“Friends, with your help and love you have shown us how to make sense of the world, and when the world hasn’t made any sense at all you told us to sit back and enjoy it; you taught us what’s right, what’s real, what’s beautiful about this planet, and for that we are eternally grateful.”
– Richard Solomon
“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas lights.”
– Maya Angelou
Living in groups
60-30 million years ago
The first primates, the group that includes monkeys and humans, evolved soon after the dinosaurs died out. Many quickly began living in groups. This meant each animal had to navigate a complex web of friendships, hierarchies and rivalries. So group living may have driven a steady increase in brainpower.
See other: What Makes Humans Human?
In English, a jill is a female ferret; to jill means female masturbation.
When Navajo babies laugh for the first time, they get a party. The food is paid for by whoever made the baby laugh.
The Republican Party is the only political party in U.S. history to win a Presidential Election without achieving a majority of the popular vote. As a result, three Republicans were elected President even though their main opponent received more votes.
More than half the world’s population has seen a James Bond film.
During the Second World War, the Führer oath that every party member, officer and soldier had to take contained the words “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Führer.” Also, the belt buckles of German soldiers were inscribed with ‘Gott mit uns’ (God on our side).
See other: Quite Interesting Facts
What is a friend exactly? After some deliberation, it turns out to be very difficult to provide an uncontentious analysis. Because of its many different conceptions and dimensions, the full value of the word ‘friend’ is surprisingly hard to capture. To that end, below is a list of quotations to help sketch a definition of the word ‘friend’.
“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
– Aristotle
“To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship.”
– Catiline
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
– Anaïs Nin
“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
– Linda Grayson
“Friendship is Love without his wings!”
– Lord Byron
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
– C.S. Lewis
See more: Approximations
There are a number of words in Shakespeare’s plays and poems which are deceptive to modern ears. They may seem familiar words but, in fact, camouflage a quite different meaning lost to modern English. In Linguistics, these words are called False Friends.
A False Friend is a word which has kept its form but has strayed from its original sense (or was a completely different word) so that the modern English word is false when compared to the original sense or word. Shakespeare likes to extend the wordplay further by often deliberately using words in their older senses. Consider the following words:
Lover
Modern: someone you are in a sexual relationship with, usually illicitly
Shakespeare: friend
Lover as friend precedes the modern meaning by a little over a century, with both dating back to the Middle English period. Shakespeare, however, punster that he is, uses lover almost exclusively in the old sense. If you do not know what he means, some Shakespearean situations can sound quite awkward, to say the least. Lorenzo, for example, fervently puts a plug in for Antonio to Portia as ‘a lover of my lord your husband’ (The Merchant of Venice, III.iv.7).
Friend
Modern: a person you know well, love and regard
Shakespeare: (primarily) lover
Friend is an Old English word which appears in texts as early as Beowulf; it derives from the Proto-Germanic frijōjanan and is cognate with the verb ‘to free’. It started with the sense we know today, with a slightly extended application to someone we hold in regard or a relative. This generalized sense, too, is encountered in Shakespeare and creates a pun or two. Now that you know what Shakespeare has in mind, you are clued in when Lady Capulet tells Juliet to stop crying, ‘So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend / Which you weep for’, and Juliet replies that she is weeping for her beloved — not the relative, ‘Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend’ (Romeo & Juliet, III.v.74-7).
Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst Syndrome is characterized by uncontrollable sneezing in response to the sudden exposure to bright light, typically intense sunlight.
This type of sneezing is also known as photic sneezing, also known as photoptarmosis – a condition of uncontrollable sneezing in response to numerous stimuli. About one in four individuals who already have a prickling sensation in their nose will sneeze in response to sunlight, but pure photic sneezing is far less common.
Sneezing is usually triggered by contact with infectious agents or after inhaling irritants, but the cause of photic sneezing is not fully understood. It may involve an over-excitability of the visual cortex in response to light, leading to a stronger activation of the secondary somatosensory areas.
“I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.”
– D. H. Lawrence
Sneezing usually feels good because, much like an orgasm, sneezes are reflexes involving tension and release. Also, like climaxes, they sometimes feel like they are about to happen, but do not; and like the final throes of sex, they can erupt as loud crescendos or pop off like a string of firecrackers.
Some evidence suggests that sneezing, like orgasms, also releases endorphins. Unlike orgasms though, sneezes can travel at about 100 miles per hour.
Ross: I was in the shower, and I felt something.
Chandler: Was it like a sneeze, only better?
– Friends (1996) Season 3, Ep. 23; “The One with Ross’s Thing” [No. 71]
Curiously, in English, it is common to say “Bless you”; in German, “Gesundheit”; in Hindu, one person says “Live” and the other responds “With you”; and in Zulu people say “I am now blessed”. The ancient Greeks and Romans said “Banish the Omen”.
‘Baldrick, does it have to be this way? Our valued friendship ending with me cutting you into long strips and telling the Prince that you walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat?’
– Joseph M. 1998. Blackadder The Whole Damn Dynasty London, Great Britain: Penguin Books (1999) p. 329
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