Fat, apparently, is in the eye of the beholder. If the beholder lives in the African nation of Mauritania, he’s much more likely to believe that big is beautiful. In fact, fat women are so revered there that only a generation ago, a third of girls were force-fed, making it one of the few African countries where girls received more food than boys.

These days, the practice is in decline, but even now 1 in 10 girls are treated this way. Wife-fattening has its roots in the idea that fat equals wealthy, and skinny equals poor — and as such, is undesirable. “Fat farms” are still operated in rural parts of the country, which force girls to eat voluminous amounts of food and punish them if they resist. One professional fattener defended her business, saying “When they are small they don’t understand, but when they grow up they are fat and beautiful. They are proud and show off their good size to make men dribble. Don’t you think that’s good?”

However, not all Mauritanian men agree as to what a “good size” is anymore. “We’re fed up of fat women here,” said 19-year-old shop owner Yusuf. “Always fat women! Now we want thin women.” (Whatever you want, guys. Wasn’t this whole “fat” thing your idea in the first place?)

CNNMoney.com has some interesting Top 5 lists about America’s cities. Here are tops in each list:

Safest – Brick Township, NJ
Most Dangerous – St. Louis, MO
Smartest – Seattle, WA
Fastest Growing – Elk Grove, CA
Most Expensive Housing - Beverly Hills, CA
Least Expensive Housing – Minot, ND
Most Affordable Major Housing Market – Indianapolis, IN
Least Affordable Major Housing Market – Los Angeles, CA
Fastest-Appreciating Housing Market – Salem, OR
Slowest-Appreciating Housing Market – Detroit, MI

Today’s tidbit comes from volume 5, issue 6:

Noted comic (and drunk) W. C. Fields left the world with these fine parting remarks: “God d*** the whole friggin’ world and everyone in it but you, Carlotta.” If that sounds sweet, consider that Fields’ wife’s name was Harriet. Carlotta Monti was his mistress.

Today’s first archival tidbit comes from What’s the Difference?

According to the Billiard Congress of America, during the Civil War billiard results often received wider coverage than war news.

Those rumors floating around the office lately about your job being on the line? Worrisome, sure, but easy enough to dismiss — after all, they’re only rumors. But according to a new book, Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches, you might want to start cleaning out your desk and scouring the want ads. Rumors — especially workplace rumors — tend to be more reliable than we think.

“In a workplace setting — what we call a stable organizational grapevine — people are very good at figuring out the truth,” says author and professor Nicholas DiFonzio. “If you tell me something and I work closely with you, I know whether you’re a credible source. But even if I’m not so sure, in workplace settings the network connections are so dense that it’s easy to cross-check information.”

After awhile, the rumor becomes a sort of self-correcting information machine — not unlike the socially-authored encyclopedia Wikipedia, which a study in the respected journal Nature recently concluded was, at least in terms of its science articles, nearly as accurate as the Britannica.

Of course, there’s a difference between workplace rumors and workplace gossip, the difference being people often secretly want juicy bits of gossip to be true, and so truth falls beside the wayside.

It’s Thursday folks, and you know what that means! Before I name a new thingamajig, I must make good on my promise to pick a winner from last week’s open call to rename the banal ski pole “basket.”

Most creative has to go to Anthony for his “desinkificator.” While bragging rights for Wittiest goes to Dawn for “No-Snow-Low-Go.” Priceless guys, thanks!

Now today I’m naming those small, ball bearing-like balls, usually silver-colored and used for decorating cookies, cake, and other such sweets. They’re called dragées and can be traced back to the Greek word, dragéa, or dried fruit. Curiously, in the early 20th century, the sale of dragées was banned as the silver was thought to have mercury in it. Now, they’re sold with the following WAY scary disclaimer:

Dragees are to be used as “decoration only” because, per the FDA, they contain trace amounts of metal (ie: silver). They are, however, considered non-toxic. Although people do consume them in some parts of the world, we recommend you remove them before eating confections.

I’ve always eaten them and assumed, seeing as they were buried in the frosting of a cupcake, they were candy! So you see folks, Thingamajig Thursday doesn’t just make you look smarter by naming odd things, it SAVES LIVES!

“As the crow flies”

An old sailing term. Ships unsure of their position in coastal waters traditionally released a crow, which would fly towards the nearest dry land, thus giving the vessel at least a rudimentary navigational fix. The tallest lookout platform on a ship, from which said crow was observed, was called the “crow’s nest.”

“Olly olly oxen free!”
Shouted at the end of a game of hide-and-seek, it lets all remaining hiders know that they can emerge safely. Though there are many variations on this phrase (such as “all ye, all ye, all’s set free”), it’s probably a corruption of a German phrase, “Alle, alle auch sind frei” (literally, “Everyone, everyone also is free”).

“Cut to the chase”
We can thank inexperienced silent filmmakers for this one. Many early films (and come to think of it, contemporary films) climaxed in chase sequences. If a film was hampered by extensive and laborious exposition thanks to a cut-rate screenwriter, producers would often ham-handedly fix the problem with an abrupt “cut” to the chase.

“On the lam”
“Lam” comes from the Icelandic “lemje,” meaning “beat” or “thrash.” Thus, “on the lam” and “beat it” mean approximately the same thing: to run away; to beat the ground with your feet.

“Over the top”
A World War I-era military phrase referring to trench warfare. In order to launch an attack from a trench, one had to go “over the top” of the defensive parapet and into the line of enemy fire. Here’s a haunting (and rare) color print of French soldiers in a trench, circa 1916:

I’m currently traveling in Japan, and since I’ve subjected you to seven Armchair Field Trips in the last two weeks, I think instead I’ll let you see for yourselves what I’ve been seeing, via pictures (mine) and links (from elsewhere).

We’ve already talked about wasabi; next up: namako-kabe, an architectural style indigenous to Izu. “Namako” features slate overlaid with plaster cross-hatching, which was originally developed to keep wooden houses from burning down.

* It’s not to be confused with the sea cucumber of the same name!

* “Though namako-kabe translates unappealingly as ‘sea-slug walls,’ these walls are in fact rather handsome affairs.”

* Here’s a quick history of namako-kabe, which “developed among the warrior elite,” along with a few striking examples of the style.

* If you can read Japanese, this appears to be a site entirely devoted to the style.

And here are much better pictures than mine.

I’m currently traveling in Japan, and since I’ve subjected you dear people to seven Armchair Field Trips in the last two weeks, I think instead I’ll let you see for yourselves what I’ve been seeing, via pictures (mine) and links (from elsewhere). First up: the wasabi fields of the Izu peninsula, about three hours south of Tokyo.

* Loads of good wasabi trivia here (caveat emptor: as you’ll already know from our magazine, “many, if not most, of the brands of wasabi powder and wasabi paste are actually fakes and consist mainly of colored horseradish”)

* The history of wasabi farming

* The story of an Izu wasabi farmer, from a popular Japanese English-language magazine

* An essay on wasabi cultivation, written by an American journalist 

* Wasabi’s relationship to sushi

* And, apropos of very little, a favorite wasabi-flavored song of mine, by the Japanese-American pop group Cibo Matto 

Today’s second archival tidbit comes from volume 3, issue 4 (Sept/Oct 2004):

Who says males don’t have PMS? About once a year beginning at the age of 15, male elephants experience periods of “musth” (pronounced “must”), during which testosterone levels are 50 times higher than normal. Derived from the Hindi word meaning “intoxicated,” this phenomenon causes intense periods of heightened aggression and sexual activity. Often, males in musth pick fights with each other, uprooting trees and throwing logs.