The other 101 - the Freeway. Pic: http://www.othersidegroup.com

101 is a Freeway (we Californians call our Highways Freeways, don’t ask me why – at least not now) near our house but you will encounter the number in other contexts as well -mostly when study subjects are concerned.  For example you might take economics or physics 101 in school.  A 101 course of anything is an introductory course, where you learn the basics.

The next level up is not 102 but 201.  So once you successfully completed Accounting 101 you can move on to Accounting 201 – if  you are so inclined.

The expression 101 is also used in daily language with reference to basic skills or knowledge.  You might say to somebody who just told you that he/she can’t prepare a simple pasta dish “what?? you can’t make a pasta with tomato sauce.   But that is cooking 101.  How can you not know how to do that?”

Or

“Before you read War and Peace in the Russian Original you might have to take a bit more than Russian 101.”

No such a thing in Californian schools, pic: smbtraining.com

… in the California school system.  I haven’t written about this in a while.  Kind of decided that it won’t get any better if I make a big fuss over it and have by and large been able to ignore whatever craziness came my way but today is one of those days when my son tells me a story and I just stare at him and say something along the lines of “you got to be kidding, right?”

“No, mom” he says and I say

“But this story you just told me isn’t true – you made it up?  Right?”

“No it is true, the teacher said it.”

So the story he told me was the following.  Along with such words as underwear, stupid, dumb and lame (I get the last three, no complaints there) the latest word to be banned from the class room is “easy”.  “Easy” as in not difficult.

A reasonable question in this context might be: “why on earth is ‘easy’ a bad thing to say?”  which is exactly what I asked my child.  He, looking earnestly, said “the teacher said because it might hurt someone feelings who does not think the task is easy.”  WHAT?  How far do we have to drive this craziness?  Some kid finds this easy, others that and that’s just a fact of life.   Shouldn’t they get used to that?  Isn’t that normal and a good lesson to learn?

So here we go again – another thing I need to remember when doing homework with him.  Can’t say “hurry up, you can do this quickly, it is easy.”  That just might be an insult to somebody out there.

Where, oh where, did all the common sense disappear to?

Onomatopoeia in action, pic: http://www.englishcafe.com

I know from my own experience as an ESL (English as Second Language) speaker that “onomatopoeic” is an extremely valuable word when it comes to impressing native speakers.  It is kind of hard to pronounce but that does not matter – since most people don’t know it it does not matter if one gets it slightly wrong or quickly rushes through the back part of the word with it’s difficult combination of vowels.

So what does onomatopoeic mean? An onomatopoeic word  imitates the sound it represents.  Huh?

The concept is easiest explained with a few examples:

Cuckoo – the name of the bird imitates the sound the animal makes

Sizzle – imitates the sound of something hot in a pan

Gurgle -imitates the sound of somebody – well, gurgling – water

A few more: rattle, roar, screech

A lot of words used in cartoons fall into the onomatopoeic category: plop, bang, honk, boom, zap, whack, vroom, wham, zoom -  my 7 year old son would probably know a lot more of these words.

Modern version of the baker's Dozen - the glazed donut dozen, pic: memphisflyer.com

My husband asked me about this expression today and I knew the correct answer but had no idea where it comes from so I thought this might be a good blog post.  A Baker’s dozen is not – you guessed it – 12 but 13.   My original notion, namely that it was some clever marketing ploy to get people to buy at your bakery, not another by giving them 13 bagels for the price of 12 proved to be overly modern.

The expressions seems to be predating modern marketing ploys and date back to the 13th century.  An interesting but historically dubious explanation is that in the England of Henry III bakers who short-changed their customers where severely punished.  We are not talking stuff like jail time or a fine here, we are talking having your hand cut off by an axe.  To avoid such unpleasantness – so the story goes – bakers would bake a 13th of whatever with the dozen thereby reducing the risk of being one short.

Another explanation is that it is easier to bake 13 – as this makes an nice arrangement on a tray 3+2+3+2+3.  I find this unconvincing – baking 13 doesn’t mean you have to sell them all at once – but maybe I am thinking modern marketing again.

That vaccination causes all sorts of mental health issues is based on anecdotale vidence - at best. pic: sfbaypeds.com

The expression “anecdotal evidence” is used when referring to evidence from anecdotes.  This implies a small sample – too small to be statistically relevant and therefore the data is unreliable.  That does not mean the fact for which one has anecdotal evidence is necessarily wrong – just that the available set of data isn’t strong enough to support the conclusion in a scientific sense.  Frequent problems are a biased sample or cherry-picked cases.

The expression does not necessarily have a negative connotation as it implies hat the person using it is aware of the potential issues and does not try to hid them.  If you say something like “What I am saying is based on anecdotal evidence” everybody will know that you aren’t making any scientific claims about the accuracy.

So, as long as one notices that what one is presenting is anecdotal evidence by nature and states this there is no issue.  The problem is people who mistake anecdotal evidence for real, scientific evidence and particularly those who are trying to sell us anecdotal evidence as the real thing – which is happening more often than we should like, especially by politicians to further their agenda.

Definitely eye candy, pic: theberry.com

To say it right away: an eye candy is nothing one eats, and is not made of sugar.  An eye candy is what the name implies: something that pleases the eye like a real candy might please the palate.  Sweet, unsubstantial and probably not all that good for you.   In short, an eye candy is a person considered highly attractive to look at.  The expression implies that these person may be lacking in intelligence or depth. The latter is not necessarily the case but it could well be.  However, it does not matter because you look at an eye candy – not engage them in intellectual conversation.

Both men and women can be eye candy, sometime the term is also used for objects.

Here is an usage example: “we had a great time at the beach – lot’s of eye candy there”.

Serious manscaping, pic: http://dearannabelle.com/2011/manscaping/

Manscape – the process of removing unwanted and overabundant body hair from a male body.  The days where real men looked like our hairy cousins in the trees seems to be over – at least for now and so a minimum of “maintenance” is required even by males.  Which, I guess, is fair since most of them seem to expect women to undergo pricy and painful hair removal procedures frequently.  So the process of shaving, plucking, waxing a man’s cheat, back or other regions is refered to in popular culture as manscaping.

Then there is the manshower – it had to happen though I personally have never heard that any of my friends and acquaintances had done  such a thing.  The manshower is the male event equivalent  to the babyshower – an event for the dad-to-be.  Whereas the ladies are supposed to sit at home, eat dainty cupcakes and drink herbal teas the guys go out for a round on male fun, like golfing and then have a guy appropriate dinner – steak and beer at some sports bar.

A perfect man cave, pic: mancavemarket.com

This is were the modern man and his buddies hang out, watch sports, complain about their wives, play games, use the f-word in over-abundance  and probably visit a few sites on their computer that nether their wives, nor their mothers or priests would approve of.

The fact that the man caves defy all good taste and design sense seems part of the allure – this is where big fish and deer heads get mounted on walls, pages from the Sports Illustrated swim suit calendar adorn walls and brown pleather is all the rage.

I guess it is called man cave for a reason.   The term man space apparently exists but I have never heard anybody use it.

Passport-less nation, pic: http://www.theexpeditioner.com/2010/02/17/how-many-americans-have-a-passport-2/

Interesting factoid about the US and maybe an explanation why sometimes people here come across as, well, somewhat ignorant when it comes to the rest of the world.

The statistics I am citing is not uncontested, if you search you will find a different data, although likely not dramatically so.  The important point , however, is not whether a particular number is 10% or 15% but that it is not, like 85%.

Anyway, I am talking about passport ownership which correlates strongly (if not perfectly) with travel abroad which – at least in the opinion of this travel-obsessed expat – equals a deeper understanding and sympathy for different cultures and different ways of doing things.

So the number of Americans owning a passport seems to be somewhere between 10 and 25%.  Which means that 3/4 of the American population never even set foot into Mexico or Canada, let alone Laos or Namibia.

The only number I could find for Europeans were Brits, and there the number of passport holders seems to be in the low 70%.

A more interesting question as the actual percentage is the question why the percentage is so low.  The US is a big country and so it is easier not to leave it than, say, not to leave Switzerland ever but still – wouldn’t one think that at some point people would want to see what’s out there?

Cost of travel gets mentioned a lot but to me that is a smoke-screen.  If someone can afford a F-150 truck they can afford a vacation in Mexico.

Some point out that Americans don’t have an “imperial history” and therefore, unlike for example the Brits, they are, as a people historically speaking, not used to travel.  I tend to discard such arguments because, as a people, historically speaking the Americans are also not used to owning over-sized flat screen TVs – and still everybody has one now.  Maybe that is simplistic but on some level valid nevertheless.

There might not be much interest in the rest of the world.  The news, if one can call them that, certainly do nothing to encourage taking an interest in foreign countries.  Unless there is a major catastrophe (tsunamis, terrorist attacks, earthquakes and plan crashes come to mind), or some exciting human interest story (people caught in collapsed mine behaving valiantly) the rest of the world barely gets mentioned.    The impression most Americans get from watching the news is that certain death is looming abroad.

Still, one would hope that the people of the sole remaining self-nominated superpower take a bit more interest in the rest of the world  – which, by the way certainly does not see itself as the rest of the world or the non-US territory.

The queen bees are at it again, pic: screenrant.com

However, that is not the only way in which this term is used.  A queen bee is also a woman who is in a dominate or favored position over her female peers.  The term is used mainly to refer to young women, girls actually, often high-school kids who have a dominate position in their group of peers, that is their class or school.

Queen bees are the cool ones, the ones who set the trend and get the hot guys.  If a queen bee wears a particular sweater today everybody else will want it tomorrow.  She is frequently emulated and often envied.  Since assuming and keeping such a position is not easy queen bees are often mean and condescending,  surrounded by a clique of “girl-friends”  who would sell their soul to be her.

Queen bees are feared but generally not loved.  Mean queen bees have become quite an issue in the US society and so books are written and movies are made about queen bee characters.