Lexical Compendium

While alla turca generically just means "in the Turkish style," alla turca time (or alaturka saat) specifically refers to the way that time was reckoned in the Ottoman Empire.

In the alla turca time Sun always sets at the 0’th hour and rises at the 12th hour. The hours of the alla turca time have variable length. During winters the length of 1 (alla turca) night hour is longer than the length of 1 (alla turca) day hour. During summers the opposite is true.

-- from alla turca time (blog post)

Clocks around the empire were manually set/reset by the muvakkit, or timekeeper. It's hard to even imagine using this sort of time keeping in our modern era.

I haven't been able to find a whole lot about this online, but I've noted what I have found. My father introduced me to this term; it was something he recalled from his childhood.

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References:

• Reading Clocks, Alla Turca - A review of the book _Reading Clocks, Alla Turca_ by Avner Wishnitzer
• alla turca time - Blog post on alla turca time
• It's Sirius O'Clock: Astronomical Timekeeping in Ancient Egypt - Dr. Sarah Symons lecture on ancient timekeeping.
• Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire - Excerpt from the book _Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire_ by Avner Wishnitzer.

My favorite line in the movie "Trading Places" is a reference to a joke in another movie called "Aunti Mame." In that movie, a rich and condescending woman tells a story about a ping pong game in which she "stepped on the ball."

In "Trading Places," this exchange takes place as Louis Winthorpe III, now disgraced, jobless and homeless, enters his tennis club in in hopes of getting help from his rich friends. As Louis enters the scene, we hear the end of a story being told by one of these friends to the rest of the gang, "...and she stepped on the ball." Louis, of course, discovers that his friends and even his fiancée want nothing to do with him.

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References:

• What do Kimmy Schmidt, Trading Places, & Auntie Mame have in common - Reel Memorable blog entry
• IMDB: Trading Places

I came across this quote in the television series Mythic Quest. In that show, it was attributed to Aristotle, but I haven't been able to confirm this.

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References:

• IMDB: Mythic Quest

There is a "Cards Against Humanity" card that simply reads: "Bees?" It's so fatuous that it has become a common expression for me.

Some on the internet believe that this is a reference to an "Arrested Development" episode.

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References:

• Cards Against Humanity
• Arrested Development clip - perhaps the origin of the card

From Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," a poem in "Through the Looking Glass."

The poem was about the capture and killing of a creature called the "Jabberwock" and is filled with many other nonsense terms.

The word "jabberwocky," itself, has come to mean something meaningless in writing.

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References:

• Definition: jabberwocky
• Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

When Great Briton's two halves were slammed together.

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References:

• Caledonian Orogeny - Encyclopedia of Geology (Second Edition), 2021

A false or unfounded statement/story.

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References:

• Definition: canard

An ideology that, in a Christian context, supports the concepts of Zionism (Jewish people returning to the "Holy Land").

Joe Biden considers himself a Zionist.

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References:

• Wikipedia: Christian Zionism
• 'I am a Zionist': How Joe Biden's lifelong bond with Israel shapes war policy - A Reuters article from shortly after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

An acronym for Display Keyboard (pronounced diskey). This was the interface that Apollo astronauts used to communicate with the computers on the Command and Lunar Modules.

I first came across this acronym while watching the television series For All Mankind.

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References:

• IMDB: For All Mankind
• Smithsonian: DSKY - A Smithsonian description and image of a DSKY.

A quote from Jeff Bezos during the 2008 YC Startup School.

Bezos made an analogy between AWS and breweries, at the turn of the 20th century when electricity had just been invented. These early breweries started generating their own power to leverage machines that ran on electricity. Soon, utility companies came along. Newer breweries that were able to just use electricity from the utility companies didn't have the capital expenses of the older breweries and were able to beat them.

I heard of this analogy from the Acquired podcast.

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References:

• YouTube: Footage from the '08 Startup School
• Acquired: The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories

This archaic word was used to describe someone who was discontent, i.e. someone who grumbles a lot. The origins of the word are in 17th century English politics.

I heard the word in an episode of the podcast The Allusionist.

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References:

• Podcast: The Allusionist - Episode 193: Word Play 3: Lemon Demon
• Definition: grumbletonian

An acronym for Internal Combustion Engine. This acronym seems to be bandied about a lot during automobile discussions, especially when discussing electric vehicles (EVs).

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References:

• Wikipedia: ICE

These were the lines spoken in the play "Our American Cousin" when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. A "sockdologer" is the decisive word in an argument; the final blow.

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References:

• The context behind the fatal punchline that obscured the Lincoln assassination - Washington Post Op-ed
• Definition: sockdologer

1. A period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.
2. An interval or pause between two periods of office or other things.

As in:

...the interregnum between the discovery of radioactivity and its detailed understanding.

or:

You are a weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum.

The latter comes from a line of dialog from the character Gerri in the television series "Succession"

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References:

• Definition: interregnum
• succession-season-4-episode-6-recap - episode recap from thewrap.com

An English translation of a line from The Bhagavad Gita, written in Sanskrit. A more accurate translation is "Time I am, destroyer of the worlds..."

I first encountered this expression in the late 90s on the CAKE BBS. It appears many times in popular culture:

• Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer
• Bolivar in s01e07 of Xmen '97
• Captain Ramius' diary in Hunt for Red October
• Caleb Smith in Ex Machina

And probably many more.

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References:

• Bhagavad Gita
• IMDB: Oppenheimer
• IMDB: X-Men '97
• IMDB: The Hunt for Red October
• IMDB: Ex Machina

I learned, from sort of an unlikely source -- the National Park Service, the reason why "night vision" is reset after exposure to light.  That our pupils dilate  is probably obvious, but what I didn't know was that the body produces a protein called rhodopsin which, through a series of chemical reactions, gives our rods the ability to "see" in dim light.  The protein decays in bright light (though much slower in longer wavelengths, i.e. red light).  When depleted, it takes ~30m to regenerate.

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References:

• Dark Adaptation of the Human Eye and the Value of Red Flashlights - National Park Service blog article
• Wikipedia: Rhodopsin

From Wikipedia:

Stigmergy was first observed in social insects. For example, ants exchange information by laying down pheromones (the trace) on their way back to the nest when they have found food. In that way, they collectively develop a complex network of trails, connecting the nest in an efficient way to various food sources. When ants come out of the nest searching for food, they are stimulated by the pheromone to follow the trail towards the food source. The network of trails functions as a shared external memory for the ant colony.

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This is a quote from the 1994 movie "Clerks."

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References:

• IMDB: Clerks (quote)

Something that the character Tom Wambsgans says in the television series "Succession."

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References:

• IMDB: Succession

I came across this bit of old-timey slang in the television show "The Artful Dodger." It means something like, "Wow! It works!"

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References:

• IMDB: The Artful Dodger