Category: –

Sunday

Habeas Corpus = “That you have the body,” is a writ to determine if the detention of an individual is valid.

Monday

Amicus Curiae = “Friend of the court,” usually a person or entity who is not a party to a lawsuit, but is permitted to offer information or advice to the court, including writing “amicus briefs” advocating a position in a pending matter.

Tuesday

Res Judicata = “The matter has been adjudicated,” is a legal principle against the relitigation of substantially similar issues and parties once the issue has been already decided.

Wednesday

Ex Parte = “From one side/party,” usually referring to motions or requests coming from one party without notice or input from the other, often in the form of direct contact with a judge.

Thursday

In Camera = “In chambers/private,” as opposed to in public or open court.

Friday

Nunc Pro Tunc = “Now for then” usually indicates correcting an innocent oversight or omission by retroactively applying the effective date of an order or filing.

Saturday

Ex Post Facto = “From a thing done afterward” typically refers to an act not criminal when done, but criminalized retroactively by law. Passing such laws is forbidden in the US Constitution.

Sunday

Leaves turn sunlight into sugars and starches to feed the plant with the help of the chlorophyll molecule, which reflects green light and thus appears green. This is the main reason so much of the natural world appears green, though a few other colorful molecules can also perform the same sunlight conversion work.

Monday

Conveniently for we oxygen-breathers, oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis, just as the carbon dioxide we exhale is used in leaves as part of photosynthesis…a perfect cycle.

Tuesday

Needles are a highly modified form of leaf which evolved during the Mesozoic Era to reduce water loss. Since this needle-leaf split, trees have either had needles or conventional leaves, but never both (or neither) on a single tree.

Wednesday

Like the number of sand grains on a beach, the number of leaves that fall every year seems too vast to estimate, but it nonetheless has been done. In the US, about 203.58 billion trees drop about 40 quadrillion leaves onto forest trees every year. By this math, the worlds estimated 3 trillion trees drop about 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 leaves annually.

Thursday

Leaves can get really big, but some distinctions are needed for the title. The biggest non-split and non-floating leaf is the giant taro, with leaves up to 6 feet wide. The largest split non-floating leaf is the Raphia regalis palm, with leaves (comprised of leaflets) up to 82 feet long and 10 feet wide. Meanwhile, the massive Victoria boliviana water lily, with leaves nearly 10 feet across, can support the weight of a human adult on the water’s surface.

Friday

For all the green color it produces, chlorophyll is a short-lived molecule that needs constant replacement. So when the days shorten in the autumn and chlorophyll production slows, leaves can show off their other bright colors produced by pigments like anthocyanin and carotenoids.

Saturday

Whether you plan to or not, you likely eat a lot of leaves. Among the many common edible leaves in the human diet are spinach, lettuce, cabbage, kale, bok choi, chard, basil, arugula, oregano, watercress, spearmint, parsley, mustard greens, rosemary, endive, and many others.

Sunday

The “Vancouver Canucks” hockey team were named for comic book hero / national mascot “Johnny Canuck,” somewhat of a Canadian “Uncle Sam,” after early owner Coley Hall won the franchise rights to the team in a poker game.

Monday

Minnesota license plates declare the state to be the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” the namesake of the Minneapolis Lakers pro basketball team, formed in the 1940s. This “Lakers” name was retained when the team moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

Tuesday

The Minnesota Vikings NFL team are named in honor of the large Scandinavian-descended population of America’s Upper Midwest.

Wednesday

The University of Chicago’s mascot has always been The Maroons, but when some used UC jerseys were bought by an early Arizona Cardinal’s owner, he declared they were not maroon, but cardinal red. From this exclamation, “Arizona Cardinals” was born, and has stuck.

Thursday

Speaking of reds, the Cincinnati Reds began as the Red Stockings, then went to Redlegs, then Reds, but during the “Red Scare” era of communism, they briefly went back to Redlegs in 1953 before changing back to Reds.

Friday

Previously known as the White Stocking, Colts, and Orphans(!), the press began calling Chicago’s professional baseball team “The Cubs” in 1902 on account of the many young players, and the name stuck.

Saturday

There are no mountains in New Jersey, so the Rockies hockey team needed a new mascot when they were bought and transferred there. The current name won because the “Jersey Devil” is a mythological creature long rumored to roam the state’s Pine Barrens region.

Sunday

Just as an orange is the fruit of a much bigger tree, the familiarly-shaped mushroom is a fruiting body representing only about 5% the size of the far larger underground fungus.

Monday

Below some cute little autumn-growing “honey mushroom” caps in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest lives the largest known organism on Earth. This single individual of the Armillaria ostoyae species, fondly known as the “humongous fungus,” currently spreads underground a mind-boggling 9 square km, or about 3.5 square miles and is an estimated 10,000 years old.

Tuesday

But if you’re looking for huge mushrooms growing above ground, the “American titan” Macrocybe titans mushroom grows to have caps up to 3 feet wide, and 400 million years ago you could find the monster mushroom Prototaxites growing over 24 feet tall.

Wednesday

Some mushrooms glow with bioluminescence for the purpose of attracting spore-spreading insects, and one variety in India glows so brightly the locals call them “electric mushrooms” and use them as natural torches. In a more direct connection between mushrooms and electricity, a study in Japan confirmed centuries of anecdotal evidence that shiitake mushrooms grow better near locations struck by lightning.

Thursday

Be careful with your mushrooms. The hugely varied fungus kingdom produces mushrooms that can taste great, benefit your health, alter your consciousness, or kill you. At current count, there are about 2,300 mushrooms which are edible or have medicinal benefits. The compound psilocybin, present in many mushroom species, has hallucinogenic effects, and many mushroom species are poisonous to humans, including the aptly-named “death cap,” which resembles edible varieties but is responsible for about 90% of annual mushroom-related fatalities.

Friday

Mushroom spores tend to be tiny and abundant, resembling puffs of smoke. Normally they rely on the wind to disperse them broadly, but new research shows some species actually change the temperature of the mushroom gills so as to create miniature air currents that give the spores a small lift and head start.

Saturday

Though ancient, fungi offers environmentally-friendly needs for modern packaging. Mycelium, the underground root part of the fungus, can be used for compostable, biodegradable packaging similar to styrofoam or plastic.

Sunday

COB = Close of Business (day)

Monday

BAFTA = British Academy of Film and Television Awards

Tuesday

BOPUS = Buy Online Pick Up in Store

Wednesday

CWOT = Complete Waste of Time

Thursday

NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard

Friday

SOP = Standard Operating Procedure

Saturday

TBA = To Be Announced

Sunday

Crabs are old. The oldest fossilized crab was found preserved in amber and was dated at 100 million years old, well into the time of the dinosaurs.

Monday

Crabs have incredible diversity in size. Male pea crabs are as small as 1/3rd of an inch wide, while the Japanese spider crab typically weighs 40 lbs. with a mind-boggling legspan up to 13 feet. In human terms, this would be like one person having an armspan of 6 feet, while another person’s armspan was a half mile wide.

Tuesday

In evolutionary terms, being crabby is popular…at least at some point. Biologists have determined that among decapod crustaceans – a group which includes crabs, lobsters, and shrimp – that the body design of a crab has evolved separately at least five times, a phenomenon known as “convergent evolution.” However, the design isn’t ideal for all environments, since this body plan has been lost by species at least seven times.

Wednesday

Some of the best-known “crabs” aren’t “true crabs” as defined by scientists. For example, the amazingly ancient horseshoe crab, that living fossil which was around before the dinosaurs, is actually an arachnid, like spiders and scorpions. Likewise, the hermit crab, with three pairs of walking legs and that longer, softer body necessitating those shells for protection, is also not a true crab, and neither is the king crab. “True crabs,” among other characteristics, have four pair of walking legs, a wide, flat shell, and antennae between their eyes.

Thursday

A “crab mentality” or “crabs in a bucket thinking” comes from observations that crabs which could otherwise easily climb out of a bucket on their own actually pull those crabs near the top back down. This is also known as “tall poppy syndrome” or simply “If I can’t have it, neither can you.”

Friday

Unless you’re a crab fisherman, catching crabs is usually bad. Besides being the colloquial (if imprecise) name for pubic lice, “catching a crab” also indicates losing control of the oar in competitive rowing.

Saturday

The modern term “crabby” comes from the obsolete “crabbed,” which doesn’t have any direct connection with the crustacean, but described an individual who is “angry, spiteful, and ill-tempered,” much like the modern crabby person is.

Sunday

The first historical record of gambling goes back to 2300 BC. This makes games of chance 15 centuries older than the invention currency itself, meaning things besides money were first wagered.

Monday

History’s first casino appeared in Venice in 1638, and was so popular that in the next century another 100 had sprung up there.

Tuesday

“Don’t bet the farm” is an American idiom discouraging the wagering of one’s own home/livelihood on something, and may have originated when actual real estate was bet in Old West poker games.

Wednesday

A wealthy hedge fund manager once paid Kenny Rogers millions to play his favorite song “The Gambler” over and over at his birthday party, but after a while Kenny refused to play it yet again.

Thursday

Gambling is huge business. In 2023 alone, casinos in the state of Nevada reported $15.5 billion in gaming revenue, with the casinos on Las Vegas’ famous “Strip” taking in $8.9 billion of that.

Friday

Even flashy Las Vegas, however, can’t touch the allure of state lotteries, where Americans spend a combined $100 billion dollars plus every year. These began mostly in the mid-20th century for states to raise local government revenue, a preferable option over the illegal lottery operations of the time. The idea of running lotteries to help benefit local governments isn’t new, however, as there is evidence that this was practiced back to Europe’s Middle Ages.

Saturday

Gambling is no fun anymore if it becomes addictive. In the US, approximately 6-8 million people fit the criteria for problem gamblers, but only around 8% of those seek help. This is especially troubling since gambling addicts have the highest suicide rate among addictive behaviors. (Problem in the US? Call 1-800-GAMBLER)

Sunday

At 11,674 stairs, the longest staircase in the world is up Niesen Mountain in Spiez, Switzerland, and was built so that maintenance workers could access the Niesenbahn funicular railway.

Monday

A 300 ft. (88 meter) staircase was installed next to a vertical rock wall in China’s Taihang Mountains to more safely replicate the thrill of rock climbing. To ascend it, however, you must be under 60 and affirm that you don’t suffer from heart or lung conditions.

Tuesday

Although “Stairway to Heaven” is one of rock’s most enduring and heavily-played songs, Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant dislikes performing it, saying he can no longer relate to the abstract lyrics. He even pledged $10,000 to a Portland, Oregon radio station promising not to play the song anymore in exchange for public sponsorships.

Wednesday

The French have a perfect term for that witty comment that occurs to you right after the moment has passed. “L’esprit de l’escalier,” or “staircase wit” indicates that perfect line you which hits you only on the stairway as you later leave the gathering.

Thursday

The Spanish Steps are in Rome, Italy, yet were commissioned by the French. The name comes from the fact that the Spanish embassy was then located at the base of the stairs.

Friday

The sport of racing up stairs, also called tower running or stairing, has exploded in popularity in recent years, become highly organized, and spawns over 160 races per year all around the world.

Saturday

Though ubiquitous and timelessly useful, stairs are also deadly, currently causing over 2,000 fatal falls annually in the United States.

Sunday

The largest seed in the world comes from the Coco-de-Mer, or “double coconut” tree, a long-lived tree which grows only on two islands in the Seychelles. This enormous seed, far larger than a coconut, weighs 33-66 lbs and rather resembles a human buttocks.

Monday

Earth’s smallest known seeds are from epiphytic orchids native to the rainforest, which produce seeds about the size of a dust particle. Six billion of these seeds weigh about one ounce.

Tuesday

Seeds disperse themselves by one of five methods: letting the wind carry them, letting water carry them, letting animals carry them (either on fur or in digestive tracts), gravity, or by “ballistic” dispersal, which involves a launching of the seeds by the plant.

Wednesday

There are many seed and food banks in the world to preserve crop varieties against disaster, but some are especially durable. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, aka the “Doomsday Vault,” preserves over 1.2 million seed samples from all over the planet and representing “13,000 years of agricultural history” as a protection from natural or man-made disasters.

Thursday

While plants can reproduce by seeds or spores, seeds evolved later and are comparatively hardier, with better protection from the elements and drought as well as a ready-made food supply inside.

Friday

The term “seed” appears in sports as a way of ranking, or, as one columnist put it, “planting individuals or teams into a competition.” This practice began in tennis as a way to keep it interesting by making sure the best players didn’t knock each other out early in a tournament, such that the best (or at least better) players were competing later and reducing the chance of blowouts in the finals. Later, this practice of ranking spread to basketball and other sports.

Saturday

The passing millennia may cause the end of most living things, but not all seeds. Modern scientists have planted 32,000 year-old seeds from the Arctic and 2,000 year-old seeds from the desert to see both grow in the modern era.

Sunday

Since Netflix originally focused on using the internet to rent DVDs, founders liked that this title used both ideas. “Flick” is an old term for film, since early theater films often flickered while playing.

Monday

Before the world knew Uber as a ridesharing app, German speakers knew it as the word for “over/above” (über).

Tuesday

Before “Fortnite” was an epically popular online game, “fortnight” just meant a timespan of two weeks, more common in British English.

Wednesday

Apple’s Macintosh computers are so named because this is one variety of apples, and a favorite of an early Mac developer Jef Raskin. However, the actual apple cultivar is spelled McIntosh, and the company had to tweak the spelling to avoid conflict with a high-end audio manufacturer McIntosh Laboratory.

Thursday

When all the hotels were booked for a San Fransisco conference, AirBandB founders rented out air mattresses in their apartment, calling it an “Air Bed and Breakfast.” This later became the namesake of the now-massive company.

Friday

YouTube is simply as combination of you, who might supply some of the video, and tube, a slang term for earlier cathode ray tube televisions.

Saturday

The “i” in front of many Apple products these days began with the iMac computer series, which effectively saved the company in the 1990s. Since those machines were designed for quick access to the then-young internet, that’s what “i” was for.