CarlHoliday

The Metropolitan Opera in New York has been broadcasting live performances on radio since 1931. Most of the performances are the Saturday matinee, but they sometimes broadcast the opening night performance of the new season.

Warner Bros. 1957 cartoon, What’s Opera, Doc?, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, was a parody of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, was the first cartoon to be deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1992.

I suppose only the British could have come up with this line of reasoning. Their wheeled armoured vehicles are manufactured under one nomenclature and used under a different one, as in: Ocelots are Foxhounds; Cougars are Mastiffs, Wolfhounds, or Ridgebacks; but why are Snatches called Vixens.

Philately is the English transliteration of the French “philatélle” coined by Georges Herpin in 1864, to replace the disliked term timbromanie (stamp mania). Herpin took the Greek root word phil(o)- meaning “an attraction or affinity for something” and ateleia- meaning “exempt from duties and taxes”, which referred to the original purpose of stamps: delivery of goods or mail was paid by the receiver. A stamp, ink or paper, on the item indicated the fee had been paid by the sender.

Supposedly, Herdsman is a suburb of Perth, Australia. According to Google Maps and Google Earth, Herdsman consists of Herdsman Lake and Herdsman Regional Park. There are no residential areas in Herdsman. Just people out recreating in the park.

And then there is anagen effluvium and telogen effluvium which deal with the loss of hair. Anagen effluvium is the pathologic loss of anagen or growth-phase hair caused by radiation therapy to the head or systemic chemotherapy. This alopecia (hair loss) is non-scarring. Telogen effluvium is a scalp disorder characterized by the thinning or shedding of hair due to the early entry of hair into the telogen phase (the resting phase of the hair follicle). It is in this phase that telogen hairs begin to shed at a rate beyond the approximate normal hair loss rate of 129 hairs per day. Thus ends our brief examination of hair loss in animals. Oh, and this just in from the wire. Effluvium is singular, effluvia is plural, therefore effluviums and effluvias are incorrect.

Thinking of using monstrous in a story you're working on? Mark Twain used it nine times in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Jim was monstrous proud, a monstrous big lumber-raft, some monstrous hooks on it, a monstrous big river, a monstrous long raft, her monstrous bows, a monstrous easy time, a monstrous big river, a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. You would think he'd use huge, but it doesn't occur once.

Many people think that the single distinguishing characteristic of New World monkeys as opposed to Old World monkeys is their prehensile tail. Technically speaking, the characteristic between the two isn't their tails it's their noses. New World monkeys have flatter noses than their Old World counterparts. When speaking of examples of prehensility, most people point to the New World monkey's tail as the definitive example of a prehensile body part completely ignoring the opposable thumb on their own hand.

Periwig, what a fun word indeed. No wonder Shakespeare gave it to Hamlet in Act III Scene II: “… to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters …”. Where did periwig come from? We have to go back to the 1520s to hear an English gentleman when speaking of a “peruke, artificial imitation head of hair worn as a fashionable accessory or part of a formal professional costume.” Only he said perwyke, a popular mispronunciation of the French word perruque, which comes from the Italian word perrucca, “head of hair, wig”. And, according to some, comes from Latin pilus “hair”. So, which is it? In the Merrium-Webster dictionary Periwig refers you directly to Peruke, which in turn refers you directly to Wig, specifically one of a type popular from the 17th to early 19th century. These are the wigs that, in some cases, drape down from the top of the head onto the shoulders.

Once more English has complicated something that didn't need to be complicated. The four-letter verb for the process "to accustom (a young child or animal) to take food otherwise than by nursing" is wean. But what about the noun form? Is it something as simple as the four-letter verb? No, no, dear pursuers of meaning. The noun for the act of weaning is ablactation. One-syllable verb versus a four-syllable noun that doesn't even look like the verb. That would make a good spelling bee word.

My immediate thought upon seeing the word was that bit of raw meat down near the bone on undercooked chicken legs or breasts.

What a coincidence we should have recital today. In a story I'm working on, the protagonist's (Bryan) six-year-old sister is at a dance recital while he is playing the clarinet in his middle school orchestra's spring concert. Both of his parents chose to watch his sister. Post orchestra concert, Bryan is waiting outside the school for his parents, but they never arrive ...

In the same sense that Humans are in the Homindae family known as the Great Apes.

And I didn't think winter plant identification class would ever have a use. Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) can be found from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains and from Alaska to Oaxaca, Mexico. It comes in three varieties: coast Douglas-fir (var. menziesii), Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir (var. glauca), and Mexican Douglas-fir (var. lindleyana). Its genus (Pseudotsuga) means false hemlock (genus Tsuga). Despite its common name Douglas fir it is not a true fir (genus Abies), a spruce (genus Picea), or pine (genus Pinus). We have a pair of Douglas firs on the shore of the creek. Every time a remnant of an east Pacific hurricane works its way up the coast we worry whether a strong gust of wind will knock over one or both of them.

Know anyone with the surname of Spencer? It comes from Old French despencier "dispenser" (of provisions), "a butler or steward."

Good ol' English does it again. Among the ira- root words you can use a long i, as in irate, or you can use a short i as in irascible. It was said recently that the three hardest languages to learn are: Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and Vietnamese (I can attest to Vietnamese because I had to learn North Vietnamese (yes, it's slightly different from South Vietnamese) when I was in the Air Force. Frankly, I'd put English right up there as number four.

You don't see this often, but today’s psoriasis came to us from Late Latin psoriasis “mange, scurvy,” from Greek psōriasis “the itch, being itchy.”

Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus first described the common merganser in 1758 as Mergus merganser. Subsequent descriptions for the common merganser are Mergus merganser merganser (northern Europe and northern Asiatic Russia), M. m. orientalis, 1845 (M. m. comatus, 1895) (Central Asian mountains), and M. m. americanus, 1852 (North America). Their physical descriptions are mainly limited to bill shape and size, and in the case of the North American species a black bar crosses the white inner wing (visible in flight).

The usual treatment after surgery for early-onset bladder cancer is intravesical immunotherapy with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin bacteria. A solution containing the bacteria is inserted into the bladder with a catheter and held for a period of time, one hour in my case, and then expelled. The bacteria triggers an immune response and the leukocytes are fooled into destroying the cancer cells along with the bacteria.

Pelage: the hairy covering of a mammal Has nothing to do with: Pelagial, Pelagian, Pelagianism, Pelagic, Pelagius, or the Pelagie Islands

The root words of ambush refer to hiding in the bush or lure into the bush or woods. The technical or formal word in a military sense for an ambush is ambuscade, which comes from the French embuscade, which comes from the Italian imboscata "hiding in the bush." A faux Spanish verb ambuscado ,"attack from a concealed position" was popular in the 17th century.

Ragweed is so notorious for causing rhinitis in late summer early fall that some fool(s), who obviously were not allergic to Ragweed pollen, introduced Ragweed into Europe where it has become naturalized and become an invasive species in some areas. Ragweed belongs to the genus Ambrosia. Ambrosia is the food or drink of the Greek gods on Mount Olympus served by Hebe, before her marriage to Herakles, and Ganymede, the most beautiful youth of Troy who was abducted by Zeus to be his personal cup-bearer.

Okaaaay, it's only a little oopsy, somebody had to say the Emperor has no clothes. After all we've only repositioned the "i" and the "n", and to commit further harm we dropped the "u" in the explanation. What's the big deal. Unfortunately, neither caluminate or calminate exist anywhere in the English language. Calumniate will get you where you want to go, because only calumniate is committing an act of calumny.

As often occurs in biology names are rather fluid. Take the members of the Compositae family. They were probably very happy with other members with composite flowers. Then along comes the aster who looks at the other members and sees a general lack of asterdness. At various and sundry Compositae botanical conventions around the world, there were botanists, who were small in number in the beginning, but were a boisterous lot in beer halls and wine cellars, constantly pushing their asters in the faces of inebriated composite botanists. It took some time, but eventually the aster group prevailed in their quest and convinced enough botanists to change the Compositae family name to Asteraceae. (Not to be confused with the Diplocystaceae family of fungi (formerly Astraeaceae).)

Benighted the book by J. B. Priestlty (currently available on Kindle) Benighted the book was the basis for James Whale's film The Old Dark House staring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton (available on Amazon Prime) Benighted, the French deathgrind band. For the adventurous, there is Benighted Pass in the Victory Mountains, Victoria Land, Antartica.