Useful "Useless" Knowledge

Misotheism, Antitheism, & Dystheism:

Misotheism is the hatred of god(s). Usually brought on by great hardship the believer thinks god(s) is in some way responsible for there are many historical and mythological examples of misotheism. Some modern day 'dark pagan' traditions and/or devil worshiping sects (not to be confused with Satanism which involves no belief in any external god) have incorporated misotheism into their dogmas.

Antitheism is the hatred of all forms of theism or the belief in god(s). Always themselves atheist, antitheism sometimes is expressed as a hatred or intolerance for theists themselves as the antitheist will often see such beliefs as a character flaw.

Dystheism is the belief in god(s) that aren't entirely good or to some degree evil. Very common among polytheists, who usually have one of more gods who are assigned to war, death, and/or other difficult aspects of life, dystheism is best embodied by 'trickster' gods such as Loki (Norwegian) and Coyote (Native American).

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: a form of serendipity, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is when a person upon learning an obscure word, fact, or other item of interest find over the next few weeks or days themselves encountering said word, fact, or point of interest where before they had never heard of it.

Presidential Assassinations (US): Most Americans can readily tell you the events and culprits involved the assassinations of presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, but there have been two other presidents in US history who where murdered while in office; James A. Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901.

Kennedy was the only among the four to die instantly from his injuries. The other three survived for one or several days before finally succumbing to death.

Unsubstantiated rumors of apparently successful assassination plots surrounded the deaths of both president Zachary Taylor in 1850 and president Warren G. Harding in 1923.

This is some very enlightening stuff to read!

Thank you for providing this Hydra!

I look forward to what other things you might bring up.

Urs wrote:

This is some very enlightening stuff to read!

Thank you for providing this Hydra!

I look forward to what other things you might bring up.

Well, I'm very glad you've enjoyed the entries thus far, Urs.

I plan to keep covering a wide range of subjects. So, hopefully, there will be a little bit of something for everyone.

RAS syndrome: Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome refers to when a person uses one of the words which is initialized in an acronym along with the acronym itself.

RAS syndrome is of course itself and example of itself in action. Another come example in the literary world would be ISBN number (International Standard Book Number number).

Red Rose: as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Red Rose is more the rambunctious sister of Snow White. Red Rose's character is associated with summer, where her sister is with winter, and in that way the two are opposites or reflections of each other.

It should also be noted, to those only familiar with the fable of Snow White by way of the popular Disney movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", that in its original form the dwarfs were the evil forces the two young sisters were troubled by and where not their saviors or protectors as they are depicted to be in the movie.

HYdraMStar wrote:

Red Rose: as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Red Rose is more the rambunctious sister of Snow White. Red Rose's character is associated with summer, where her sister is with winter, and in that way the two are opposites or reflections of each other.

It should also be noted, to those only familiar with the fable of Snow White by way of the popular Disney movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", that in its original form the dwarfs were the evil forces the two young sisters were troubled by and where not their saviors or protectors as they are depicted to be in the movie.

This is not wholely true. There are MANY versions of the Snow White story. I know that Russia has an entirely different version of the tale (it is mostly there - but not). In learning of the Russian version, I researched and found a number of others. It should also be understood that Disney has almost never been true to the original tale.

Red Rose mostly appears in other stories, some with Snow White and others where she is an only sibling (as is Snow White in a number of her tales). One has to remember that we are dealing with folk tales - not written authorial tales (and the Brothers Grimm and others were very recent in getting them written down, so there really are NO true sources), so it all depends on the location of the source as to the actual historic version of the source.

TerishD wrote:

HYdraMStar wrote:

Red Rose: as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Red Rose is more the rambunctious sister of Snow White. Red Rose's character is associated with summer, where her sister is with winter, and in that way the two are opposites or reflections of each other.

It should also be noted, to those only familiar with the fable of Snow White by way of the popular Disney movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", that in its original form the dwarfs were the evil forces the two young sisters were troubled by and where not their saviors or protectors as they are depicted to be in the movie.

This is not wholely true. There are MANY versions of the Snow White story. I know that Russia has an entirely different version of the tale (it is mostly there - but not). In learning of the Russian version, I researched and found a number of others. It should also be understood that Disney has almost never been true to the original tale.

Red Rose mostly appears in other stories, some with Snow White and others where she is an only sibling (as is Snow White in a number of her tales). One has to remember that we are dealing with folk tales - not written authorial tales (and the Brothers Grimm and others were very recent in getting them written down, so there really are NO true sources), so it all depends on the location of the source as to the actual historic version of the source.

You're right there are tons of different versions of these tales. Folklore and fairy tales are by their very nature very hard to nail down, but most folks, right or wrong, recognize the Brothers Grimm and to a degree Disney the leading 'authorities' and its interesting to look at how even they disagree on them.

As a side note; I, myself, first became aware of the Rose Red character after the Stephen King book/movie by the same (or similar) title, which had nothing at all to do with the old tales.

quite good stuff... to tell the truth.

It seems I learn something new every time I check this topic. Kudos to you Hydra.

Gallows Humor: gallows humor is humor born out of life-threatening circumstances or situations in which the speaker believes their death is approaching and inevitable or very likely.

Unlike black comedy, gallows humor comes from the people who's lives are actually in peril, not a second party observer.

Chopped Liver: brought to the consciousness of mainstream non-Jewish culture by the expression "What am I, chopped liver?", chopped liver is a long standing popular spread in Jewish cuisine. It is made from pan frying or boiling liver (chicken or beef) with onions and rendered chicken fat and then mixing it with chopped boiled eggs, though naturally other variations of the recipe exist. Chopped liver is usually served with rye bread or as a sandwich.

Hitotsume-kozō: monsters of Japanese folklore, Hitotsume-kozō, are considered to be a bad omen, but are rather harmless. One eyed bald and roughly the size of a child the Hitotsume-kozō have an extremely long tongue and a love for silence.

Adam Rainer: Born in Austria in 1899, Adam Rainer, by the age of twenty-one had only reached the height of around three feet and ten inches, but thereafter, for unknown reasons, had a dramatic growth spurt. By the age of thirty-two Mr. Rainer stood at seven feet and two inches tall. Upon his death in 1950 he had grown another six inches for a grand total of forty-six inches of growth during his adult life, making him the only man in recorded history to be both a dwarf and a giant.

Manticore: similar to the Egyptian sphinx, the Persian manticore has the body of a red lion, the head of a man with three rows of sharpened teeth, and sometimes horns and the tail of either a dragon or a scorpion. Having a voice like a trumpet and the ability to shoot spines from it's tail the manticore paralyzes his victim prior to eating them.

Duclod: a term made popular by an anonymous letter writer who targeted mostly collage students, duclod is a merging of the two words dual and closeted. It refers to a person whom is bisexual but hides their true sexuality from both the heterosexual and homosexual communities. They typically present themselves as homosexual while in the company of gays and heterosexual while in the company of straights; hence the term dual closeted or duclod.

The identity of the anonymous letter writer was supposedly discovered in 2007, after nearly fourteen years of activity, by Sarah Aswell, a journalist for The Advocate (a popular magazine geared towards the interests of the homosexual community). In her subsequent articles Ms. Aswell only referred to the man behind the letters as "Richard", no doubt the last in a long list of pseudonyms.

Belle Gunness: born in the mid 1800s, Belle Sorenson Gunness is one of the most prolific female serial killers the United Sates has known. It is believed she killed over twenty people over the course of several decades. Her victims included two husbands, several suitors, and two if not all of her children. The motivation for her murders was the collection of life insurance benefits.

According to hear-say and eye-witness Mrs. Gunness and the last of her children were murder and their farmhouse burned by Ray Lamphere, who was deeply in love with and obsessed with Mrs. Gunness, in 1908. But due to Mr. Lamphere's own untimely death, while being held for trial, and discrepancies in identifying the body rumors of Mrs. Gunness's survival and sightings of her persisted well into the 1930s.

In 2007 the presumed grave of Mrs. Gunness was exhumed in an attempt to prove rather or not the headless body found in the burned out farm did indeed belong to Mrs. Gunness or rather it was that of another of her victims planted there in an effort to fake her own death and take advantage of Mr. Lamphere's crime of arson to escape law enforcements increasing interest in the deaths of her family members. So far the DNA results haven't given any answers.

Interrobang: simply a superimposition of a question mark and a exclamation mark, the interrobang (‽) is used when a statement 1) asks a question in an excited manner, (2) expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or (3) asks a rhetorical question. Due to the fact that most typewriters do not have a interrobang key the same effect is often gained by using its two root symbols side by side (?!).

HYdraMStar wrote:

Interrobang: simply a superimposition of a question mark and a exclamation mark, the interrobang (‽) is used when a statement 1) asks a question in an excited manner, (2) expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or (3) asks a rhetorical question. Due to the fact that most typewriters do not have a interrobang key the same effect is often gained by using its two root symbols side by side (?!).

You can slip these by some editors, but they are not really proper (or accepted). If you have such a situation in a story where an interrobang could be used, text should be used to declare the excited state.

Tom grabbed his side in alarm while saying, "Who else is here?!"
Approaching the edge of the cliff, Tom suddenly grabbed his side while spinning and yelling back at those that made him go ahead, "Who else is here?"

As a general rule, a writer should never rely on ending symbols to tell the reader how to read the sentence. By the time most readers get to the symbol, the sentence has already been read -- forcing at times a need for the reader to go back and read the sentence again. The text around a story should thus work to inform the reader of the situation with the symbol merely reinforcing the mood of the sentence.

TerishD wrote:

HYdraMStar wrote:

Interrobang: simply a superimposition of a question mark and a exclamation mark, the interrobang (‽) is used when a statement 1) asks a question in an excited manner, (2) expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or (3) asks a rhetorical question. Due to the fact that most typewriters do not have a interrobang key the same effect is often gained by using its two root symbols side by side (?!).

You can slip these by some editors, but they are not really proper (or accepted). If you have such a situation in a story where an interrobang could be used, text should be used to declare the excited state.

Tom grabbed his side in alarm while saying, "Who else is here?!"
Approaching the edge of the cliff, Tom suddenly grabbed his side while spinning and yelling back at those that made him go ahead, "Who else is here?"

As a general rule, a writer should never rely on ending symbols to tell the reader how to read the sentence. By the time most readers get to the symbol, the sentence has already been read -- forcing at times a need for the reader to go back and read the sentence again. The text around a story should thus work to inform the reader of the situation with the symbol merely reinforcing the mood of the sentence.

Yeah, I've actually never seen it anywhere other then online, and even then not in fiction or even non-fiction writing. But then there are a lot of other broken rules of grammar and speech/writing that are unacceptable on a professional level but quite accepted and widely used socially. I just more or less thought it was interesting to know that the mark does actually have a name and not really promoting it's use.

Seasonal affective disorder: a form of depression, Seasonal affective disorder or SAD is often called Winter Depression of Winter Blues. It is a condition in which a person who is free of mental illness or depression the rest of the year experiences the symptoms and feelings of depression during winter months or less frequently summer, spring, or fall months. Some suffers of SAD receive yearly treatments for the disorder as any other non-seasonal affected depressant might, as the condition does tent to reappear and repeat yearly.

Dildo Key: though many people's minds might bring up an erotica connotation to the name of a small island located in the Florida Bay, Dildo Key is in fact named for a genus of cacti, acanthocereus or the dildo cactus, which grows wild in the Florida everglades.

As part of the Everglades National Park, Dildo Key is not populated by people.

Allophilia: the extreme opposite of prejudice, allophilia is the love of people or a group of people who are not like yourself. Allophilia can be associated with race, religion, country of origin, sexuality, or any other number of factors. A person who is an allophili typically have a sense of kinship with the people they feel affection towards, seek out and engage them in conversation and/or relationships, and in general show enthusiasm for said group and their culture or other aspects of their lives or lifestyles.

London Underground Mosquito: of the genus Culex the London Underground mosquito is found only in the London Underground. The species evolved from the Culex pipiens, above ground, species of mosquito sometime in the last few decades and displays very different behaviors then the Culex pipiens. They have also proved very difficult to breed in captivity.

Spite Houses: A spite house is any house or building which was built for the primary purpose of annoying or otherwise causing hardship to a neighbor or some other person the constructor feels they were wronged by.

The Richardson Spite House in New York City was likely the most famous spite house. It stood on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 82nd street from 1882 til its destruction in 1915. Joseph Richardson, the owner of the plot of land on which it stood, had it built after the owner of the property beside it, Hyman Sarner, offered him only $1,000 for the plot and stated it was too small to be of any use by itself. The Richardson Spite House was four stories tall, 104 feet long, and only five feet wide.