Number
200
From an ad:
"Artist-driven" designs? As opposed to what? Designs created by CEOs? Jump-started by janitors? Started by salespeople?
And how about that art created "from scratch"? Very impressive. Not your usual art built from kits.
What they need is some writer-driven ad copy.
The complaints about naming sports teams after Indian tribes popped up again, regarding the Fighting Sioux of the University of North Dakota. Unlike the Redskins, this name doesn't refer to color, which must never be mentioned even though it's a good thing. But there's another objection: Sioux is an old Ojibwa word for "enemy tribe" that was adopted by the French, but the tribe still calls itself Lakota. Yet nobody objects to the Fighting Irish, for instance. And how about the Padres? A veteran pointed out that the military names helicopters after Indian tribes, like the Apache. It's an honor to be thought to be a tough competitor. At least the teams aren't eating the livers and hearts of the Sioux and Irish and so on in order to acquire their qualities of valor. In order to be perfectly, correctly sensitive, maybe team names should never refer to anything human. How about the Fighting Rocks? Or Paper or Scissors? The Paper Scissors Rock game now has a world tournament.
Dennis Prager thinks the impulse for revenge ~ not necessarily the practice ~ is a good and noble aspect of our built-in sense of justice. To those of you who are recoiling right now, compare the concept of revenge with the concept of karmic retribution in this or another life. Revenge bad, karma good?
Prager also asked in passing why "jungle" has been replaced with "rainforest". Good question. Maybe rainforest is a more scientific, botanical term. But I also suspect that people find the connotations of "jungle" not quite nice. "Jungle" also has metaphorical meaning as a place of confusion or bloody competition ("It's a jungle out there"). But for me, especially when I was a kid, it also suggested a place of primal mystery. Yourdictionary.com says the word is "ultimately from Sanskrit jagalam, desert, wasteland, uncultivated area." An interesting political scenario here: a rainforest sounds like something that might need conservation, whereas a wasteland sounds like something that should be made use of. Our ways of using land are changing in some places.
PO Reader Tim Bazzett has a new book out, Pinhead: A Love Story, third in an autobiographical series. It's "an engaging inside look at dating rituals and sexual mores of the mid-sixties. Doug Stanton, NY Times best selling author, said: "Part American Graffiti, part coming-home tale, Pinhead is a barrelling road-trip into a long-ago America ~ not a simpler time, just funnier."
I talked to my Belgian student about "solidary" and found I had misunderstood her. "Solidary" is an English word that she used in an attempt to translate something, probably solidariteit.
From Garner's Usage Tip of the Day
'Boulevard' is a French
corruption of the German Bollwerk, 'bulwark.' It means, therefore, a street
laid out on the site of an ancient fortification. As this is never done until a
city has far outgrown its walls, a boulevard is generally in a thickly settled
quarter and has no suburban associations. On the contrary, an 'avenue' (from
Fr. avenir, 'arrive') is properly an 'approach' to a city or to some
conspicuous part of it. A 'road' is properly a way by which ones 'rides' or
travels, a 'highway,' and is naturally named from the place to which it leads
(as 'the London Road') or its direction ('the Northern Road')." James
Bradstreet Greenough & George Lyman Kittredge, Words and Their Ways in
English Speech 320-21 (1901).
OK, so what about street? Going back even further, it comes from an ancient Indo-European root ster meaning spread. Derivatives include: destroy, industry, straw, street, and stratagem; also strain, perestroika, and streusel.
The old English word path comes from I-E root pent and derivatives include find, pontiff, and sputnik. How does find come from pent, you ask. It's because of the connection between the consonants F and P, and D and T. These sounds shift around historically but are produced in the mouth by similar movements or tongue positions.
News flash: Along with video of a live confrontation between police and a shooter, a reporter said that the "shooting suspect was holed up in a house shooting at police." True, the shooter hadn't yet been arrested, tried, and convicted, but there was no doubt that he was shooting.
"Gay" is a name that's gone out of fashion for women, but did you know it was a man's name too? James Stewart played a man called Gay in the 1940 movie No Time for Comedy. It was short for Gaylord, which I'm sure is not a name picked by very many new parents anymore either.
You may have read that some school children were told to dress up as Muslims for class, recite the five pillars of Islamic belief, and more or less pretend to be Muslims. There is zero chance that any public school in the U.S. would have kids pretend to be baptized or take communion, or shave their heads and meditate for an hour, or read the Torah, even as a lesson in cultural history and diversity. Aside from that inequity, this lesson teaches that these beliefs can be played with. I don't suppose Muslims would say this playacting by children constitutes conversion, unlike the conversion at gunpoint of the kidnapped journalists. But sharia law says that if a Muslim converts to another religion, it is apostasy and the penalty can be serious death, so I wouldn't fool around with it. I also would be careful about encouraging children to emulate Mohammed, a warrior who married a 9-year-old girl.
While American textbooks are changing their content due to pressure from Muslim interest groups (among others), some people complain that avowedly religious politicians may be influenced by their religious beliefs. This was the fear with the Catholic John Kennedy. If you have a religious belief, how it can fail to affect your actions? If it doesn't, it's not a real belief. That's not the same as imposing that belief on the country or establishing a state religion. But everyone has some kind of belief in what the nature of reality is ~ i.e., religion ~ and acts accordingly, consciously or unconsciously. If you believe that economics is the greatest driver of human beings, you might possibly be a communist or progressive. Atheism is a belief too; as they say, "Tell me what the god is like that you don't believe in." If you believe only in what you can perceive with your five senses (assuming all five are working), I'm not sure how that would affect your decision-making, but it would.
So, get ready for the holidays. Mike Sykes wrote:
I sometimes wonder
whether one sends Christmas cards to Muslims. I once used to exchange greetings
with a (now deceased) second cousin whom I knew to be a devout atheist, so I
offered him "solsticial greetings".
There's always New Year's for everyone, unless they object to measuring years by the Christian calendar. I told Mike I send non-religious seasonal greetings to my Jewish or non-religious friends ~ but only at Christmas time. By the way, who do you thank at Thanksgiving? The least you could do is thank the turkey.
200
This is the 200th Parvum Opus! Sometimes I think about switching to a blog format, but I'm not sure if that would work as well. What do you think?
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It is the glory of God to
conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs
25:2
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