in the 19th century for its resemblance to the boards masons used for carrying mortar, And I never thought of that.

Bob Smith 4:53
Why would they put it on a hat for a graduate? That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 4:58
It goes back to the 11th century. That graduates get to wear fancy hats. It started with a skull cap called a collote, then it became a round and puffy beret, and then it became a square-shaped hat, which supposedly saved time and fabric. That’s why they got the square.

Bob Smith 5:15
Oh, is that right?

Marcia Smith 5:16
Yeah, and it was named after, as we said, the boards masons used for mortar, and that’s how it came about. Can I give you a little interesting factoid?

Bob Smith 5:24
Sure.

Marcia Smith 5:24
For centuries, it was the student’s responsibility to make their own diploma.

Bob Smith 5:30
Didn’t know that!

Marcia Smith 5:31
The document functioned like a passport, in a way, to prove that he or she had trained in a particular set of skills.

Bob Smith 5:37
So, they’d have to go out and slaughter the sheep for the sheepskin to print the diploma on, and everything?I mean, because they were done on, you know, real animal skins originally.

Marcia Smith 5:45
I don’t think so. If a student wanted a certification of their degree, they needed to hire a calligrapher and then pay their university president to sign the document.

Bob Smith 5:56
Oh my goodness, really.

Marcia Smith 5:58
Here I’ll give you 10 bucks. Sign this. It’s not entirely clear which school started to give them out first, but graduates of Harvard did begin receiving diplomas around 1813 and other schools soon followed suit.

Bob Smith 6:10
Good Lord, so you had to get your own diploma printed or calligraphied

Marcia Smith 6:14
Yeah

Bob Smith 6:15
And then take it to the university and hope that

Marcia Smith 6:17
The president would sign it.

Bob Smith 6:18
Sign this, sire.

Marcia Smith 6:19
It’s kind of dumb in retrospect.

Bob Smith 6:22
Well, how much money were they spending on their education that they couldn’t get a diploma?

Marcia Smith 6:27
Sad.

Bob Smith 6:28
It is sad. All right, back on the Rubicators.

Marcia Smith 6:31
Yes.

Bob Smith 6:32
That art of using color, how far back do you think that goes in manuscripts before printing?

Marcia Smith 6:38
Well, it certainly goes back beyond the Bible.

Bob Smith 6:40
Mm-hmm

Marcia Smith 6:41
Mm-Hmm

Bob Smith 6:42
Mm-Hmm

Marcia Smith 6:42
The 14th century,

Bob Smith 6:44
No, it was well before that. It dates back to Pharaohic Egypt, when the pharaohs were around.

Marcia Smith 6:50
Oh, kay.

Bob Smith 6:50
Yesh, Egyptian scribes began emphasizing important texts, such as headings or the first lines of new parts of a narrative on papyrus with red ink, and you can see that in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. You can also see it in fragments of the letters of Paul to the Corinthians, where they have a new section starts. You see some red instead of the black ink. Once again, that’s how the practice of indentation before paragraphs begin. But Rubication goes back a long way.

Marcia Smith 7:16
Indeed, it does. Bob, tell me the decade these names were the most popular.

Bob Smith 7:20
Okay,

Marcia Smith 7:20
from 1900 to now.

Bob Smith 7:22
Okay, okay.

Marcia Smith 7:23
The top boys’ names: Robert, John, James, William, Charles. Top girl names were May, Mary, Dorothy, Helen, Betty, Margaret.

Bob Smith 7:33
I imagine that started in the 20s.

Marcia Smith 7:35
Very good. Okay. How about these?

Bob Smith 7:37
Okay.

Marcia Smith 7:38
Top boy names: Michael, David, John, James, Robert – you seem to cross over decades, Bob

Bob Smith 7:44
Yes, I do.

Marcia Smith 7:45
Top girl names: Lisa, Mary, Susan, Karen, Kimberly.

Bob Smith 7:50
How about the 30s or the 40s?

Marcia Smith 7:53
60s,

Bob Smith 7:54
1960s

Marcia Smith 7:55
Yeah

Bob Smith 7:55
All right.

Marcia Smith 7:55
And the Lisa name, it was so popular because the Mona Lisa made its first trip to the US in the 1960s Yeah, it went to the National Gallery of Art and created a social excitement, and 2 million people saw it. And then the name Lisa became very popular.

Bob Smith 8:10
Oh no kidding, that’s where it started.

Marcia Smith 8:12
Top boy names: Michael, Christopher, Matthew, Joshua, David. Top girl names: Jessica, Jennifer, Amanda, Ashley, Sarah,.

Bob Smith 8:21
I’d say the 80s or the 70s.

Marcia Smith 8:23
Pick one.

Bob Smith 8:23
Okay, I’ll say the 70s.

Marcia Smith 8:24
80s,

Bob Smith 8:25
80s, like I said, the 80s or the 70s.

Marcia Smith 8:28
That’s right. And last one, tell me the decade these names were the most popular. Okay,

Marcia Smith 8:33
Boys: Noah, Liam, Jacob, William, Mason. Girl names: Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Isabella, Ava,

Bob Smith 8:41
I would say those are the 1990s or the 2000s because all those kids are living among us now.

Marcia Smith 8:48
They’reamong us. Bob

Bob Smith 8:49
What is the

Marcia Smith 8:50
2010s

Bob Smith 8:51
2010s okay, that’s when those became very popular.

Marcia Smith 8:53
Okay, I’m done.

Bob Smith 8:54
All right, more animal story questions, Marcia. Why do pandas do handstands in the wild? You’ll find this funny. They often do handstands in the wild because they urinate while doing handstands to make their marks higher on trees.

Marcia Smith 9:09
Well, you can’t get too high. Well, that’s good to know.

Bob Smith 9:12
Okay, and another one: Europeans accidentally repopulated North America with what animal? This animal went nearly extinct during the last ice age, they weren’t here for a long time, inadvertently reintroduced in the soil of plants brought over by European sailors – earthworms!

Marcia Smith 9:31
Oh, really?

Bob Smith 9:32
Yeah, earthworms, they nearly went extinct in half of North America during the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago.

Marcia Smith 9:38
Wow, okay,

Bob Smith 9:39
That comes from britannica.com

Marcia Smith 9:41
Because of the cold, and they do like warm earth, that’s when they come squirreling out. Have you ever heard of leap seconds?

Bob Smith 9:48
Yes, I have. I recently read about that.

Marcia Smith 9:50
Instead of a leap year, scientists add leap seconds to even out disruptions in the, in the world.

Bob Smith 9:57
And who does this?

Marcia Smith 9:58
It’s the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service.

Bob Smith 10:03
I never knew there was such a thing.

Marcia Smith 10:04
IERS.

Bob Smith 10:05
Okay, say it again.

Marcia Smith 10:06
The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.

Bob Smith 10:11
Reference Systems Service!

Marcia Smith 10:13
they do this to keep highly accurate atomic clocks synchronized.

Bob Smith 10:16
Okay, got it.

Marcia Smith 10:17
With the Earth’s slightly irregular rotation. So, my question for you, Bob, is: in the last 50 years, how many seconds have been added?

Bob Smith 10:26
How many seconds have been added to the atomic clock?

Marcia Smith 10:30
Yeah

Bob Smith 10:31
I’ll bet it’s not that many. I’ll bet it’s only like 1010, seconds,

Marcia Smith 10:34
2727 seconds, so it’s almost half a minute already.

Bob Smith 10:39
So our days have been half a minute longer.

Marcia Smith 10:41
Yes.

Bob Smith 10:41
Well, it’s a cumulative thing. Do you know when they did that back in 2011 It caused major problems. Did you hear about that? That caused major problems.

Marcia Smith 10:50
Well, I think that’s why they have it planned to end in 2035 because in extreme cases, it can be very disruptive.

Bob Smith 10:58
They say it got into what they call, I think, the Linux kernel that computers use. And in Australia, it caused airline reservation services to go down, and the airlines there were canceling 400 flights a day – not into a computer, because the computers weren’t working. so they had to do everything by hand, and that was just because this leap second had been added to the atomic clock.

Marcia Smith 11:20
They can’t screw things up for sure. Right now, nobody knows what they’re going to do come 2035.

Bob Smith 11:26
All right, Marcia, why did people once dunk frogs in milk?

Marcia Smith 11:30
Well, back to frogs, with or without the retractable claws.

Bob Smith 11:37
You want a clue? I’ll give you one.

Marcia Smith 11:38
Was it to remove the smell?

Bob Smith 11:41
I said, if you want a clue, I’ll give you one. I

Marcia Smith 11:43
guess without the clue.

Bob Smith 11:44
Oh, well, you’re wrong.

Marcia Smith 11:45
Oh, okay.

Bob Smith 11:46
Well, do you want a clue?

Marcia Smith 11:46
Yes.

Bob Smith 11:47
It happened before modern refrigeration. People used to dunk frogs in milk. Why?

Marcia Smith 11:54
Well, I guess that wasn’t for stench. It was to.. I don’t know.

Bob Smith 11:57
Okay. Well, some Russians and Finns used a novel folk method to keep milk from spoiling – dunk a live frog in it. Why? Well, scientists eventually discovered Russian frogs, and probably other frog species, secrete certain antibacterial peptides from their skin that, among other things, slow the spoiling of milk. So it was all based in actual fact.

Marcia Smith 12:20
You mean it’s you were drinking the milk after the frog had been in it.

Bob Smith 12:24
Yeah, you dunked the frog in the milk, and then it secreted some stuff, and it kept the milk from spoiling.

Marcia Smith 12:28
I ain’t drinking that milk, that’s not going in my Cheerios. Okay. Time for time for where in the world. All right, little card game that I’ve plowed through for questions to you. Okay, I’ll give you up to three clues to figure out the city. Clue one: one of the city’s most famous attractions was supposed to be a temporary installation for the 1889 World Fair.

Bob Smith 12:53
I think this is in Vienna, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 12:55
No.

Bob Smith 12:56
Where is it?

Marcia Smith 12:56
Clue two.

Bob Smith 12:57
Oh yeah, multiple clues.

Marcia Smith 12:59
I think this will give it to you. The city of light,

Bob Smith 13:03
Oh, Paris

Marcia Smith 13:03
That’s right. One of the city’s most famous attractions was a temporary installation that was the Eiffel Tower.

Bob Smith 13:09
Oh, yes, absolutely.

Marcia Smith 13:10
Okay, and then the City of Light, and the third clue was home of Notre Dame Cathedral. Is that where we went? Oh, yes, people, before it had the fire, and now it’s back up and running.

Bob Smith 13:18
Okay, back up and running.

Marcia Smith 13:20
Okay, new city,

Bob Smith 13:22
okay.

Marcia Smith 13:22
Once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, the Jardine Majarelli is in this city.

Bob Smith 13:28
Wow, I don’t know what that is or what you’re talking about.

Marcia Smith 13:31
Clue two,

Bob Smith 13:32
okay.

Marcia Smith 13:32
Often called the Red City,

Bob Smith 13:35
The Red City. All right, Clue three.

Marcia Smith 13:38
Clue three, it’s famed for its public square, Jama El Fana,.

Bob Smith 13:43
Jama E; Fama.

Marcia Smith 13:44
Alfana.

Bob Smith 13:45
Okay, so it’s a red city. It is in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia. I don’t know where it is.

Marcia Smith 13:52
You get the general idea. Marrakesh.

Bob Smith 13:55
Oh, really? Okay,

Marcia Smith 13:56
Haven’t been there?

Bob Smith 13:57
Heard songs about it, though.

Marcia Smith 13:58
Yeah.

Bob Smith 13:59
Marrakesh Express.

Marcia Smith 14:01
Okay. Clue one: home to Banpo Bridge, the world’s longest bridge fountain.

Bob Smith 14:06
The longest bridge fountain. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 14:08
B A N P O.

Bob Smith 14:10
Bampo Bridge, the longest bridge fountain. Wow, that’s strange.

Marcia Smith 14:14
Clue two.

Bob Smith 14:15
Yes,

Marcia Smith 14:16
Gangnam District is the city’s luxury shopping area.

Bob Smith 14:20
Wow.

Marcia Smith 14:21
Clue three. This is the largest city in South Korea.

Bob Smith 14:25
The argest city in South Korea, that would be Seoul, South Korea.

Marcia Smith 14:29
You salvaged one out of that, not easy. I should have thrown an easier one in there for you.

Bob Smith 14:34
All right, back to word origins. All right, what’s the origin of train of thought? How far back does that go?

Marcia Smith 14:40
Train of thought.

Bob Smith 14:42
Now I heard this the other day, and I thought, does that actually refer to trains – like locomotives?

Marcia Smith 14:47
Does it?

Bob Smith 14:48
No, it goes all the way back to the 1600s

Marcia Smith 14:51
Really?

Bob Smith 14:52
Long before the invention of locomotives. To us, a train means the locomotives, the steam whistles, the long lines of cars, and a. Train of thought, you go, okay, train of thought. It’s all these

Marcia Smith 15:02
Wedding trains?

Bob Smith 15:03
Yes, train came from the old French trainer, meaning to pull, to draw, to drag, or to trail behind. And for centuries, a train was simply anything that followed in a line. The 1300s is when the expression came about, and it originally did refer to the part of the gown that trails behind the wearer – like a wedding train. The bride wore a train. A king traveled with a train of attendants. A line of black gunpowder leading to an explosive was called a train – you’d like the train. And by 1600 writers were already talking about a train of thought, a connected sequence of ideas, one dragging the other long behind it. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes used train of thoughts in 1651 and so when steam locomotives arrived 150 years later, the English didn’t need a new word. They said, “Oh, there’s a train, it’s a train of

Marcia Smith 15:54
Train of cars.

Bob Smith 15:55
Yeah, a train of cars.

Marcia Smith 15:56
Okay,

Bob Smith 15:56
So the railroad borrowed the metaphor, not the other way around.

Marcia Smith 16:00
Well, that’s interesting.

Bob Smith 16:02
So, the next time your mind wanders and you lose your train of thought,

Marcia Smith 16:04
Which hardly ever happens,

Bob Smith 16:06
remember that phrase is older than steam, iron rails, and the industrial revolution.

Marcia Smith 16:11
Okay, Bob, time for a break.

Bob Smith 16:13
Let’s pull this train into the station and take a break. You’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment.

Bob Smith 16:22
(Train whistle) We’re back!

Marcia Smith 16:24
Bob ran and got his train whistle, so we could amaze and amuse you all.

Bob Smith 16:29
I do love this (Toot toot)

Marcia Smith 16:31
it’s a good whistle.

Bob Smith 16:32
Yes, you’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and then we put it on podcast platforms where it is heard

Marcia Smith 16:42
All over the world.

Bob Smith 16:44
We were just talking about the, you know, train of thought. So, what’s the difference between a train of thought and a stream of consciousness?

Marcia Smith 16:54
There’s more subjects in a stream of consciousness, more

Bob Smith 16:57
subjects,

Marcia Smith 16:57
yeah, different thoughts where a train is related.

Bob Smith 17:00
Oh, that’s exactly right. A train of thought is structured, moving from point A to B through a sequence you can trace, but a stream of consciousness suggests something rather messier. Lot of impressions, sensations, and that expression goes back to the late 1800s And psychologist William James,

Marcia Smith 17:16
okay, Cinderella Bob. She didn’t start out with a glass slipper, what was her original slipper? The

Bob Smith 17:23
word “glass” in translation was green, like it was a green slipper. That’s what I heard.

Marcia Smith 17:28
This was a story passed down orally for centuries before being written down in 1697 by Charles Perrault. It’s believed he mistook the word “ver” v a i r, meaning ermine, which is weasel fur for the word vere, v e r r e, which translates to glass. And by the time he realized the mistake in his story, it had become so popular he didn’t change it. So it has been since 1697 The glass slipper of Cinderella, isn’t

Bob Smith 18:00
that interesting. Keep it, it’s more interesting. It’s a glass slipper.

Marcia Smith 18:04
Yeah,

Bob Smith 18:04
all right. Marcia, hi. How long has that word been in use?

Marcia Smith 18:07
Hi, like hello,

Bob Smith 18:08
hi, and other things.

Marcia Smith 18:10
Well, I don’t know. How would I know that?

Bob Smith 18:12
Well, this is a word origin question. We do these all the time, but our job is to guess.

Marcia Smith 18:16
All right, got one job. One job, I don’t know.

Bob Smith 18:21
High meaning intoxicated goes back more than 400 years. The Pilgrims would have described drunks as high.

Marcia Smith 18:28
Oh, really?

Bob Smith 18:29
Yeah, that’s how far back it goes. Because people have been getting high, described high from alcohol since 1607 Getting high on drugs has been used since 1935 but getting high on alcohol that’s been used for well over 400 years, and here’s one more hang out. How far back does that expression go? Hang out, like we’re going to a hangout.

Marcia Smith 18:50
I’ll say 1800s

Bob Smith 18:52
Yes, the Victorians, they were using it.

Marcia Smith 18:55
Queen Victoria hang out

Bob Smith 18:56
as a verb, to hang out, meaning to pass time together, that dates back as far as 1846 and then as a noun, a hangout is a place that goes back to 1852 So it’s not a new expression, it goes back quite a while.

Marcia Smith 19:10
Bob, which culture was the first to celebrate the new year with a feast of food and alcohol?

Bob Smith 19:17
The new year with alcohol, that’s got to go back to the Romans, and before that time I’m sure, I bet it goes back to the Sumerians,

Marcia Smith 19:23
it goes back to ancient Babylon. Okay, which is now Iraq. Yeah, the celebration took place in spring during the planting season, and the Babylonian feast was elaborate and went on for 11 days. Oh my goodness, can you imagine having a nice long

Bob Smith 19:39
celebration?

Marcia Smith 19:40
Yes, New Year’s Eve is too long for me, and it included copious amount of drinking and eating in tribute to the gods of fragility and agriculture.

Bob Smith 19:49
Marcia, every state has a bird, every state has a tree, every state has a favorite food. What US state is the Pelican State?

Marcia Smith 19:58
Oh, we just went to. Wedding, where pelicans flew over the bride and groom when they said their vows. I thought that was adorable.

Bob Smith 20:07
The pelican state, is it Idaho?

Marcia Smith 20:09
I don’t think so. Funny,

Bob Smith 20:12
what’s so funny about.. I guess

Marcia Smith 20:13
they do have a..

Bob Smith 20:14
is it Idaho, Georgia, Louisiana, or Mississippi?

Marcia Smith 20:18
I’ll say Louisiana.

Bob Smith 20:20
That’s it. Louisiana is the pelican steak. Ning, ding, ding. Yes, the brown pelican is the state bird and appears on Louisiana’s state flag.

Marcia Smith 20:29
Interesting looking bird.

Bob Smith 20:29
Yes, it is.

Marcia Smith 20:30
Just for the rest of the world to know, American white pelicans are a regular sight around the Great Lakes in America.

Bob Smith 20:37
So, it’s not just the South where they have pelicans, not

Marcia Smith 20:39
just the ocean.

Bob Smith 20:40
Okay,

Marcia Smith 20:41
here’s a quickie. Okay, painted the blue boy, the boy

Bob Smith 20:44
in the little blue suit. Let’s see, who did that? That was British,

Marcia Smith 20:48
Thomas Gainsborough.

Bob Smith 20:50
That’s it, Gainsborough

Marcia Smith 20:51
in 1770 It hangs permanently at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Bob Smith 20:57
Oh, that’s where we saw that’s where we saw one of the Gutenberg Bibles, too, was a

Marcia Smith 21:02
surprise visit. Yeah,

Bob Smith 21:03
all right. Marsha, one more word origin today. The word ‘hot. How long has it been used to describe someone’s attractiveness? She’s hot, he’s hot. How far back does that go?

Marcia Smith 21:13
How long for a hot female, huh, or a hot

Bob Smith 21:16
male?

Marcia Smith 21:16
Is it the 20th century?

Bob Smith 21:18
No, it goes back farther than that.

Marcia Smith 21:20
Okay, you

Bob Smith 21:20
can date it to the 14th century. Really, I

Marcia Smith 21:24
can’t picture them

Bob Smith 21:25
back then. That was used to refer to somebody feeling a flustered state of desire, like when they’d say, “Whew, I feel hot, you made me feel hot. That meant that kind of hot. But 1886 that’s when it had come to describe somebody who is sexually attractive. Still, a long time ago, you think it’s a new expression. Yeah, it does right in

Marcia Smith 21:43
your ear. No. In medieval Europe, Bob, what table condiments proximity to you determine your status?

Bob Smith 21:51
You mean the closeness of mustard or ketchup to me determine my status? That’s correct. In Europe, okay? Something exotic, could it be cinnamon that’s not considered a condiment, is it? Yeah. Oh, well. Oh no, I’ll say mustard. We’ll say mustard.

Marcia Smith 22:06
It is salt.

Bob Smith 22:08
Oh, really? Nothing

Marcia Smith 22:08
exotic about that.

Bob Smith 22:10
So, if salt was close to you, yeah, you had a higher status. It was

Marcia Smith 22:13
a symbol of status at formal feast. A large salt container called a salt cellar, c e l l a r, was placed prominently on the table near the host and the most important guests. Wow,

Bob Smith 22:26
so wherever the salt was, the VIP was sitting where the salt was.

Marcia Smith 22:30
Hence, the phrase, those seated closer to the host were considered above the salt, and while those farther away below the salt, if you had low social standing below the salt, that’s an expression that’s gone

Bob Smith 22:42
away. We don’t have that anymore. Oh,

Marcia Smith 22:44
because it was expensive and essential for preserving food. It was a natural marker for rank, wealth, and honor.

Bob Smith 22:52
I find it interesting that the container was called a cellar, because we think of a cellar being below ground, usually. Yeah, I think

Marcia Smith 22:59
it’s just a square. Yeah, it’s.

Bob Smith 23:01
I guess, it’s just a place to store things. Cellar, so there’s a seller of salt on your table. All right. Hyper, as a description of somebody who is high-strung and full of energy. The word hyper is an abbreviation of a word. Hyper meant hyperactive. It was first used in 1867 and it was first abbreviated cut down to hyper in 1942 that was an expression during World War Two. I didn’t know that,

Marcia Smith 23:26
aka Bob.

Bob Smith 23:27
Okay,

Marcia Smith 23:28
aka the card game I like, and we’re going to give you a category, and you try to figure out the word I’m looking for. Salads, okay? So, what kind of salad am I asking for? It’s yellow plus blue,

Bob Smith 23:41
yellow plus blue,

Marcia Smith 23:42
uh huh,

Bob Smith 23:43
yellow plus blue.

Marcia Smith 23:45
What kind of salad is that?

Bob Smith 23:46
I don’t know. You’re gonna have to help me with that one.

Marcia Smith 23:49
You don’t mix colors, do you?

Bob Smith 23:51
What is it, Marsha?

Marcia Smith 23:52
Green,

Bob Smith 23:53
a green salad.

Marcia Smith 23:54
Yeah,

Bob Smith 23:54
okay.

Marcia Smith 23:55
All right. Second clue, Julius, the

Bob Smith 23:58
Caesar salad.

Marcia Smith 23:59
That’s right,

Bob Smith 24:00
although it wasn’t named after him,

Marcia Smith 24:01
no spud

Bob Smith 24:03
potato salad,

Marcia Smith 24:04
right? Cook,

Bob Smith 24:06
a cook salad,

Marcia Smith 24:07
another name for a cook,

Bob Smith 24:09
chef salad,

Marcia Smith 24:09
that’s right.

Bob Smith 24:10
Okay,

Marcia Smith 24:11
Beijing Fraidy cat, that’s funny,

Bob Smith 24:14
Frady something frightened chicken, I don’t know what it is.

Marcia Smith 24:18
Beijing, what is that country?

Bob Smith 24:20
China,

Marcia Smith 24:20
yeah, and a Fraidy cat is Chinese chicken salad.

Bob Smith 24:25
I didn’t know about that.

Marcia Smith 24:26
Okay,

Bob Smith 24:26
Chinese. Why is it Frady Cat?

Marcia Smith 24:29
Because people call you a chicken when you’re afraid of things. You’re a chicken.

Bob Smith 24:32
Jeez, okay.

Marcia Smith 24:33
Okay. Corn holder, what kind of salad am I talking about?

Bob Smith 24:39
A corn holder.

Marcia Smith 24:40
Yeah,

Bob Smith 24:41
a corn holder, a husk, an ear,

Marcia Smith 24:44
keep going,

Bob Smith 24:45
ear of corn,

Marcia Smith 24:46
close

Bob Smith 24:46
husky, ear of corn salad. I don’t know what

Marcia Smith 24:49
cob, a cob holds the kernels. Oh dear, cob salad, you like those?

Bob Smith 24:53
Okay.

Marcia Smith 24:53
And finally, Kraft pasta, craft pasta,

Bob Smith 24:58
craft pasta.

Marcia Smith 25:00
Yeah, what kind of salad are we talking about?

Bob Smith 25:03
Pizza salad, I don’t know. Marsh

Marcia Smith 25:05
macaroni salad.

Bob Smith 25:07
Okay,

Marcia Smith 25:08
okay. Here’s a quick question. Approximately, how many breaths does the average person take every day?

Bob Smith 25:14
That’s going to be significant. That’s kind of hard to fathom, isn’t it?

Marcia Smith 25:18
Yes, it is.

Bob Smith 25:19
Okay, how many in a minute? That’s the question. There, my goodness, at least 60 in a minute. I’ll say that. So, my goodness, how many hours? I don’t know. What’s the answer? The

Marcia Smith 25:33
answer is 20,000 times a day.

Bob Smith 25:35
20,000 times a day, you breathe.

Marcia Smith 25:38
20 to 25,000 is the average person breathes in the course of 24 hours, that breaks down to between 12 and 18 breaths per minute for adults. Wow,

Bob Smith 25:48
you know, again, these kinds of statistics always make me think of when somebody murders someone, it’s like, do you realize what you’ve killed this remarkable creature of God, destiny,

Marcia Smith 25:58
and all these inhales and exhales add up to by the age of 50, the average human takes 400 million breaths. By the age of 50,

Bob Smith 26:08
man,

Marcia Smith 26:08
400 million,

Bob Smith 26:09
that’s amazing.

Marcia Smith 26:10
And what does the breath do? Helps our oxygen.

Bob Smith 26:14
Sure, of course, couldn’t do without it.

Marcia Smith 26:15
Helps fuel our bodies. Oxygen is a crucial component needed for our most basic functions, like moving muscles, digesting food, and even thinking. So, we need that oxygen and those breaths.

Bob Smith 26:26
Absolutely.

Marcia Smith 26:27
Okay? You ready for my quotes?

Bob Smith 26:29
Well, what could we do with all that time if we used it for something else?

Marcia Smith 26:32
I was like it when you say that. What can we do with that save time instead of breathing? Okay, we could have quotes like this on friendship, Jim Hayes. A good friend will help you move, but a best friend will help you move a dead body.

Bob Smith 26:48
Oh geez, okay. Well, you brought it down there, Marsh. I don’t know what to say. I

Marcia Smith 26:54
think that’s funny.

Bob Smith 26:55
Don’t you have anything more positive to end on?

Marcia Smith 26:57
Okay. You don’t like this one either. Oscar Wilde, a good friend will always stab you in the front. Okay, there we go. More cynical. How about this one? Here’s one by Winnie the Pooh. A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.

Bob Smith 27:14
Oh, that’s great.

Marcia Smith 27:15
That’s sweet. That

Bob Smith 27:16
is sweet.

Marcia Smith 27:16
Yeah,

Bob Smith 27:17
what sweet thoughts that man wrote in those books.

Marcia Smith 27:19
Yes, I just love Winnie the Pooh. This is from Unknown. We’ve been friends for so long that I can’t remember which one of us was the bad influence. There you go.

Bob Smith 27:30
All right. We hope you’ve enjoyed our show today, and we hope you’ll join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I’m Bob Smith.

Marcia Smith 27:39
I’m Marcia Smith

Bob Smith 27:40
on the off ramp, the off ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at The Offramp dot show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai