Stray Hawkeye

The word of the day is kerfuffle.  Say it with me now: kerfuffle.

There is only one known pig in all of Afghanistan.  Via Kottke and Boing Boing.

Given that it sound like it’s because no one in Afghanistan eats pork due to religious laws, I’m curious how many other countries have few or no pigs for the same reason.

Random bonus history of why it’s a pig in the field and pork on the table:

In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered England and the Anglo-Saxons. After the invasion, the Norman kings and the nobility spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman, while English continued to be the language of the common people. This class distinction can still be seen in the English language today in words such as “beef” vs. “cow” and “pork” vs. “pig.” The aristocracy commonly ate beef and pork, which are derivatives of Anglo-Norma, while the Anglo-Saxon commoners, who tended the cattle and hogs, retained the Germanic and ate cow and pig.

I have no idea where swine came in to that equation.

In case you’re in need of a good weather website, I really like Weather Underground.  It has a few too many ads (especially ones that blink and move, nothing should ever blink on a website), but it also has lots of cool features.  Mostly, it lets you look at data, and dig down into things, zoom in and zoom out, see history and trends and averages.  You know, generally dork out about weather data.

I mention it mainly because this was the detailed weather description on Weather Underground for where I live a few nights ago.  Not particularly notable for the weather itself, I just like the language.

Not 95% relative humidity and 7/8ths of a mile of visibility, but- “new snow accumulation from big fluffy flakes.” and “Some spots could see up to an inch of fluffy powder… and other areas may see nothing at all.  It all depends on where the individual snow showers fall.”   The human descriptiveness.  The honest uncertainty and “it’ll fall where it may” attitude.  Not something you see often on a weather website.  I like it.  I get excited about small things like this.