Wolf of Wall Street may refer to:  The Wolf of Wall Street (book), the 2007 memoir of Jordan Belfort, who was himself nicknamed the Wolf of Wall Street; The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film), a film by Martin Scorsese based on Belfort's memoir; The Wolf of Wall Street (1929 film), a silent film by Rowland V. Lee and starring George Bancroft; David Lamar (1876–1934), con man known as "The Wolf of Wall Street"; Wolves of Wall Street, a 2002 film by David DeCoteau; and The Lone Wolf of Wall Street, nickname of Bernard Baruch (1870–1965), American financier, stock investor and philanthropist.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_of_Wall_Street  The phrase is also used in the 1947 film They Won't Believe Me. 

Lestodons could eat avocado pits, which is the only reason we have avocados at all.  Lestodons might sound like toothy, scaly dinosaurs.  But these Cenozoic-era creatures were sloths, the direct ancestors of the ones still around today.  Lestodons were much, much larger than your typical sloth; they put the “mega” in “megafauna.” Weighing from two to four tons, lestodons, along with other “ground sloths,” roamed grassy plains in South America.  Their diet consisted of grass and foliage.  But they occasionally ate a more nutritious treat: the early avocado.  Giant sloths, along with megafauna like gomphotheres and glyptodons, feasted on whole avocados and spread their seeds over South America.  Many big-seeded plants across the Americas, such as osage oranges and honeylocusts, similarly were propagated by megafauna.  Until one day, there weren’t any left. Near the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, a fluctuating climate wiped out many megafauna.  (Some survived, such as the much-bigger-than-you-think moose.)  Accordingly, the ranges of many of the plants they ate also shrank.  Without large creatures around, seeds simply fell to the ground and rotted.  The avocado might have only survived in a valley or two as a small, obscure fruit, if a new propagator hadn’t come along:  us.  While human hunters likely contributed to the end of the megafauna, both giant sloths and people had something in common:  a love for luscious avocado.  Though humans weren’t swallowing the fruits whole, they did plant them widely over South and Central America.  Anne Ewbank  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/avocado-giant-sloth-seed 

The slang term 'qt' is a shortened form of 'quiet'.  There's no definitive source for the phrase 'on the q.t.', although it appears to be of 19th century British origin--not, as is often supposed, American.  The longer phrase 'on the quiet' is also not especially old, but is first recorded somewhat before 'on the qt', in Otago: Goldfields & Resources, 1862:  "Unless men can work [the gold] on 'the quiet', they are not likely to make 'piles' so rapidly as Messrs. Hartley and Riley."  That first record is from New Zealand, but is soon followed by citations from the United Kingdom and the USA.  As to on the q.t., in The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Robert Hendrickson states:  "A British broadside ballad (1870) contained the line 'Whatever I tell you is on the Q.T.'"  Read more at https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-the-qt.html 

At the onset of the Occupation in 1940, Nazi troops seized about 80 percent of French food production, including about a quarter of its produce and half of its meat.  They focused on choice products like potatoes, leaving the French with scraps.  Before World War II, vegetables such as rutabaga and Jerusalem artichoke had been relegated to animal feed, but they soon became the centerpieces of French tables.  It’s no surprise that the French, who survived off of these hardy vegetables for nine years, could no longer bear the sight of them when rationing finally ended in 1949.  Eggplants, zucchini, and potatoes returned to market stalls, but many other easy-to-grow root vegetables were palpably absent, so much so that when they finally started to appear on restaurant menus decades later, they were dubbed les légumes oubliés:  the forgotten vegetables.  It wasn’t until the early 2000s that many of these vegetables once again took root in the hearts and on the menus of the French.  Loïc Martin, owner of wine bar Martin and restaurant Robert, claims their renaissance arrived with the “bistronomy” movement.  Emily Monaco  See pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/food-during-french-occupation 

Jack Robinson is a name present in two common figures of speech.  When referring to Jack Robinson, it is used to represent quickness.  In contrast, the phrase "(A)round Jack Robinson's barn" has the opposite connotation, implying slowness, as it is often used to refer to circumlocution, circumvention, or doing things in roundabout or unnecessarily complicated ways.  According to Grose's Classical Dictionary (1785), the reference is to an individual whose social visits were so short that he would be departing almost before his arrival was announced.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Robinson_(mythical_person) 

“Jack” first appeared in written form in the 13th century, and most scholars believe that it was adapted from the French “Jacques.”  But “Jack” in English has always been used as a “pet” or “familiar” name for “John,” and there’s a school of thought that “Jack” evolved all by itself in English without the help of “Jacques.”   “Jack” was (and still is) also used to mean a manual laborer who performs specific jobs, such as a “steeplejack” or a “lumberjack” (but the true “jack of all trades” was, sadly, last spotted riding out of town on a unicorn).  One of the most interesting uses of “jack” that developed was as a term for a device or tool that performed the function of an imaginary helper or otherwise proved helpful in a task.  Thus we use “jack” to mean the gizmo we use to raise a car, a fitting or socket into which something important plugs, or one of a thousand small parts of larger machines.  Uses like these eventually led to “jack” becoming a slang synonym for “small” or “nothing,” as in “You don’t know jack about haggis.”  “Before you can say Jack Robinson,” meaning “quickly, in a very short time (or suddenly)” first appeared in print in 1778 in Frances (Fanny) Burney’s novel “Evelina” (“I’d do it as soon as say Jack Robinson”), but probably was in wide use before that time.  The most vivid theory about the origin of the phrase traces it to a Sir John Robinson, who served as His Majesty’s Lieutenant at the Tower of London around 1600, and supposedly became famous for the alacrity with which he conducted beheadings.  Robinson certainly existed and held the job; Samuel Pepys referred to him as “a talking bragging bufflehead.”  But to say that this theory lacks solid supporting evidence would be a gross understatement; among other problems, there’s no record of the phrase, or a reputation for quick action, ever being tied to Robinson at the time.  http://www.word-detective.com/2012/06/jack-robinson/ 

Alex Trebek, the genial "Jeopardy!" host with all the answers and a reassuring presence in the TV game-show landscape for five decades, has died.  He was 80 years old.  Over 37 seasons, Trebek hosted more than 8,200 episodes of "Jeopardy!," the most by a presenter of any single TV game show, according to a statement from Sony Pictures.  Born in Sudbury, Canada, he studied philosophy before becoming a journalist, working as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.  In 1966, while still in his mid-20s, he switched from journalism to hosting game shows, starting with a quiz show titled "Reach for the Top," and followed a few years later by another, "Jackpot."  It wasn't until 1984 that Trebek landed what turned out to be his big break, when producer-host Merv Griffin chose him to emcee a revival of "Jeopardy!," which was paired with another hit game show, "Wheel of Fortune."  Besides his hosting work, which included such shows as "Classic Concentration" and "High Rollers," Trebek was active as a philanthropist, taking part in USO Tours visiting US troops overseas and serving as a spokesman for various charities, including WorldVision.  Brian Lowry and Dakin Andone  https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/entertainment/alex-trebek-jeopardy-host-death-trnd/index.html  Alex Trebek died November 8, 2020.  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2282  November 9, 2020