The Dilemma: Someone just handed you a crisp $100 bill, and you’re pretty sure the Franklin on there isn’t supposed to be Aretha.

People You Can Impress: U.S. Treasury wonks and bank tellers

The Quick Trick: Spotting counterfeit bills is like discerning whether you’re in love: If it feels real, it probably is.

The Explanation:
There are several strategies for spotting fake money. But for starters, try The Touch Test: Small-time thugs often forget that the paper U.S. money is printed on is a lot different from the stuff you put in your ink-jet printer. Instead of being made from tree-based cellulose, currency paper is made from cotton and linen fibers. You can easily feel the difference, so if counterfeiters want to be successful, they’ve got to make sure their money has the right touch. In 2002, Philadelphian Ricky Scott Nelson got around this quick trick by making his fake dollars out of real ones. He took actual $1 and $5 bills, used bleach to strip off the denomination markings and portraits, and photocopied them as $100 and $50 notes. Unfortunately for Nelson, his copying job still gave the bills away. The ink used on real money is never fully absorbed by the paper, leaving behind a distinct texture. Nelson’s money, however, was smooth in all the wrong places.

If it feels real but you still aren’t sure, it’s time for Strategy 2: The Vending Machine Test: Unlike human cashiers, most vending machines can’t tell a fake bill by touch or sight. So, in order to weed out the bad notes, they’re programmed to check for magnetism. Fake bills don’t have it. Real bills do because some of the ink the government uses for printing is magnetic.

If for some reason you’re still convinced you’ve been passed a fake bill, try The Attention-to-Detail Test: If you turn a magnifying glass on a bill, you’ll see that it contains intricate printing details not visible to the naked eye. For instance, the $20 bill is imprinted with a hexagonal pattern of lightly colored lines that give different parts of the bill different tints. Anything printed on an ink-jet printer would inevitably smudge those lines, turning the fake bill a brighter shade than that of a real one. Even a top-of-the-line printer will fudge some of the detail—if not these lines, then a bill’s tiny dots and microprinted phrases—making it almost impossible to forge a perfect copy. Of course, not all would-be crooks sweat the details. In 2004, Alice Pike of Atlanta was arrested after she tried to use a novelty $1 million bill at a Wal-Mart store, apparently not realizing the Treasury doesn’t make (and has never made) that denomination.

When All Else Fails
If you’ve tried all of the above tricks and you’re still a little doubtful, there is a last resort: The U.S. Department of the Treasury Test. Although not really applicable to the average cash-using citizen, this test is definitely the most accurate. The U.S. Treasury keeps special currency-analysis machines at its locations around the country, where each machine has 30 different kinds of sensors, most likely trained to spot secret security features only the government knows about.

The Dilemma: You’re itching for a hangover, so you know bubbly booze is the way to go. But when you awake tomorrow in the cold gray light of the morning after, will one promise you a purer headache than the other?

People You Can Impress: everybody at the New Year’s party. Auld lang syne! Whatever that means!*

The Quick Trick: This should be pretty easy to remember: Champagne is from Champagne; sparkling wine isn’t.

The Explanation:
The French are really, really prickly about misuse of the word champagne. Only sparkling white wine that comes from the Champagne region of France, in the northeastern part of the country, can be called champagne. And that’s not a suggestion; in Europe, it’s the law. It has been illegal for non-Champaignois vineyards to call their booze champagne since 1891. In fact, so important is French ownership of the word champagne that it was reaffirmed in no less important a document than 1919’s Treaty of Versailles—the one that ended World War I.

But here’s the loophole: The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles—not because of the champagne clause, but because the Republican-controlled Congress didn’t want to see the formation of a League of Nations. And so, in America, it is perfectly legal to call your sparkling wine “champagne.” In fact, you can call your gym shoes champagne, if you’d like. (What better way to exercise your freedom of speech!)

For decades, American producers of the bubbly called their products “champagne” left and right, but these days they tend to stick with “sparkling wine.” Today many California producers tend to believe their products superior—mainly because California gets so much sunlight, and the richer grapes tend to produce drier wines. That may be true, but Cristal is still a heck of a lot better than Andre’s pink champagne. True champagnes are usually aged longer than their American counterparts, and they’re generally considered “more complex,” which is sommelier-speak for “more expensive.”

Dom Perignon
Although he did not invent champagne (it’s been fermented in France since the Roman days), Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon (1638–1715) perfected it with improved fermentation and aging procedures. Upon first tasting his vastly improved champagne, Perignon is said to have exclaimed, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” The champagne branded Dom Perignon, however, wasn’t produced until 1936.

Bubbles (a.k.a. When Size Matters)
Conventional wisdom holds that the smaller the bubbles in sparkling wine, the better the booze. And it’s true. Smaller bubbles mean more total bubbles, which help release the wine’s flavor in the mouth. But bubble size is only one of many factors in determining champagne quality. The surest gauge? Price.

*It literally means “old long ago” in old Scottish. Huh. Still don’t get it

The Dilemma: It happens every time you buy groceries. Your bagger casually asks, “Paper or plastic?” And if you don’t answer within three seconds, people start looking at you funny. But it’s a complex question requiring considerable analysis. Which is better for the environment? Easier to carry? Less likely to be a choking hazard? You could stand in that grocery line all day.

People You Can Impress: It’s not about impressing anyone so much as not letting your indecisiveness aggravate the people in line behind you.

The Quick Trick: Plastic is probably better for the environment; paper is mostly better for the paper industry.

The Explanation:
First, let’s dispense with the difference between paper and plastic bags. Most plastic bags are derived from crude oil or natural gas by-products that have been treated to form long chains of carbon and hydrogen molecules. They’re then molded into the bag-with-handles shape we’ve known and loved at grocery stores since the mid-1980s. Paper bags, on the other hand, are made (you’ll never believe it) from trees—specifically, compressed wood pulp.

So which is better? We’ll begin with the case for plastic. For sheer ease of use, plastic certainly wins. Although the average paper grocery bag holds more than a plastic bag, plastic bags’ handles make them much easier to carry. Also, plastic bags are cheaper (which is why when you respond to the paper-or-plastic question with an ambivalent shrug, baggers are usually taught to pick plastic). Plastic bags also take up less landfill space. According to one study (and yes, there are studies about this sort of thing) two plastic bags take up 72 percent less landfill space than one paper bag.

Proponents of paper are likely to point out that paper is easier to recycle, that plastic is derived from a nonrenewable resource, and that plastic is nonbiodegradable. But as it happens, paper isn’t biodegradable either in modern American landfills, because landfills lack the water and soil needed for biodegrading. And it’s true that paper is easier to recycle (although plastic bags are recyclable), but recycling itself takes energy and creates pollution.

All in all, every study we found agreed plastic was the better bag, requiring less total energy to create and producing less waste than paper. Of course, the best solution is to use neither paper nor plastic. Instead, you could bring your own reusable bags to the grocery store. But that seems like an awful lot of work just to slightly increase the chances that your children can live on a habitable planet.

The Ugly Factor
The movie American Beauty makes the flying plastic bag into a pretty metaphor, but most of us would agree that plastic bags floating through the air aren’t so great. In South Africa, plastic bags came to be known as the “national flower” until 2004, when they were banned.

The Dilemma: You find yourself at a Chinese restaurant craving cylindrical food. But of which variety?

People You Can Impress: all the folks down at Hunan Garden. Now if you could only pronounce Szechuan.

The Quick Trick: If it’s got a shell like a deep-fried tortilla, it’s probably an egg roll. And if you’re thinking that deep-frying tortillas is awfully American for Chinese food, you’re onto something.

The Explanation:
The main gustatory difference between a spring roll and its egg cousin is that spring rolls have thin, often translucent flour wrappers, while egg rolls have thicker-wrappings (they are both fried, unlike their healthier cousin the summer roll). Also, spring rolls in America are often filled with carrots and bamboo, while egg rolls are more likely to be filled with meat and bean shoots. Oh, and one other difference: Spring rolls are Chinese; egg rolls probably aren’t.

In fact, Chinese cuisine in America is so vastly different from Chinese cuisine in China that many American Chinese restaurants advertise, beneath their English names, “Westernized Food” in Chinese. In the 19th century, the primary audience for Chinese food was railroad workers, a group of people not widely known for their sophisticated palates. Chinese restaurateurs sought to accommodate both Chinese immi- grants working the rails and their white coworkers—and in doing so created “fusion cuisine” long before it was hip. While some argue that egg rolls existed in China prior to their appearance in America, many food scholars believe that the egg roll is an American original. Besides the legendary roll, there are many staples of American Chinese food you’ll rarely, if ever, see in China: fried rice, crab Rangoon, chow mein, sweet-and-sour pork, and General Tso’s chicken. Also, fortune cookies (see below). What do all these foods have in common? Frying, which is a staple of American Chinese food but somewhat less important in authentic Chinese cuisine.

As for the spring roll, though, around the late 1980s, Americans began to turn against the very Chinese food they’d helped to invent. No longer could we afford to eat high-sodium foods sprinkled with MSG. And so more authentic Chinese restaurants started popping up, bringing back the relatively healthy spring roll. American Chinese cuisine still dominates the market in small towns, but the number of authentic restaurants grows every year.

How the Fortune Cookie Crumbles
Unlike the spring roll, the fortune cookie is not Chinese. It’s actually Japanese-American. Makato Hagiwara, who designed (and for many years lived in) the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, invented the fortune cookie in the early 20th century. He intended the cookie to be a snack for people walking through the tea garden, but the concept became so popular that Chinese restaurants in San Francisco’s Chinatown stole the idea.

The Dilemma: You want to look preppy. But how?

People You Can Impress: everyone at the country club, polo players, Republicans

The Quick Trick: Get a Lacoste shirt and you’ll have the best of both worlds.

The Explanation:
As it turns out, Lacoste is a subbrand of IZOD. As Aristotle would put it: All Lacostes are IZODs, but not all IZODs are Lacostes. These days, both brands are owned by the garment giant Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation, so the difference between Lacoste IZODs and non-Lacoste IZODs is primarily marketing. But the difference between the men behind IZOD and Lacoste is vast indeed.

Jack Izod owned a tailoring shop in London, and billed himself as the “Shirtmaker to the King.” Indeed, he made shirts for King George VI (1895–1951) in the 1930s. One day in the late ’30s, a women’s apparel magnate named Vin (no relationship to Diesel) Draddy visited IZOD’s tailoring shop. Looking to start a line of men’s clothing, Draddy recognized that his own last name would make a poor name for a clothing line, but he quite liked the ring of IZOD. So he bought the rights to IZOD’s name and began making clothes under the IZOD moniker. Oddly enough, the brand’s namesake, Jack Izod, never designed a single item for the company.

René Lacoste, on the other hand, really did design the famous shirts named for him, which is all the more remarkable because he was not a tailor. He was a professional tennis player. Between 1925 and 1928, Lacoste won seven Grand Slam events, and might have won more had he not become ridiculously rich by inventing the world’s first good tennis shirt. In the 1920s, tennis players wore long-sleeved, heavily starched dress shirts (often with ties!). Lacoste grew weary of the outfits, and by 1929, he’d designed a short-sleeved shirt with a longer shirttail in the back and a flat collar. Further proving he was ahead of his time, Lacoste generally played the game with his collar turned up, though it was more to block out the sun than anything else. But back to the shirts! Light and comfortable, Lacoste’s garments were an immediate hit when he began mass-producing them in 1933. By 1951, he’d sold the brand to IZOD.

Lacoste’s other significant contribution to fashion has to do with the iconic crocodile (it’s not an alligator—see below) on his shirts. Known as “Le Crocodile” for his on-court tenacity, Lacoste added the crocodile to his shirts in the mid-1930s—the first time a logo is known to have appeared on the outside of a shirt. Not a bad fashion record for a guy who mostly just wanted to win tennis tournaments.

Alligator vs. Crocodile
So how can you tell the Lacoste symbol is a crocodile not an alligator? You can’t, really, unless you know the story of Le Crocodile. But a real alligator and crocodile have many differences. For starters, crocodiles are much more likely to kill you. But also:

Crocodiles have a narrower, almost pointy snout. A crocodile’s lower teeth are always visible; an alligator’s disappear when its mouth is closed. Alligators are usually gray; crocodiles, a light brown.

The Dilemma: You’re pretty sure that neither of these postmortem destinations is ideal—but if things don’t work out as planned, you want to know which to pray for.

People You Can Impress: saints, sinners, and everyone in between

The Quick Trick: If you’re reading this, you’re probably not an infant—so purgatory’s your main worry.

The Explanation:
Let’s start with sin. Roman Catholics make a distinction based on a sin’s severity. The biggies—murder, adultery, sacrilege, that type of thing—are called mortal sins because they put your soul in jeopardy of damnation. Die with one of those on your docket and you’re pretty much screwed. The lesser sins that we all commit every day—petty jealousy, fibbing, cutting tags off of mattresses—well, those are venial sins. Confession and absolution free your soul from sin, but if you die with some venial demerits, you’re off to Purgatory, table for one.

Contrary to some popular confusion, Purgatory is not the same thing as Hell. Not by a long shot. Purgatory is a place of punishment whereby your soul is cleansed. While theologians vary on the kind and severity of Purgatorial “punishment,” some say that the agony of waiting for Heaven’s rewards is punishment enough. Folks still living can pray for your soul to shorten your time there (November 2, All Soul’s Day, is set aside specifically for this). Of course, once it’s all shiny and sin free, your soul goes to Heaven to be in the presence of God, seeing God in a “beatific vision.” Whereupon there is much rejoicing. Protestants reject Purgatory because it’s not specifically in the Bible, among other reasons.

As for the doctrine of “limbo,” it’s so controversial that even Catholics aren’t sure they believe in it. By definition, limbo is where the souls of those who are righteous or innocent, but not baptized (and therefore still stained by Adam’s Original Sin), spend eternity deprived of joy. But there are actually two limbos. The first is limbus patrum (limbo of the fathers), where the souls of the just who predated Jesus Christ hung out until he freed us all from sin. The other, limbus infantium, is just what it sounds like—a home for the souls of babies who die before they can be baptized. It’s a place of happiness, but free from the beatific vision, so ultimately a place of punishment for the sin of Adam (stupid fruit!). This doctrine is especially controversial within the Church, and some Catholics have begun accepting an alternative view—that the faithfulness of the parents can redeem an unbaptized baby’s soul. An emotional issue, to say the least, making it a challenge to segue into the other limbo, but—well, we just did.

The Other Limbo
Trinidad’s sacred ritual becomes a game 80-year-olds play on cruise ships. In the late 1950s, American tourists “borrowed” the limbo and turned it into a fixture at dinner parties, beach movies—even in rock-and-roll songs. In fact, Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock” was the number 9 hit song of 1962.

The Dilemma: You dreamt about riding a horse bareback with your high school wrestling coach. Oh, and you were smoking a cigar. Should you be worried?

People You Can Impress: everyone at Group!

The Quick Trick: The id, ego, superego, and Oedipus stuff are Freudian; archetypes, extro- and introversion, and the collective unconscious are Jungian.

The Explanation:
Both Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961) were so influential that they have become adjectives. But their story begins with Freud. Young Sigmund was the first one to push the idea of the unconscious (a.k.a. the part of your thought process that happens without you knowing it) on the masses. Freud thought that the best window into the unconscious was the dream, and he fixated on sexual development and the libido. In doing so, Freud divided childhood into the oral, anal, and phallic stages, based on what part of the body gives a child pleasure. It was here that he postulated his famous Oedipus complex—the one where sons want to kill Dad and marry Mom (the female version is the Elektra complex). It’s no wonder, then, that Freud believed that a lot of humanity’s problems came from repressed libidos. He thought, for instance, that women were particularly susceptible to “hysteria” (from the Greek for uterus, the same root as that of hysterectomy). And don’t forget penis envy, his (now discredited) theory that women’s psychological problems stemmed from their lack of said appendage.

Of course, Freud also brought words like id, ego, and super-ego into the popular lexicon. The id is home to our base instincts and desires, or our animal impulses; the superego is our subconscious nanny, keeping the id in check; and the ego is the I, balancing desire and acceptable behavior.

In addition, we still use lots of Freud’s other terms in daily conversation, especially when psychoanalyzing our friends. Such coping mechanisms as projection (attributing our faults to others), denial (pretending something never happened), and rationalization (explaining something intellectually, removing the painful emotion) all come straight from Freud.

As for Carl Jung, Freud’s slightly younger contemporary, he fathered analytic psychology. This was based on the idea that the conscious and unconscious minds need to be in harmony with each other. If not, you get neuroses, like depression or phobias.

We use a lot of Jungian gems, too. He coined the words introvert and extrovert. He also postulated the concept of the collective unconscious, or those shared mental characteristics that keep popping up in our cultures and dreams. Early in his career, Jung befriended Freud, but Jung quickly moved away from his predecessor’s theories, emphasizing the role of myth, art, and religion in informing the unconscious.

My Coney Island Baby
Despite their differences, Freud and Jung once went to Coney Island together in 1909. Seriously. Our guess is that Jung found the Loop the Loop to be the archetypal roller coaster, while Freud probably found the whole place phallic and hysteria inducing.

The Dilemma: Oh, we bet you can imagine a few.

People You Can Impress: Mom and Dad, for sure

The Quick Trick: Transvestites cross-dress (including, but not limited to, vests); transsexuals identify as members of the opposite sex.

The Explanation:
The word transvestitism was created by German psychologist Magnus Hirschfield around 1915 to describe people who cross-dress. But cross-dressing was around long before that. It’s been common among eunuchs in India for centuries; in Norse mythology, famously masculine Thor once dressed like a woman; Shakespeare’s characters did it in Twelfth Night and other plays; and so did 15th-century Pope Paul II. (Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, despite what you may have heard, probably did not cross-dress.) Transvestitism describes only the wearing of clothes—or accessories!—associated with another gender. In truth, cross-dressing has little to do with sexual preference, and experts estimate that only about 20 percent of cross-dressers are gay. Transsexualism, on the other hand, involves not wanting to dress as the other gender does, but wanting to be considered another gender. Transsexuals may or may not have undergone surgery and hormone therapy (after which they are often known as “post-op” to their friends) to complete their gender transformation, and while there are more male-to- female transsexuals, the number of female-to-male transsexuals seeking surgery and hormone treatment is growing.

Of course, all of this leads to some very sticky questions with regard to pronouns. Here’s how it breaks down: Transvestites should be referred to by their genetic genders; i.e., someone born male who dresses in women’s clothing is still a he. A genetic male transsexual, on the other hand, is a she, because she considers herself a woman and wishes to live as a woman in all ways, including the pronoun way.

(Inter)sexual Healing
Although most people have always thought of gender as being a one-or-the-other proposition, intersexuality proves that gender is a broad spectrum. Once known as hermaphrodites or pseudohermaphrodites, intersex people are born with gender-ambiguous genitalia. As many as 1 percent of all live births are intersex, usually resulting from a genetic mutation during fetal development. In fact, XX and XY are not the only possible gender chromosome combinations: There have been cases of XO, XXX, XXY, and XYY. Intersex children usually undergo surgery to help them conform to one gender or the other, but more and more, intersex rights groups are lobbying against such surgery, arguing that there’s nothing wrong with being neither male nor female.

Who’s Who
Eddie Izzard (British stand-up comedian): transvestite
Caroline Cossey (“Bond Girl” in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only): transsexual
RuPaul: transvestite
Georgina Beyer (member of New Zealand’s parliament): transsexual
Count Dracula: Transylvanian

The Dilemma: If you’ve seen one smart old Greek guy in a bedsheet, you’ve seen ’em all.

People You Can Impress: philosophy majors, Greeks, and any lingering fans of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The Quick Trick: It’s simple! Just think of them in reverse alphabetical order: Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle who taught Alexander the Great.

The Explanation:
Like many a good philosopher, Socrates (470–399 or so BCE) was obsessed with truth and the correct way to stumble into it. In fact, in his effort to find truth, Socrates placed value not just on knowledge, but on how we know knowledge, and his inquisitive teaching style refl ected it. For one thing, Socrates never lectured. Instead, he asked questions on top of questions (a teaching method still used to this day). The more his students answered, the more they knew or, more accurately, learned what they didn’t know. For example, when you ask yourself, “Do I hate my job because I’m awful at it, or am I awful at my job because I hate it?” you’re being Socratic in your search. As a master philosopher, Socrates’ greatest rhetorical tool was irony, but not the Seinfeld-ian kind. Socratic irony is a tactic by which one pretends to be ignorant of another’s dogmatic beliefs. And by asking apparently “innocent” questions, Socrates would then tear the other’s position to ribbons.

Unfortunately for Socrates, endless questioning is also extremely annoying, and the barefoot philosopher’s inquisitiveness made him powerful enemies. Put on trial for “corrupting the youth,” Socrates was forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock.

Luckily for us, his work lived on through his students. If Socrates wrote anything, it didn’t survive. But his question-and-answer sessions were recorded by his pupils, Plato and Xenophon, in the dialogues. The former (427–347 BCE, give or take) also took it upon himself to expand on Socrates, and in the later dialogues Socrates is mostly AWOL, meaning it’s all Plato. Plato’s work didn’t stop with the dialogues. His own writings dealt mostly with government, law, ethics, and reason. Today The Republic is considered Plato’s major masterwork. In fact, his treatise on a “good city” is still a “must read” for poli-sci majors in universities everywhere.

Of these three philosophical bigwigs, however, it was Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) who had the most expansive intellect (not to mention the shortest beard). Aristotle wrote on literally every subject of the day, from metaphysics and government to mathematics and natural science. In fact, his renown as a polymath is what led Macedonian King Philip II (359–366 BCE) to choose Aristotle as a tutor for his son, Alexander. Aristotle departed from his two predecessors’ line of thought, relying more on sensory input as a source of knowledge. Today Aristotle is thought of as the granddaddy of the scientific method—despite the fact that he relied on pure reason, not experiment, to come to a conclusion, and as a result was wrong a breathtakingly large percentage of the time.

The Dilemma: You read these two epic poems in college for class. Or, more precisely, you scanned them. Well, you never technically cracked the spine of either book, and now you can’t spot a Cyclops from a Trojan Horse. Help!

People You Can Impress: potentially, Brad Pitt. Also anyone who loves the phrase “It’s all Greek to me.”

The Quick Trick: If it’s happening on a boat, it’s The Odyssey; if it’s not, it’s probably The Iliad. Also, The Iliad stars Achilles; The Odyssey, Odysseus.

The Explanation:
Both of these epic poems are attributed to Homer, the Greek poet who may or may not have ever existed (if he did, it may have been in the eighth century bce). The Iliad tells the story of the so-called Trojan War, a war that may or may not have
actually happened due to a boy, Menelaus, and another boy, Paris, being in love with the same girl, Helen. As the story goes, it was out of this love triangle that the fierce battle between the Greeks and the Trojans was born.

As for The Iliad itself, it focuses on the 10th and final year of the war. Greek Achilles (today known primarily as a heel and a tendon) is so angry with his commander-in-chief, Agamemnon, that he ceases fighting. The Trojan Hector, meanwhile, is a loyal soldier. Eventually, Achilles returns to battle and ends up (spoiler alert!) killing Hector. Upon seeing Hector’s body, Achilles feels tremendous pity for the man, and the reader is made to understand the horrors of war.

The Iliad includes some of the oldest lyric poetry in the world, but it doesn’t include the two most famous scenes from the Trojan War: the Trojan Horse and Achilles’ death. Indeed, The Iliad hones in narrowly on Achilles’ wrath and the tragic consequences of battle—making it, perhaps, the world’s first antiwar poem.

While the story revolves mainly around Achilles, a fellow named Odysseus (or, as he was known to Romans and James Joyce, Ulysses) has a nice supporting role. Although Odysseus isn’t central to The Iliad, he’s an important part of stories about the war (for one thing, he came up with the whole idea of the Trojan Horse). But Odysseus’ real moment in the spotlight comes after the war, in the 11,300-line story of his rambling, 10-year-long boat trip home known as The Odyssey.

The Odyssey also tells the story of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, who stands by her man despite having a roomful of suitors who insist he has died at sea. But the focus of the story is the heroic journey of Odysseus. He gets seduced by Sirens, his fellow travelers get turned into swine, and he defeats a Cyclops—all in the space of a few hundred pages. It is this epic that really forms a cornerstone of Western literature. From Virgil’s Aeneid to the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? countless works of art have been inspired by The Odyssey.

The Dilemma: You’re proud to be all three of these supposed insults! But you’re wondering if one captures your brilliant essence better than the others.

People You Can Impress: well, not cool kids, certainly. Face it—we’re never going to impress those jerks.

The Quick Trick: Etymologically, geek probably equals carny, nerd probably equals Seussian animal, and dork probably equals what you might have called President Nixon if you were his close friend.

The Explanation:
All three of these words are now used interchangeably to refer to someone who is undesirable due to a paucity of social skills and an excess of braininess. Fortunately, former middle-school punching bags have co-opted all three words, turning them from insults into badges of honor. But while the words have come to overlap in meaning, their etymologies couldn’t be more different. So for all those of us who’ve suffered such verbal barbs—and what proud mental_floss reader hasn’t?—here’s what they were really saying about you.

GEEK

Etymological Theory 1: Sometime in the early 19th century, the Scottish word geck, meaning “fool,” changed to geek and began being used to describe a certain kind of carnival performer. Geeks specialized in eating live animals, including biting the heads off live chickens.

Theory 2: Real etymology geeks trace the word geck all the way back to Shakespeare—see, for instance, “the most notorious geck” in Act V of Twelfth Night—and claim that we have the first great literature geek to blame for the word.

NERD

Theory 1: The first known appearance of the word is in Dr. Seuss’s 1950 If I Ran the Zoo, in which a character wants to collect “A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!” The theory goes that kids liked the ring of the word so much, they started using it derogatorily.

Theory 2: Some at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute claim that they coined the word knurd in the ’50s to describe kids who studied all the time (knurd being drunk spelled backward).

DORK

This time, there’s only one theory: The word dork originally meant “penis.” (Specifically, human penis.) Popularized in the ’60s, dork was probably derived from dirk, a penile name that was widely used until the short version of Richard became ubiquitous.

Old School Nerds
Before the words nerd and dork existed, there were still nerds and dorks. According to Dewdroppers, Waldos, and Slackers, a guide to 20th-century American slang, all these words have been used to describe the unpopular, undesirable, and generally square: wind sucker, dewdropper, Joe Zilch, dudd, pantywaist, oil can, stinkeroo, mullet, nose-bleed, roach, schnookle, kook, dimp, dorf, mince, squid, auger, and waldo.

The Dilemma: You know one of these rascals is the star of the Great American Novel, but which one?

People You Can Impress: the Widow Douglas, Aunt Polly, Injun Joe, Jim—and most important, noted hottie Becky Thatcher

The Quick Trick: Huck Finn is brilliant; Tom Sawyer isn’t.

The Explanation:
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) was among the first American novels written in the vernacular. Twain always felt strongly that writing ought to reflect the way people talk (for a hilarious meditation on the topic, see Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” in which Twain takes Cooper and, to use the vernacular of our day, tears him a new one). Huckleberry Finn was by far the greatest book Twain ever wrote. Set before the Civil War, it tells the story of one Huck Finn, the son of a violent drunk. Huck’s dad kidnaps him from his civilized foster home. Huck escapes his dad and ends up floating on a raft with a slave named Jim who is seeking freedom in the North. Although Huck’s conscience tells him he ought to do the legal thing and turn Jim in, he just can’t bring himself to do it. The conflict between Huck’s “deformed con- science,” as Twain called it, and his personal feelings is what makes Huck such an extraordinary hero. And Jim, whose dialect is brilliantly rendered, emerges as, to quote the novelist Russell Baker, the book’s “only true gentleman.” It’s a staggering inversion of 19th-century expectations: Doing the right thing means going against your conscience, and sometimes the noblest man in a story is black. Plus Huck Finn is a wonderful adventure story, which is why it was initially published not for adults but kids. Adults, as it happened, ended up loving it, too. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. . . . It’s the best book we’ve had.”

You’re not likely to catch anyone calling The Adventures of Tom Sawyer “the best book we’ve had.” Tom Sawyer is about the rollicking life of boys in a riverside town—and it ain’t much deeper than that. Tom convinces other children to whitewash a fence for him; Tom and Huck explore Injun Joe’s cave; Tom and Huck try their best to win the affection of pigtailed blonde Becky Thatcher, etc. Critics view Tom Sawyer as little more than a well-written, nostalgic romp through Twain’s childhood in Hannibal, Missouri. It’s plenty of fun, but Tom’s simpleminded mischievousness just can’t match Huck’s thoughtfulness and despite-his-best-efforts heroism.

Banning Books
When the American Library Association compiled a list of the books people most frequently attempt to ban from schools and libraries during the 1990s, Huck Finn came in fifth. (It was beat by, among others, the filthy, profanity-ridden, borderline-pornographic drivel known as—well—Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.)

The Dilemma: You’ve read his writing, or at the very least heard his First Letter to the Corinthians at 100,000 weddings (“Love is not boastful,” etc.). But what’s the real name of the 13th apostle?

People You Can Impress: biblical scholars and people named Paul (also, people named Saul, although a lot of them tend to be either elderly or dead)

The Quick Trick: Before he saw Jesus, he was Saul; thereafter, Paul.

The Explanation:
Just as Prince became the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, Saul of Tarsus saw fit to have a midcareer name change. But Saul’s transformation was even more radical than Prince’s: Saul was a Jewish tentmaker who may have possessed Roman citizenship and persecuted Christians; Paul was a Christian—in fact, he was probably the single most important person in Christian history not named Jesus.

The change came about while Saul was on the road to Damascus around 35 ce, when Jesus appeared before him in a vision. Called by Christ to apostleship, Saul became Paul, and Paul quickly became one of the most important leaders of the young church. As a Jew, Paul was able to ground his theology in the Judaism of Jesus and most of the fledgling band of Christians. But Paul saw his true mission as being “the apostle to the gentiles,” and with his knowledge of Roman traditions, he was well placed to preach to non-Jewish residents of the empire. In his letters to various congregations, many of which ended up in the New Testament, Paul’s emphasis on the mystical importance of the resurrection of Christ, along with his exhortations to evangelize to the gentiles, helped establish Christianity as we know it today, as a religion entirely separate from Judaism. Paul also founded churches in Asia Minor and possibly even Spain and Britain.

Although little is known for certain about his life after the letters in the New Testament (most of which date to the 50s ce, making them some of the New Testament’s earliest writings), Paul is believed to have been—you’ll never believe it—martyred around 67 ce.

John vs. John vs. John vs. John
A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE BIBLICAL JOHNS

John the Baptist: A prophet to Christians and Muslims alike, J the B was a radical, locust-eating preacher who baptized folks in the desert. When Jesus visited John, he hailed Jesus as the Second Coming. Unfortunately, he was beheaded on orders from Herod.

John the Apostle: One of the 12 apostles. Possibly the author of the Gospel According to John; possibly the author of the epistles of John; and possibly the author of Revelation. But probably none of the above, since all those works date to the late first century/early second century.

John the Evangelist: The name used to refer to the author of The Gospel According to John, whoever he was.

John of Patmos: The name used to refer to the author of Revelation, whoever he was.

The Dilemma: They’re both dogs, right? And they’re both Disney characters. So why’s one of them walking around on two legs and chatting up a storm while the other’s resigned to barking on all fours and lapping from a water bowl?

People You Can Impress: Mickey, Minnie, Scrooge McDuck, Dumbo, Darkwing Duck, Lady, the Tramp, Chip, Dale, and Baloo Bear from TaleSpin*

The Quick Trick: Goofy talks; Pluto doesn’t.

The Explanation:
To begin with, cartoon dogs are generally not known as “dogs” but as “dawgs.” Believe it or not, this convention dates all the way back to the 1920s. So neither Goofy nor Pluto is a dog; they are both dawgs. Pluto, however, is a pet, whereas Goofy is equal to (albeit stupider than) the other anthropomorphized residents of the Disney universe.

A character similar to Pluto first appeared in 1930 as a bloodhound named Rover. Rover quickly became Minnie Mouse’s pet dog, and then Disney changed his name to Pluto and made Mickey Mouse the owner. Over the years, the versatile Pluto has also played Donald Duck’s pet dog. In fact, Pluto was among the most popular Disney characters in the ’30s and ’40s, often appearing in his own cartoons opposite such friends as Dinah the Dachshund and such enemies as Chip ’n’ Dale, who went on to have their own success as Rescue Rangers.

But Pluto has fallen out of favor lately: He was the only major character not featured in 1984’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Goofy, whose full name is Goofy Goof, has fared far better, perhaps because kids prefer their dawgs talking. Goofy debuted in 1932, and was known variously as Dippy Dawg (see?!), Mr. Geef, and Dippy the Goof before his name was solidified in 1934. The highlight of Goofy’s early career was 1951’s No Smoking, in which he fights a nicotine craving to hilarious effect. Goofy’s star faded for decades: Between 1961 and the mid-1990s, the professional doofus nearly disappeared from the Disney pantheon. But what a comeback he’s made. After the success of his TV show Goof Troop, Goofy has become a star in many of Disney’s direct-to-DVD animations, including 2000’s An Extremely Goofy Movie, which we regret to report is also An Extremely Cloying Movie. Pluto should be so lucky as to have the comeback his chatty, pants-wearing pal has enjoyed.

Pluto vs. Other Tiny Planets
Some astronomers argue that a celestial object, currently known by the catchy name 2003UB313, is more of a planet than Pluto is—and that it either should be the ninth planet or kids should have to memorize a tenth planet name. That said, it’s definitely going to mess up a lot of mnemonic devices: “My Very Earnest Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles 2003UB313” just doesn’t roll off the tongue.

*Note: Several years ago, our friend Hank bet us that we could never get “Baloo Bear” into a book. Checkmate, sir. That will be five American dollars.

The Dilemma: You’re vaguely worried about a pop quiz at the Pearly Gates.

People You Can Impress: well, Jesus, obviously

The Quick Trick: Unless Jesus Christ himself has named you an apostle, discipleship is really the best you can hope for.

The Explanation:
The words are often used interchangeably, but they don’t quite share a meaning. All Christians are (or at least ought to be) disciples of Christ, because they follow his teachings. (Disciple comes from the Latin discipulus, which means “pupil.”) But very, very few Christians have ever been full-on apostles, because “apostle” is a title that only Jesus himself could give someone. If a disciple is a pupil, then an apostle is something of a traveling salesman (its Greek root word technically means “delegate,” but “traveling salesman” is funnier). The 12 disciples officially became Jesus’ delegates when he personally sent them out into the world to preach and heal.

Over the years, many people have claimed that Jesus named them apostles (see, for instance, David Koresh), and many evangelical Christian groups believe that all their members are apostles who’ve been dispatched by Jesus—which is why they often show up on your doorstep. But all Christians agree that there have been at least 13 apostles: the 12 ODs (that is, Original Disciples) and the apostle Paul, who met Jesus after his resurrection.

The 12: A Quick Rundown

Simon called Peter: Fisherman who left his nets to follow Jesus; became the first pope; probably crucified around 64 CE.

Andrew: Peter’s brother; didn’t get to be pope, but probably did get crucified (on an X-shaped cross, now known as a St. Andrew’s Cross and seen on the flag of Scotland).

James: Known as “St. James the Greater”; one of the first to follow Jesus; wasn’t crucified, but was martyred by the sword.

John: Possibly the author of The Gospel According to John and The Book of Revelation to John; he was the rare disciple who lived to old age.

Philip: Not widely mentioned in the Gospels, Philip reportedly died during a crucifixion even though a miraculous earthquake shook him loose from the cross.

Bartholomew: Pals with Philip, Bartholomew (according to tradition) was flayed alive in Armenia and then crucified upside down.

Matthew: Known as “the tax collector” and the author of The Gospel According to Matthew, tradition holds that Matthew was martyred in either Ethiopia or Parthia.

Thomas: The Thomas behind “Doubting Thomas,” he is supposed to have been the first missionary to India. Martyred, naturally.

James: Known by the unfortunate moniker “James the Lesser” and barely mentioned in the gospels, although he may have written the underread Book of James. Probably martyred.

Simon: Commonly referred to as “Simon the Zealot,” he was reportedly put to death by a saw.

Judas Iscariot: Most likely betrayed Jesus for 30 lousy pieces of silver, and ended up killing himself.

The Other Judas: So many people got Judas Thaddeus confused with the-Judas-who-betrayed-Jesus that veneration of Thaddeus came to be known as a “lost cause.” Thaddeus is now the patron saint of lost causes. Martyred.

The Dilemma: You’re chatting with a cute girl at a party, and she calls herself a pantheist. You want to ask a good follow-up question, but your limited knowledge of Greek prefixes has gotten you all flustered.

People You Can Impress: Pagans, wiccans, Hindus, Buddhists—pretty much everyone except Christians, Jews, and Muslims

The Quick Trick: Poly means “many”; pan means “all.” So if you’re looking to worship a bunch of things, go with polytheism. If you want to worship everything, go with pantheism.

The Explanation:
Very simply, polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, and pantheism is the belief that God is everything and everything is God. While the polytheist may believe in Zeus and Hera, the pantheist probably believes in Zeus and Hera and every other deity as part of the primary force in all things.

But the simplicity of this difference masks a world of confusion. Take Hinduism, which is usually considered to be a polytheistic religion because it contains enough gods to pack the Rose Bowl. However, many Hindus are not polytheistic. They view all gods as manifestations or aspects of the one Supreme God, which is every bit as monotheistic as the Christian belief in the Trinity. However, some Hindus are pantheistic, believing that just as all the various gods are aspects of the one true God, so is everything else in creation. Wait. So who’s on fi rst? (Aside from Vishnu, Ganesha, Shiva, Brahma, and Lakshmi.)

In reality, the problem stems from a desire to boil down religious traditions into something simpler than they are. It’s true, for instance, that most Buddhists don’t believe in any gods, ergo no word with theist in it applies to them, but the Buddhist belief that everything in the cosmos has “universal Buddha nature” is sorta pantheistic. Accusations of pantheism are frequently leveled against mystical sects of monotheistic religions, like Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufi sm in Islam, and Gnosticism in Christianity.

All in all, you’re well advised never to label a people pantheistic or polytheistic unless they identify themselves as such. Although both words have clear meanings, the actual application of them exposes the diversity within all religious traditions.

Polyamory vs. Polygamy

Polyamory means that you’re part of a long-term sexual relationship that involves more than two people; polygamy means you’ve made it official with a wedding. (Or multiple weddings, actually.) Polyamory is legal in the United States, and, in fact, its proponents claim there are thousands of happily polyamorous Americans. Polygamy is illegal, although prosecutions are rare.

Polygamy itself comes in two poly-varieties: Polygyny means having more than one wife or female mate at a time and is also the shortest word in the English language containing three y’s. Polyandry means having more than one husband or male mate at a time.

Sure, but is there such a thing as panamory, for those of us who literally want to do it with everything? Not yet, but be patient. Polyamory didn’t become a popular word until 1990; panamory can’t be far behind.

The Dilemma: You’ve just finished a brilliant, heartbreaking screenplay titled Mighty Ducks 5. But you can’t remember whether to slip it under Sheen or Estevez’s door.

People You Can Impress: rabid Men at Work fans

The Quick Trick: You saw Estevez in The Breakfast Club; Sheen in Wall Street. (So to answer your dilemma: It’s Estevez.)

The Explanation:

SHEEN
5’10″

Born Carlos Estevez (took his father’s stage name to ride his coattails)

Divorced from a quasi-celebrity (he was married to Denise Richards from 2002 to 2005)

Has often been forced to talk about his romantic relationships in court (he once accidentally shot then-girlfriend Kelly Preston, was twice charged with beating women, and admitted paying $50,000 for prostitutes during the trial of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss).

Best movies: Platoon, Wall Street, Major League

Worst movies: Grizzly II: The Predator, All Dogs Go to Heaven
2—there have been a lot, really.

ESTEVEZ

5’7″

Born Emilio Estevez (refused to take his father’s stage name because he didn’t want to ride his coattails)

Divorced from a quasi-celebrity (he was married to Paula Abdul from 1992 to 1994)

Never talks about his romantic relationships

Best movies: The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, The War at Home

Worst movies: The latter two-thirds of the Mighty Ducks franchise certainly didn’t get a lot of Oscar buzz.

The Sheens: A Family Circle

-Joe Estevez (appeared in more than 125 movies, like Max Hell Comes to Frogtown [2002]) BROTHER TO →
- Martin Sheen (West Wing, Wall Street, etc.) FATHER TO →
-Renée Estevez (bit parts in everything from The War at Home to Red Shoe Diaries 5) SISTER TO →
-Charlie Sheen (already discussed) FATHER TO →
-Sam Sheen (In a record even for Sheen/Estevezes, Sam was born on March 9, 2004, and got her first acting gig just eight months later, playing a baby on Sheen’s show Two and a Half Men.) NIECE TO →
-Ramon Estevez (a bit part in Alligator 2: The Mutation might be the highlight of his career) BROTHER TO →
-Emilio Estevez (already discussed) FATHER TO →
-Taylor Estevez (bit parts in two movies, both of which starred his father) BROTHER TO →
-Paloma Estevez (bit part in one movie, The War at Home, which starred her father and grandfather)

The Dilemma: You’re writing an important memo/ term paper/mental_floss book, and you need a dash. But not just any dash.

People You Can Impress: almost no one, really

The Quick Trick: It’s almost always an em dash. No document can ever contain too many em dashes—in this book alone we use 173.

The Explanation:
Having learned to not dangle your participles or split your infinitives,* grammar offers bolder, deeper mysteries. Like, can you start a sentence with like? And what about starting (or finishing) a sentence with and? And also, what’s the difference between an en dash and an em dash? The answers to those questions: Sure; yeah; and well, read on.

An en dash (–) is bigger than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash (—). Th e names come from an obscure typographical measurement system, but the dashes have now taken on a life of their own in grammar. The em dash is the spork of English grammar: It ain’t particularly pretty, but you can use it for most anything. Em dashes can replace colons or sets of parentheses, or represent a sudden change in thought or tone.

But if the em dash is a spork, then the en dash is nothing less than a salad fork: We often forget what it looks like and when to use it. But here are the two basic uses of en dashes:

1. To show numerical ranges, signifying “up to and including”—of dates, ages, pages, etc. (Example: “I read pages 7–22 last night.”)

2. The storied “compound adjective hyphen,” an event so rare in the English language that proofreaders shiver with excitement whenever they come across it. Basically “pro-American” gets a regular hyphen because “American” is only one word, whereas “pro–Falkland Islands” gets an en dash because “Falkland Islands” is two words. So, too phrases like “Civil War–era.”

The Grammar Roundup

Colon vs. Semicolon: Semicolons connect two complete sentences; colons start lists, introduce quotations, and extract water from feces. Oh, wait. Different colon.
Slash vs. Backslash: The backslash was invented in 1960 and is used almost exclusively in computing; the forward slash was invented by the ancient Romans and is often used in place of a hyphen.

What the ‽
The newest punctuation mark, by far, is the interrobang, which has the kind of name you just want to keep repeating. An exclamation point superimposed on a question mark, the interrobang is for those questions that are also exclamations, like: “Arnold Schwarzenegger is pregnant‽” Invented by advertising executive Martin K. Speckter in 1962, the interrobang became a key on some typewriters and was featured in newspapers. But alas, its popularity waned. Today you have to scroll all the way down your font list to Wingdings 2 to find the interrobang on Windows-based computers.

*Both of which, you will no doubt note, we did in that very sentence.

The Dilemma: You’re reading a document that’s riddled with needless, pretentious Latin abbreviations (a legal brief, e.g., or mental_floss’s exploration of differences—i.e., this book), but your year of high school Latin has been obscured by the fog of memory.

People You Can Impress: Roman emperors, lawyers, and grammar nerds

The Quick Trick: E.g. means “for example”; i.e. means “that is.” We at mental_floss remember this simply by employing Valley Girl speak. Where a fancypants Latinist would use e.g., a Valley Girl would use “like.” And where the Latinist uses i.e., the Valley girl goes with “I mean.” Like: “I love going out with Todd. He has, like, a really nice car. I mean, it cost a lot of money.”

The Explanation:
We will never understand why English abbreviations like BRB and LOL are derided as lazy, while Latin abbreviations are seen as the height of class. But now and again, it just sounds better to spice things up with a little dead language, and since Greek and Sanskrit both use unfamiliar alphabets, Latin’s your best bet.

E.g. is short for exempli gratia, which literally means “by grace of example.” I.e. is more straightforward: id est means “that is.” The confusion stems from the fact that both abbreviations seek to clarify or focus a broad proposition, but e.g. is followed by a specific example, whereas i.e. is followed by a restatement.

Now that you know your i.e. from your e.g., we hereby provide a guide to other Latin abbreviations and phrases that some people use, even though the English language has already stolen all the Latin words it needs.

Other Helpful Latin Abbreviations

C.f.: Often misused to mean “see, for instance,” c.f. is actually short for confer. Confer is the imperative of conferre and means “compare” in Latin even though it means no such thing in English. Just remember c.f. should be used in English only to mean “compare with.”

Etc.: Literally, “and the rest,” etc. (the abbreviation of etcetera) indicates that the list it follows is partial. For that reason, it’s redundant, and therefore poor grammar, to say, “I love hair metal; e.g., Whitesnake, Poison, Damn Yankees, etc.,” since the “for example” immediately makes it clear that the list is partial.

QED: An abbreviation for quod erat demonstradum that means “which was to be demonstrated.” These days, QED generally means “Look, Mom, I proved it!” Mathematicians sometimes still end their proofs with “QED,” and you sometimes hear lawyers say it, because lawyers will say absolutely anything in Latin.

The Dilemma: You want to assail someone’s intelligence, but you don’t know quite which word to use, which calls into question your own intellect.

People You Can Impress: Well, idiots and morons both, for starters. But also psychologists. And you really, really need to impress psychologists, because—as you’ll see—you don’t want them to think you’re an
idiot.

The Quick Trick: These days, the words are completely synonymous. But back in the dark days of psychology (which is to say until about 30 years ago), there was a difference, and here’s the quick trick psychologists used: Ask a question. If your subject answers, they’re a moron at worst. If they don’t answer, you might have an idiot on your hands.

The Explanation:
Anyone who says that political correctness never accomplished anything worthwhile should take a long, hard look at the lot of the idiot.

In 1911, French psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the first modern intelligence test, which measured intelligence (hence the “intelligence quotient”) based on whether children could accomplish tasks like pointing to their nose (honestly) and counting pennies. The concept of “IQ” followed soon after, and psychologists fell so deeply in love with the scientific nature of the tests that they created classification systems. Any child with an IQ of above 70 was considered “normal,” while those with scores above 130 were considered “gifted.” To classify scores below 70, psychologists invented a nomenclature of retardation. Those with IQs between 51 and 70 were called morons. Morons had adequate learning skills to complete menial tasks and communicate. Imbeciles, with IQs between 26 and 50, never progressed past a mental age of about six. And the lowest of all were the idiots, with IQs between 0 and 25, who were characterized by poor motor skills, extremely limited communication, and little response to stimulus.

The moron/imbecile/idiot classifications remained popular, amazingly, until the early 1970s, when people started to note that the developmentally disabled have enough difficulties without being saddled with condescending labels.

Today the classification system is one category broader—moron, imbecile, and idiot have been replaced with mild, moderate, severe, and profound retardation—and diagnostic factors other than IQ are considered in making a diagnosis.

Good to Know
The doubly offensive term “Mongolian idiot,” which in the 19th and early 20th centuries was an actual, literal diagnosis, derives from people’s belief that individuals with Down syndrome—with their wide-set eyes and round faces—resembled Mongolians. In fact, before the British physician J.H.L. Down (1828–1896) lent his name to the chromosomal syndrome, Down syndrome was known merely as “mongolism.”