Making up collective nouns for different animals (also known as “terms of venery”) was a popular Victorian parlor game. Not all such phrases have gained wide acceptance, but those which have include an exaltation of larks, a murder of crows and a clowder of cats.
While “clowder” is the most commonly used term for groups of cats, there are a few other terms that have been used to describe three or more felines:
Cluster of cats
Clutter of cats
Destruction of cats
Dout of cats
Glaring of cats
Nuisance of cats
Pounce of cats
A 2007 genetic study appearing in Nature Ecology & Evolution confirmed that modern housecats are descendants of those first domesticated by farmers in the Near East around 9,000 years ago.
The Near East is a geographical term that roughly encompasses Western Asia.
The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia, Turkey (both Asian and European), and Egypt (which is mostly in North Africa).
The Far East is a geographical term in English that usually refers to East Asia (including Northeast Asia), the Russian Far East (part of North Asia), and Southeast Asia.
East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. Steinbeck stated about the nobvel: “It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years.” He further claimed: “I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this.”
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas CA, where most of his works are set. He studied English Literature at Stanford University, but he did not earn a degree there. In 1952 he published his longest work, East of Eden. According to his third wife, Elaine, he considered it his magnum opus, his greatest novel.
In the Seinfeld episode “The Pick”, Elaine sends out a Christmas card with her picture on it. Due to a wardrobe malfunction, she acquires the nickname “Nip”.
The character of Elaine on Seinfeld was played by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She is the great-great granddaughter of Leopold Louis-Dreyfus, who was the founder of the Louis Dreyfus Company, a major global corporation specializing in agricultural products, shipping, and finance. Several members of the Louis-Dreyfus family are still members of the corporation’s senior management.
The Seinfeld character Elaine is popularly described as an amalgamation of Larry David’s and Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends during their early days in New York as struggling comedians.
American actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Elaine Benes for all nine seasons on Seinfeld (although she did not appear in the series premiere), was recently given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
*Seinfeld *ran for nine seasons on NBC, from 1989 to 1998, airing 180 episodes during that span. Widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms ever made, it has been ranked among the best television shows of all time in publications such as Rolling Stone and TV Guide. The show is responsible for introducing such terms or phrases as ‘Yada, yada, yada’, ‘No soup for you’, and Festivus.
The five most favorite soups in America are:
- Chicken Noodle
- Tomato
- Clam Chowder
- Potato
- Minestrone
Stone Soup is an old folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.
A mélange is a mix or a medley. A mélanger is a stone grinder used to grind cocoa bean nibs to chocolate liquor.
Chocolate liquor, which is sometimes called cocoa liquor, contains no alcohol. The name ‘liquor’ is not used in the sense of a distilled, alcoholic substance, but rather the older meaning of the word, meaning ‘liquid’ or ‘fluid’.
Chocolate liqueur, however, is an alcoholic beverage that tastes like chocolate.
The strongest that any alcohol beverage, or liquor, can be is about 190 proof, which is about 95% alcohol. At higher proof levels, the alcohol draws moisture from the air and self-dilutes.
There are 2 main ways of measuring the alcohol content of beverages: In the US, the alcohol content is measured in alcohol proof which is twice the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV), used in Europe. Therefore, a 150-proof drink has 75% ABV. Among high-alcohol drinks are Bruichladdich X4 Quadrupled Whisky 184 proof (92% ABV) and a beverage from Poland called Spirytus, which is
192 proof (96% ABV).
Whisky (or whiskey) is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. The name is derived from the Gaelic word uisce / uisge, meaning “water.”
The spelling of the name is usually “whiskey” for beverages from the United States or Ireland, and “whisky” for beverages from other countries, including Scotland (hence, “Scotch whisky”).
A whippet named Whiskey was this year’s Best In Show at the National Dog Show in Philadelphia. He was in the final Best in Show round with King the Wire Fox Terrier, Ducky the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Irupe the Doberman Pinscher, Bella the Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Bogie the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and Billy the Lhasa Apso. Hosted by John O’Hurley (Seinfeld and Dancing with the Stars) and David Frei, an American Kennel Club-licensed judge, the show is in its 17th year and airs directly after the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Approximately 20 million people watched the show this year, making it the the highest-rated dog contest in the US, beating out the Puppy Bowl and the Westminster Dog Show.
The American Kennel Club is a registry of purebred dog pedigrees in the United States.
The AKC divides dog breeds into seven groups:
Sporting Group
Hound Group
Working Group
Terrier Group
Toy Group
Herding Group
Non-Sporting Group
In addition, there is a Miscellaneous Class, which consists of 11 breeds which are not yet considered purebred, and a Foundation Stock Program, which has 65 rare breeds that are being established in the country.