Cynophobia: The Fear of Dogs

Unlike the fear of spiders, snakes or rats, the fear of cats (ailurophobia) and the fear of dogs (cynophobia) are not particularly common zoophobia fears. That said, those that do suffer from them are subjected to seeing the source of their fear everywhere they go. Cats and dogs are the most common household pets, from rural households to urban ones, and although to most of us the idea of fearing creatures we live in harmony with is strange, to some, the very idea of sharing a home with descendants of wolves is inconceivable. Perhaps that’s where cynophobia finds its source.

The post Cynophobia: The Fear of Dogs appeared first on Factual Facts.

11 Brilliant Gifts For The Traveler in Your Life

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Amazon / UncommonGoods

Many of us have at least one loved one who never can stay in one place for too long. For that frequent traveler in your life, heavy books or gift cards to local restaurants probably aren’t going to cut it. This holiday season, get them one of these products that are made to complement their adventures.

1. ZENDURE PORTABLE CHARGER; $30

Long-haul flyers can take solace in always having a little extra juice for their phones and e-books. Zendure’s portable charger raised more than $216,000 on Kickstarter, for good reason. It’s crush-proof, so no need to worry about it getting squished in suitcases or overhead bins. It turns on automatically when you plug your device in, and it can hold 95 percent of its charge on stand-by for up to six months between trips. It comes in silver or black, and for a few more dollars, you can upgrade to more battery power.

Find It: Amazon

2. THE NEW YORK TIMES: 36 HOURS EUROPE; $40

The wanderlust-prone are sure to find a city they’ve never been to in The New York Times’ book-length collection of their popular “36 Hours” travel series. The newly updated European edition features 130 cities across the continent, with itineraries that highlight the best that each destination has to offer—and shares a game plan for visiting each of them in just one weekend. For those whose travel horizons extend beyond Europe, there are also U.S. and Latin American versions.

Find It: Amazon

3. POLAROID CUBE +; $150

This tiny HD camera will fit in any suitcase, no matter how full. It’s just 1 cubic inch, but can shoot video in full HD or capture 8-megapixel images. It’s waterproof and shockproof, so it’s perfect for rugged adventures and city travels alike. Plus, with a 128° angle lens, it can capture more of the scene than a regular camera.

Find It: Amazon

4. BOSE QUIETCOMFORT 25 ACOUSTIC NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES; $300

Every traveler needs a way to block out some of the less glamorous aspects of jet-setting. Bose’s headphones come with a high recommendation from The Wirecutter, whose reviewers spent 30 hours testing 20 different noise-cancelling headphone models. The lightweight, comfy QC25 model has great noise-cancellation, and collapses down to a smaller size for storage.

Find It: Amazon

5. RIFLE PAPER CO. PASSPORT POCKET NOTEBOOKS; $11

Rifle’s passport-themed notebooks are a stylish reminder of the joys of travel. The miniature booklets are the perfect size to carry around in a back pocket or small bag, with 64 unlined sheets and natural vellum pages. They come in packs with two different designs, so if you really like them, you can even keep one for yourself!

Find It: Amazon

6. LOGITECH KEYS-TO-GO ULTRA-PORTABLE BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD; $45

It’s easier to write those emails home on a standard keyboard rather than tapping away at a touchscreen. For those who don’t bring a full laptop on their trips and opt for a tablet or iPad instead, Logitech’s Bluetooth keyboard—available in black, teal, or red—has full-size keys. It’s also still light, easy to carry in a bag or even a large coat pocket, spill-resistant, and can be used for up to three months on a single charge.

Find It: Amazon

7. ESPRO STAINLESS STEEL 12 OUNCE TRAVEL PRESS WITH COFFEE FILTER; $35

Road-trip lovers can enjoy great coffee no matter what pit-stops they counter with Espro’s travel brewer, essentially a fancy French press in an insulated cup. It has a two-filter brewing process that eliminates the grit that accompanies French presses, and halts the extraction process once the plunger is pushed down all the way, so your coffee doesn’t continue to brew. No need to strain it out of the cup. The insulation keeps it warm for four to six hours. The cup comes in a few different colors as well as a version made for brewing tea.

Find It: Amazon

8. NATIONAL PARKS EXPLORER MAP; $55

For the roving outdoor explorer in your life, consider this map of some of the best wilderness destinations in the U.S. It comes with tree stickers so they can mark off the national parks they have checked off their bucket list. With 59 parks in total, the vintage-style design shows off the many places that could serve as their next vacation plan.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

9. CITY MAP GLASS; $14

Let your favorite cross-country explorer celebrate their favorite city with tumblers depicting the street grids of some of the biggest metros in the U.S. Designed by the Boston-based Brian Johnson, there are currently 17 different city glasses to choose from, each etched with part of the urban street grid, neighborhood names, and the city’s geographical coordinates. Whether you’re looking to honor someone’s hometown pride or future travel plans, these cups make it easy to toast to some of America’s most exciting destinations.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

10. TRUNKSTER CARRY-ON; $345

The price tag on this one may seem high for a suitcase, but this isn’t just a bag. You can track its location via a smartphone app, and it has a built-in scale to ensure you never go over your maximum weight. There’s a removable power bank with USB ports to charge your devices located on the top of the suitcase. Plus, it’s exactly the size of most airlines’ maximum carry-on luggage allowance.

Find It: Trunkster

11. MEN’S ORGANIZING TRAVEL 4-PACK & WOMEN’S ORGANIZING TRAVEL 4-PACK; $46

Keeping organized on the road can be tough, but these cloth bags make it easy to keep essentials separate and handy. They’re printed with images of what should go inside, whether it’s underwear, a hair dryer, or dirty clothes. There are two sets—labeled as men’s and women’s—with different images, in case your favorite traveler needs a bag for earbuds more than one for a hairdryer.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

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November 23, 2016 – 6:00am

Tales from the Butterball Hotline

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It’s 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day and you just realized you forgot to thaw your turkey. What do you do?

Don’t panic. You just need to call 1-800-BUTTERBALL. Yes, it’s real, and yes, they really do have poultry experts standing by to help you with your last-minute snafus, flubs and foul-ups. And they’re open 24/7. If you wake up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. thinking about salmonella or whether you can bathe your turkey with your toddler (see below), never fear—Butterball is there for you. And it’s not just about Thanksgiving. The line is open in December to help you with those holiday feasts as well.

When the hotline first opened up to panicked chefs in the early ‘80s, a mere six “home economists” responded to 11,000 phone calls during November and December. These days, their staff has expanded to more than 50 and they answer more than 100,000 calls. 

Those 50 staff members have heard it all. They get the typical questions you’d expect turkey experts to get, of course: how long will it take to thaw the turkey, how do I stuff a turkey, are there any allergens in Butterball products?

THE QUESTIONABLE

But there’s also the, um, unexpected: “Can I brine my turkey in the washing machine?” and “The family dog is inside the turkey and can’t get out.” It was a chihuahua, in case you’re wondering, and the Butterball expert did manage to help the owners get the dog out safely.

Another inexperienced caller worried that her turkey wouldn’t come out of the oven because she figured it was going to rise like bread does.

One Butterball employee actually stayed on the line while her caller walked through a grocery store and painstakingly picked out ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner.

More recently, a hotline employee was surprised to hear from a wife who came home to find the turkey floating in the tub while her husband gave the kids a bath. Believe it or not, because the turkey hadn’t been removed from the package, it was salvaged, but the kids complained about the chilly water.

Don’t feel bad if you have to call the Butterball hotline for assistance, though. Even President Bartlet knows when to call in the experts:

By the way, there’s also an option for those of you who prefer assistance in the form of written word: talkline@butterball.com. This year, between November 17 and November 24, they’ve also added a texting option.

This post originally appeared in 2011.


November 23, 2016 – 5:30am

What’s the Kennection?

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Tuesday, November 22, 2016 – 23:46

Quiz Number: 
111

14 Word Origins Hiding In Plain Sight

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iStock

It’s fair to say that some word origins are pretty straightforward—straightforward being a fine example of that. Then there are those word origins that are so obscure, the word in question offers few clues to its history. Tragedy, for instance, might come from the Greek for “goat song” (perhaps a reference to actors in Ancient Greek tragedies dressing in animal furs, or maybe because a goat was once offered as a prize). A glass of punch takes its name from the Hindi word for five (because the original recipe for punch had just five ingredients: water, liquor, lemon juice, sugar, and spices—although the Oxford English Dictionary says that the original recipe was milk, curd, ghee, honey, and molasses). And the less said about avocados and orchids the better, frankly.

But then there are those word origins that are hiding in plain sight: words whose origins, after a just little consideration, seem obvious once you know them.

1. SECRETARY

The original secretaries were officers or aides working in the courts of European monarchs, a sense of the word that still survives in the titles of positions like “secretary of state.” As close associates of the king or queen, these secretaries were often privy to a lot of private information—which made a secretary literally a keeper of secrets.

2. PANDEMONIUM

You might well know that this word was coined by the poet John Milton, who used it as the name of the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost in 1667. And you might also have figured out that the pan– here is the same as in words like pandemic and panorama, and literally means “all” or “every.” Put together, that makes pandemonium literally “a place of all demons.”

3. PREPOSTEROUS

Preposterous is one of a handful of so-called oxymoronic words in the English language, whose roots combine elements that contradict one another. A pianoforte, for instance, literally produces a “soft-loud” sound. And the contradiction is even more obvious in words like bittersweet, bridegroom, and speechwriting. The preposterous meaning of preposterous derives from the fact that it brings together the prefixes pre–, meaning “before,” and post–, meaning “after”—and so literally describes something that is back to front or in the incorrect order.

4. BREAKFAST

That meal you have first thing in the morning? It would have originally “broken” the previous night’s “fast.”

5. MONTH

The months of the year were originally calculated from the phases of the moon, and ultimately a month is essentially a “moon-th.” Another Moon-related word that’s staring you in the face is lunatic: originally an adjective, describing someone whose behavior was affected by the phases of the moon.

6. NAUSEA

The first few letters of words like nausea and nauseated are closely related to maritime words like nautical and nautilus. That’s because nausea was once specifically used to mean “seasickness,” and in fact derives from the Greek word for a ship. Moreover …

7. ASTRONAUT

… the astro– of astronaut is related to the root of words like asterisk and asteroid, while the –naut comes from the same seafaring root as nausea. Put them together, and an astronaut is literally a “star-sailor.” Likewise …

8. DISASTER

… a disaster is literally an ill-starred event: a catastrophe blamed on an ill-fated astrological misalignment of the stars and planets.

9. DISAPPOINT

It stands to reason that if you can appoint someone, then you can disappoint them; in fact, the word originally meant (and literally means) “to remove someone from office.” The current sense of “to let down” or “to fail” developed in the late 15th century from the earlier use of disappoint to mean “to frustrate someone’s plans” or “to renege on an engagement.”

10. FREELANCE

Yes, the “lance” in freelance is the same one carried by a medieval knight, at least in early 19th century fiction. That’s because the original freelancers were mercenary knights in stories like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe—characters who carried no allegiance to any specific cause, and could instead be paid or hired to fight.

11. EQUINOX

The equinox is the date at which the Sun passes the Earth’s celestial equator, on which night and day are exactly equal; appropriately enough, the word itself literally means “equal night.”

12. BLOCKBUSTER

The original blockbusters were enormous bombs developed by Britain’s Royal Air Force for use in raids on German targets during the Second World War. To the RAF, they were officially known as HC, or “high-capacity” bombs. To the pilots involved in the raids, they were known by the unassuming nickname “cookies.” But to the press, these enormous bombs (the largest of which weighed 12,000 pounds and contained 8400 pounds of explosive Amatex [PDF]) were nicknamed blockbusters—bombs powerful enough to destroy an entire block of buildings. After the War, the military use of the word fell out of use so that only a figurative meaning, describing anything, from films to political speeches, that had a similarly impressive impact, remained in use.

13. MALARIA

Mal– essentially means “bad,” as it does in words like malfunction and malpractice, while aria is the Italian word for “air.” Ultimately malaria was so called because it was once said to be caused by the stagnant air and choking fumes the emanated from areas of marshland or swamp, rather than the infected mosquitos that inhabited them.

14. JOURNEY

Once you remember that jour is the French word for “day,” it’s easy to figure out that a journey is literally a day’s traveling—while a sojourn is literally a one-day stay; you write up a day’s events in your journal; and you can read accounts of the day’s events in journalism.


November 22, 2016 – 8:00pm

10 Filling Facts About Turkeys

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iStock

Don’t be fooled by their reputation for being thoughtless. These roly-poly birds have a few tricks up their wings.

1. THE BIRDS WERE NAMED AFTER THE COUNTRY.

The turkey is an American bird, so why does it share its name with a country on the other side of the world? Laziness, mostly. Turkish traders had been importing African guinea fowl to Europe for some time when North American explorers started shipping M. gallopavo back to the Old World. The American birds looked kind of like the African “turkey-cocks,” and so Europeans called them “turkeys.” Eventually, the word “turkey” came to describe M. gallopavo exclusively.

2. THEY NEARLY WENT EXTINCT.

By the early 20th century, the combination of overzealous hunting and habitat destruction had dwindled the turkey populations down to 30,000. With the help of conservationists, the turkey made a comeback. The birds are now so numerous that they’ve become a nuisance in some parts of the country.

3. THEY’VE GOT TWO STOMACHS.

Like all birds, turkeys don’t have teeth, so they’ve got to enlist some extra help to break down their food. Each swallowed mouthful goes first into a chamber called a proventriculus, which uses stomach acid to start softening the food. From there, food travels to the gizzard, where specialized muscles smash it into smaller pieces.

4. FEMALE TURKEYS DON’T GOBBLE.

Turkeys of both sexes purr, whistle, cackle, and yelp, but only the males gobble. A gobble is the male turkey’s version of a lion’s roar, announcing his presence to females and warning his rivals to stay away. To maximize the range of their calls, male turkeys often gobble from the treetops.

5. THEY SLEEP IN TREES.

Due to their deliciousness, turkeys have a lot of natural predators. As the sun goes down, the turkeys go up—into the trees. They start by flying onto a low branch, then clumsily hop their way upward, branch by branch, until they reach a safe height.

6. BOTH MALE AND FEMALE TURKEYS HAVE WATTLES.

The wattle is the red dangly bit under the turkey’s chin. The red thing on top of the beak is called a snood. Both sexes have those, too, but they’re more functional in male turkeys. Studies have shown that female turkeys prefer mates with longer snoods, which may indicate health and good genes.

7. THEY HAVE REALLY GOOD VISION.

Turkey eyes are really, really sharp. On top of that, they’ve got terrific peripheral vision. We humans can only see about 180 degrees, but given the placement of their eyes on the sides of their heads, turkeys can see 270 degrees. They’ve also got way better color vision than we do and can see ultraviolet light.

8. THEY’RE FAST ON THE GROUND, TOO.

You wouldn’t guess it by looking at them, but turkeys can really book it when they need to. We already know they’re fast in the air; on land, a running turkey can reach a speed of up to 25 mph—as fast as a charging elephant.

9. THEY’RE SMART … BUT NOT THAT SMART.

Turkeys can recognize each other by sound, and they can visualize a map of their territory. They can also plan ahead and recognize patterns. In other ways, they’re very, very simple animals. Male turkeys will attack anything that looks remotely like a threat, including their own reflections in windows and car doors.

10. IN THE EVENT OF A TURKEY ATTACK, CALL THE POLICE.

They might look silly, but a belligerent turkey is no joke. Male turkeys work very hard to impress other turkeys, and what could be more impressive than attacking a bigger animal? Turkey behavior experts advise those who find themselves in close quarters with the big birds to call the police if things get mean. Until the authorities arrive, they say, your best bet is to make yourself as big and imposing as you possibly can.


November 22, 2016 – 6:00pm

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How Scientists Study NYC's Coyotes (Plus: 9 Thanksgiving Side Dishes You Don't Want to Try)
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The Opening Lines of Dr. Seuss Books
30 Stores That Will Remain Closed on Thanksgiving 2016
Apple Will Hold a Black Friday Sale This Year
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The only number whose letters are in alphabetical order is 40 (f-o-r-t-y).

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