One Lucky Soul: Random Stuff You May Not Know: Twelve

Random Stuff You May Not Know: Twelve by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

The latest article in the Random Stuff You May Not Know series is number Eleven from all the way back in 2019. A whole lot has happened ever since, that includes a whole lot of writings about many different topics. This eventually enticed me to revive the series and here we are with number Twelve.

1. Jerboa — جربوع ⠀

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One day I shared a video of this surreal-looking animal on One Lucky Soul the Facebook page and came across something amazing. I knew the jerboa as a cute little kangaroo-looking rodent with funny alienesque ears, however, I never knew that in Arabic this is THE [ جربوع ] — sometimes spelled [ يربوع ] by certain Arabs.

For those who don’t know, the word [ جربوع ] is often used as an insult in Egyptian Arabic. And one dares saying that the word is used in this context much more than its actual meaning, probably since we don’t normally bump into jerboas in busy Egyptian cities.

The jerboa from Arabic [ جربوع jarbūʻ ] forms the bulk of the membership of the family Dipodidae, and they are hopping desert rodents found throughout Northern Africa and Asia east to northern China and Manchuria. They tend to live in hot deserts. I equally just found out they are cooked and eaten by some desert cultures. Oh.

The species found in Egypt is called The Greater Egyptian Jerboa (Jaculus orientalis), which is also found in Algeria, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.

The more languages you know, the more dot-connecting, the more phun.

Next time someone calls you [ جربوع ] say thank you because they probably just mean you’re cute. Yet at the same time, as we learned from the below video, jerboas can also be deadly as they are natural carriers of the Monkeypox virus (MPXV) — a zoonotic disease similar to smallpox. So there is that.

It is worth noting that the jerboa is not to be confused with another small animal, the gerbil. Despite the fact that the word ‘gerbil’ is a diminutive form of ‘jerboa’, the gerbil remains a small mammal of the order Rodentia, which was once known simply as “desert rats”. It is the hero belonging to the urban legend of Richard Gere and a “de-clawed” gerbil. Ha.

Other obscure and relatively unknown animals covered in the same series are the Quokka and the Eastern Quoll.

There are also The Most Unusual and Unknown Creatures [Photos & Videos] and its Sequel from the OLS Archives (2012).

*The featured photos above is of Jaculus jaculus [L] and Long-eared Jerboa (Euchoreutes naso)

2. The Women’s Faux Pockets Dilemma

Do you know that women’s pockets are 6.5% narrower and a full 48% shorter compared to men’s? This makes them more decorative than functional. In fact, the average woman cannot fit a hand in her own pocket. Let us find out the story behind these thought-provoking statistics.

Pockets are something us men today seem to take for granted. Pockets on the sides and back of our shorts and pants. Because we always had them. Well, ask women about having to carry a purse or handbag at all times and let them say how they feel. Do you know many women I know dropped their cell phones in the toilet while sitting down? About six — compared to almost none for the guys. Why you may wonder: Proper-size pockets.

First, a little history about the topic. In the Middle Ages both men as well as women wore a pouch tied with a rope around their waist. When women’s dresses became heavier and more layered — usually three layers — they stopped wearing the pouches on the outside. The alternative was to wear it around the waist underneath the outer layer. Meaning, if they needed to access the “pocket” they had to lift that layer of the dress, which is something a woman wouldn’t do in public. So unless they found a place to hide and reach the pocket, it was impractical and somewhat useless.

This effort by the male-dominated fashion industry to make women appear leaner and slimmer came to being when fashion began to change again by 1790. The more form-fitting and figure-hugging clothings meant getting rid of pockets. Instead, women were then accessorised with a small handbag called ‘reticule’ — apparently so impractically tiny, “It could barely fit a handkerchief and few coins.” Reticule ridicule!

According to some sources, it was thought that “the bag represented the idea of women not having much wealth or property and thus not needing a big purse because they didn’t have much to carry anyway.” Patriarchy at its finest! Quite political as well.

Other than society and its designers imposing on women’s choice of clothings, who then seems to benefit from this centuries-old bizarre pocketless quirk? The bags industry, which became an essential player in their case. Where else would they keep their belongings once out of the house?

A man named Dougie Sharp who delved deeper into the history of the subject shares on TikTok: [yeah, it’s a legit source now]

“Collusion between the handbag industry and the women’s fashion industry are why women’s clothings don’t have pockets.”

When we contemplate the matter, we find that it is actually restricting, inconvenient, cumbersome, even disempowering not to have all what you essentially need on your very person, let alone unsafe. In fact, the demand for pockets has been in full swing ever since Women’s Suffrage emerged in the mid 19th Century. Along with the right to vote and other basic human rights, pockets became a symbol of the Suffrage Movement. True story.

Bicycles have a similar story. “Bicycle Face” was a fictitious medical condition invented in the 1890s by the Patriarchy to discourage women from cycling. Pff, imagine the male silliness.

You see, having to rely on an outside entity in such a way creates dependence, restricting mobility while taking away from the person’s liberty and autonomy. Where is the true freedom or functionality in such dependence? The gentler gender ought to be liberated. Ladies, grow them pockets. Because by now, nobody is willingly going to give them back to you.

Vive Les [Pocketed] Femmes!

*Do you know how many times I felt tempted to tell a woman that her phone is about to fall out of her back pocket? Maybe 23.

3. Synesthesia

Synesthesia (also synæsthesia or synaesthesia) is a neurological phenomenon or condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In other words, it is when the senses overlap or trigger each other in an atypical way. Meaning, one can taste words, see sounds, and hear colours among other mix-ups of the senses. Yeah, what festivity. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

One form of synesthesia joins objects such as letters, shapes, numbers or people’s names with a sensory perception such as smell, colour, or flavour. While experiences remain unique to each synesthete, some common pairings were found between the letter ‘B’ and the colour blue, the number ‘0’ and white, and ‘1’ and black. Those were among natural synesthetes.

The painting above is titled Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky, an artist who said it reflects the experience he had while listening to a symphony. His condition causes him to see colours when hearing music and to hear sounds when seeing colours, a specific type of synesthesia called Chromesthesia, which profoundly inspires his abstract art. How trippy that is.

Synesthesia naturally occurs to about 4% of the population, with other sources citing only 1%. Another minority can get a glimpse of what it is while on psychedelics — LSD in particular.

However, in a study published in Neuropsychologia, researchers at the University of London (UoL) revealed that the one caused by LSD, the “inducer”, is not genuine synesthesia. For it to be considered so, the response must be confirmed by consistency and specificity, meaning that the same inducer must produce the same reaction every time.

But under the influence of LSD the subjects did not report specific colour experiences with graphemes and sounds. Sounds and colours were no more consistent than with placebos. The results showed that whatever is experienced under acid was not “true” synesthesia. It is still quite the wickedly enjoyable experience.

When Senses Collide: Synesthesia [below] is a 2008 eye-opening documentary about this truly bewitching phenomenon.

*Excerpted from Terms That Have Resonated With Me (2014).

4. What Is A Hope Chest?

Here was I one day watching *Back To The Future for the first time since [probably] when it first came out in 1985, when the cute-faced girl told Marty McFly: “It’s on the ‘Hope Chest’.” What? You know unmedicated lexophiles get their thrills out of instances like these. A peculiar word they had never heard before plainly laying there in a super-popular “Franchise” movie. What the heck is a hope chest and why is it called as such? I wanted to know.

Now, ladies and gents, a hope chest is a piece of furniture traditionally used to collect items such as clothing, silver, and household linen — among other domestic furnishings — by unmarried young women in anticipation of married life. Oh. Also called dowry chest, cedar chest, trousseau chest, and glory box, a hope chest would include typical dowry items such as clothing (especially a special dress), table linens, towels, bed linens, quilts, and occasionally dish-ware. As a bride would typically leave home on marriage, hope chests were sometimes made with an eye to portability.

The hope chest was often used for the firstborn girl of a family. Instead of just having sheets and household linen in the bottom drawer, this box would transport these goods and dowries and then later be used as a standard piece of furniture for the lady of the house to use. This dowry chest was often richly decorated, however over time they gradually became smaller, with jewellery boxes emerging instead of large dowry boxes.

  By contrast, a ‘bridal chest’ was given to a bride at her wedding, by her husband, and so is not a ‘hope chest’ in this sense,” said Wikipedia.   

Hope chests seem to be quite universal, hence have different names, models, and styles depending on the location and culture.   

They were known as Cassone in Renaissance Italy; Kast in Dutch and Schrank in German.   

Embodying the concept of folk art, hope chests seem to have reached their peak when waves of European immigrants started arriving to America. Particularly Scandinavians — in Northern Midwest — and Germans — in Pennsylvania (Amish) — who had long traditions of constructing and decorating painted chests.

For Arabs throughout the Middle East, hope chests were called “Dower Chest”. According to some surviving historical documents chronicling the daily life in Egypt starting the 9th C. to the 19th C, almost all marriage contracts refer to a certain “Dower Chest”. For it, there are two names used: One, “The muqaddimah” — meaning introduction in Arabic — which is specifically for the bride’s personal possessions. Two is “Sunduq” — chest or box — which often came in pairs and was left for all of her other goods. The Arabic versions of the hope chest were not showy or highly decorated, except for the ruling classes.

Now we know. 

5. Cocaine and Women

Wanting to know why a significant number of women enjoy cocaine yet don’t seem to be affected by it like men, I checked it out.

Previous studies have found that women are more likely than men to develop an addiction, try cocaine at a younger age, use larger amounts of the drug, and suffer from overdose.

According to a study by The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), women are 3.3 times more likely to become dependent on coke compared to men. The researchers, who were affiliated with Harvard Medical School, found that cocaine affects men and women differently. Women’s responses to the drug is largely affected by their hormonal fluctuations as well as menstrual cycles, leading to processing it differently.

A more recent study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior finally validates what had been long suspected: The female sex hormone estradiol, a synthetic version of the naturally occurring estrogen, is responsible for why women are more susceptible to cocaine addiction than men. It turned out they are more sensitive to this specific substance.

Linda Perrotti, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at UTA and senior author of the study said:

“In particular, we have now demonstrated that females have a higher sensitivity to the acute rewarding effects of cocaine in relation to where they were in their cycle. This research gives us a new understanding of how the brain reacts to cocaine, providing invaluable information on cocaine use and dependence in humans.”

Aha, merci psychology.

Such findings do make sense as, for instance, you rarely see women clenching/grinding their jaws while on blow — unlike men. They tend to somehow seem cooler and less agitated. Even when both consume the same amount, males often appear more “coked up” than females. And now we know their genetic make-up is the one to blame... or to thank.

Et voilà. Now that the series has been revived, stay tuned for more articles.

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