I remembered a thread that had a lot of info on the subject.
Could I legally will my corpse skin to be turned into leather?
There was a stage actor in Toronto who willed his skull to his theater troupe to be used as a prop. He said his dream role was Yorik, but he’d be happy just serving as ambiance in some desert scene or something.
Huh, why did I misremember the city? But yeah, that’s definitely the guy I was thinking of.
Most mammals are nocturnal.
In mammals, the majority of species are nocturnal (69%). Diurnal (20%) and crepuscular (2.5%) species are geographically distributed in regions of the world with biologically useful day- or twilight, respectively.
…and the next sentence in that cite sent me scurrying off to google
Finally, cathemeral (8.5%) species are often found in polar regions with long periods of light and dark (Bennie, Duffy, Inger, & Gaston, 2014).
j
The Barbie doll was co-designed by aerospace engineer Jack Ryan.
Interesting guy.
j
Yes, and many animals are turning more nocturnal, because of us:
The only animals I see during daytime in the marsh are insects, squirrels and birds.
(Post deleted owing to massive stupidity on my part)
j
It’s a bit of a hijack, but this started me thinking about what wild mammals do I actually see, day to day, and the only real everyday one is the grey squirrel. Foxes fairly commonly (but often at dusk/night). Deer maybe once or twice a week. Rats and mice from time to time. That’s about it, I think.
/hijack.
j
It’s more common than you think for both humans and animals to have biphasic sleep patterns. This is when someone or something sleeps in two shifts. It used to be more common among humans before industrialization. The industrial revolution began in the early eighteenth century:
Also called segmented or punctuated sleep. There are written records describing this common practice before TV and other lighting systems were invented. People would sleep for a few hours then spend an hour or two doing what is possible by candlelight. Or other stuff that couples might do in the middle of the night.
A small factoid I came across in a work meeting just now. The dot above an i or a j is known as a tittle.
This lead me to wonder aloud if I could replace the term “dotting the i’s” with the word titillate. So I could say, “I’ll be with you in a second, I’ve just got to titillate this sentence”. Alas the etymology of titillate has nothing to do with the little tittle that we use on our letters. But I may take up the cause.
If the dot is a tittle I guess the right verb would be to tittilate, with double t and single l. And the cross in the t is called a bar, so you would have to tittilate and bar (or bar and tittilate, whichever sounds better in your ears) the sentence to be completely thorough.
Searching this I learned that “crossing the T” is a naval maneuver that precedes the expression. An American expression, it seems.
As far as I can see tittilate is not an existing word. I mean it’s now one in my vocabulary obviously and I fully intend to use it as much as possible; however the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein might have a word or two to say to me about inventing my own private language.
You have to start somewhere when you coin a new word and hope others take it up. Perhaps they will, if it is a good one. I believe I might have contributed to Fremdschämen in German based on the Spanish vergüenza ajena, and if not, it was simultaneous resonance. As I have stated a couple of times here, the thought of it titillates me pink.
As seen fossilized in the expression “every jot and tittle”.
Great. What the hell’s a “jot”?
I believe it is the English (and therefore idiosyncratic) spelling for the Phoenician letter Yodh (yōd) which in turn turned into the Greek letter Iota (ιώτα) which is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. Small was used as a metaphor for looking and caring for details, thus the expression Chronos alluded to. This letter turned into the modern J, j (long story) which in its lower case sports a tittle. Which closes the loop.
Obscure, huh? I hope five “which” are not too many.
Jesus used the phrase “jot and tittle” , saying that nothing in the existing Jewish law would change, i.e. every detail, every “jot and tittle” is true.
In Hebrew calligraphy, certain small flourishes are called jots, others are called tittles. Jesus spoke Hebrew, so it was an expression that would be easily understood by his audience.
That seems like an odd translation to me as the extensions on the edges of letters are called serifs not tittles. And I think that Hebrew character is actually pronounced “yod” which is the latin equivalent of Y.
So, look I’ve corrected the bible for you 
:
For I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one Y or one serif shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
(I’m assuming the rest of the sentence is accurate, but I’m not so confident now)