Segnbora-t's New Writeups

The Holy Foreskin (thing)

2009-10-07T17:43:09Z

Luke 2:21 says that Jesus Christ was formally named and circumcised on the eighth day of his life. January 1 was once celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ (these days Roman Catholics observe January 1 as the Solemnity of Mary instead). The apocryphal Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior goes into much more detail about what happened, saying that when Jesus was a baby,

"And the time of circumcision, that is, the eighth day, being at hand, the child was to be circumcised according to the law. Wherefore they circumcised Him in the cave. And the old Hebrew woman took the piece of skin; but some say that she took the navel-string, and laid it past in a jar of old oil of nard. And she had a son, a dealer in unguents, and she gave it to him, saying: See that thou do not sell this jar of unguent of nard, even although three hundred denarii should be offered thee for it. And this is that jar which Mary the sinner bought and poured upon the head

…

Paddington Bear (person)

2009-07-21T03:27:48Z

"Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform. In fact, that was how he came to have such an unusual name for a bear, for Paddington was the name of the station."

opening lines of A Bear Called Paddington

Paddington Bear was created by author Michael Bond in his 1958 children's book A Bear Called Paddington. At the time, Bond was a writer who had sold some short stories and radio scripts, but was working as a cameraman at the BBC. His agent had suggested he try some writing for children. Bond was inspired with the idea of writing about a bear by a stuffed toy bear that he bought his wife for Christmas 1956, which he had picked up because he felt sorry for it alone on the shelf. His first stories about the bear, though, were originally written more for his own amusement than for publication.

Paddington is described as a small brown bear with black ears who the Browns encounter when they come to pick up…

Shaun the Sheep (thing)

2008-10-14T21:27:23Z

He's Shaun the sheep,
He's Shaun the sheep.
He even mucks about with those who cannot bleat

Keep it in mind, he's one of a kind
Oh...Life's a treat with Shaun the sheep!

He's Shaun the sheep,
He's Shaun the sheep.
He doesn't miss a trick or ever lose a beat

Perhaps one day, you'll find a way
To...Come and meet with Shaun the sheep
Oh...Come and bleat with Shaun the Sheep!

Shaun the sheep is a sheep (obviously) who appeared first in the 1995 Wallace and Gromit animated film A Close Shave, and one of the W&G "Cracking Contraptions" shorts, "Shopper 13," before becoming the star of his own series of self-titled five-minute shorts in 2007, all made by the English company Aardman Animations. His name was given to him in A Close Shave just after he'd accidentally been sent through a shearing machine; Wallace looked at the shivering sheep and remarked, "We'll call him Shaun, eh?" (…

Peace sign (thing)

2008-09-13T20:23:24Z

The "peace symbol" of a circle with a vertical line all the way across and two lines from the center to the edge at approximately the positions of 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock (that's ☮) was designed in 1958 by English designer Gerald Holtom. Holtom wanted a simple symbol to be carried by people during a march from London to Aldermaston by the British organization Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War. (The newly named Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament found the idea of a protest march to be too radical at the time.) Holtom had first thought of a Christian cross, assuming that churches would support the idea of peace, and also because the march was to start on Good Friday and end on Easter Monday. However, as Holtom said later, "all the church leaders who I interviewed refused point-blank to associate their religions with the March project."

Holtom then decided to make a new symbol. In one interview he described the lines in the circle as meant "to mean a human…

Boston marriage (idea)

2007-08-31T21:14:23Z

A "Boston marriage" is a long-term intimate friendship between two women who usually live together. The term probably came to English as a reference to Henry James' 1886 novel The Bostonians, which focuses on Olive Chancellor, a Boston woman who we would now call a feminist; her conservative Southern cousin Basil Ransom; and the younger woman Verena Tarrant who is staying with Olive and working toward becoming a feminist speaker. Basil is attracted to Verena, if not her ideas, and the novel is a sort of tug-of-war between Basil and Olive over Verena. James may have modeled Olive and Verena on the writer Sarah Orne Jewett and poet Annie Adams Fields, or perhaps on his own sister Alice James and her relationship with Katharine Loring.

At the time, living with another woman was a (somewhat) socially acceptable alternative to marriage that preserved a lot more independence than continuing to live with blood family members. (Livin…

Guinea pig (thing)

2007-08-18T03:53:39Z

In informal English usage, "guinea pig" means the subject of an experiment. In current laboratory research on animals, mice and rats are more commonly used rodents than guinea pigs; however, in the past the guinea pig, or cavy, was widely used in scientific research. The biggest boom in their use came in the 1880s after two discoveries in bacteriology: in 1882 German bacteriologist Robert Koch used guinea pigs to discover the bacterium that causes tuberculosis because mice and rats did not develop obvious symptoms, and in 1884 German bacteriologist Friedrich Löffler (or Loeffler) discovered that mice and rats were not very susceptible to diphtheria, but guinea pigs are extremely sensitive to it. In fact, guinea pigs have an immune system much more like that of humans than most rodents, and so were the most widely used test animal in the tracking down of disease germs in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Guinea pigs are also one of the few lab animals which require…