It’s normal to instantly start paying more attention when you hear a family name, even for those people whose family names are some of the most common in the world. That’s what happened in my house while we were watching ant man and they kept mentioning the Schmidt Pain Index. What was this thing named after Schmidt, we wondered?
The answer is, that Justin O. Schmidt, an American entomologist born 1947, developed the scale to measure the relative pain and discomfort of hymenopteran stings, himself having experienced many in the course of his research and trapping of the insects. After his original paper in 1983 comparing venom properties, Schmidt refined his scale.
1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.
“I set about kittle pitchering any tom long with a circumbendibus chestnut as soon as I see ’em.”
Let’s dissect:
KITTLE PITCHERING. A jocular method of hobbling or bothering a troublesome teller of long stories: this is done by contradicting some very immaterial circumstance at the beginning of the narration, the objections to which being settled, others are immediately started to some new particular of like consequence; thus impeding, or rather not suffering him to enter into, the main story. Kittle pitchering is often practised in confederacy, one relieving the other, by which the design is rendered less obvious. (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
Chestnut – an old story; an often repeated yarn. The average chestnut of the ‘dago’ fruit stand has claims to respect on account of its age, but is not desirable as an article of diet, and ancient stories are equally tiresome (1891 American Slang Dictionary by James Maitland)
So, to sum up: “I start immediately and humorously undermining the stories of any tiresome story teller with a round about, often repeated yarn.”
I went up to Ohio for a family reunion, and, though all my family komme aus Ohio for three or so generations now, I was surprised by differences in local customs I had never considered.
Ohioans
Floridians
put french fries in their salads
have ice damaged roadways
have too many geese
have an ice cream shop on every corner
put fish on our salads
have road gators (e.g. truck tire tread)
have too many bugs
have a coffee shop on every corner
Outside of a conversation with a cousin on what road gators were, the things that vary the most about us seem to always be our eating habits. I’ve never had french fries on my salad before, and I have no idea why the people of Ohio require so many ice cream shops in a cold climate.
A settlement has been reached in a U.S. lawsuit with Warner/Chappell Music over the copyright to “Happy Birthday to You” that will put one of the world’s most recognizable songs in the public domain, according to court papers released on Wednesday and a source close to the case.
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