Things I’ve learned: Phobos and Deimos

Mars has 2 moons Phobos and Deimos. Both were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall. Mars is the Roman god of war, called Ares by the Greeks. Ares had 2 sons by Aphrodite, named…you guessed it, Phobos and Deimos.

Phobos means panic/fear and Deimos means terror/dread. The sons were close companions of their father, always depicted as driving his chariot and assisting him on the battlefield. See for yourself:

“[Ares] ordered Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror) to harness his horses, and himself got into his shining armour.” – Homer, Iliad 15.110

“Ares drove these [warriors] on … and Deimos (Terror) drove them, and Phobos (Fear), and Eris (Hate) whose wrath is relentless, she the sister and companion of murderous Ares.” – Homer, Iliad 4.436

It’s a little annoying that the planet has the Roman name and the moons the Greek…but I’m willing to let it slide, because I like the concept of naming the moons after the sons of the planet’s namesake. Moons are like the planet’s children, after all. And I like the poetry of it all, that in life and literature and astronomy, war is always accompanied by fear and terror.

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Things I’ve Learned: Wilhelm Scream

It’s been quite the educational week…

Have you ever noticed a familiar sounding scream in a movie? Did it sound like this?

That’s the Wilhelm Scream, popping up in movies since 1951. Lots of movies. Star Wars seems to be responsible for its re-popularization and apparently it’s a big in-joke amongst sound editors.

The suspected screamer is Sheb Wooley. (Also responsible for the Purple People Eater.) Entertaining.

Check out this Short film on it’s history.

It’s a totally weird sounding scream, though.

Things I’ve Learned: Bespoke

Bespoke is the British equivalent of “custom made”. You can get bespoke shoes, or bespoke suits (ideally from Savile Row), or bespoke software. Excellent term.

What rhymes with orange?

So I learned today that the term for words that have no rhyme is “refractory rhyme”, which I kind of like because the definition of “refractory” is: stubbornly disobedient; unmanageable. Anyway, I always heard “orange” used as the classic example of a word without a rhyme, but there are actually a lot of others. Among the words listed, I find it interesting that silver and purple are also on the list…what’s up with the non-rhyming colors? That seems odd.

I also particularly like the following sentence, used to illustrate that although there is no perfect rhyme for the word “engine”, there are a number of near rhymes: “To my chagrin I said to my conjoined twin: ‘the tin engine caused quite a din as the wheels did spin, screeching like a violin.’”

On another, tangentially related note…when writing the above I was once again annoyed by the issues raised when using quotation marks and commas/periods. In the first sentence above, for example, should it be “refractory rhyme”, or “refractory rhyme,” ? The answer seems to be that in the US, it should be the later, but the UK advocates the former. Since I have always thought that the comma/period inside the quotation marks 1) makes no sense and 2) disturbs by sense of symmetry, I am going with the other side of the pond on this one. It was their language first, you know…