Opining Online

From Evening Palaver, Some history and a song.

As Wintley Phipps introduces the song, contrast his interpretation of the Christian message with Jeremiah Wright’s. Where one is divisive, the other is inclusive, and not just for the sake of inclusion, but because of the theoretical basis for that inclusion: that each and every human is equal in God’s eyes, that there remains no division based on strength or weakness, goodness or evil, only grace.

And that, if nothing else, is amazing.

Go listen.

While you’re there, check out this version too.

Go check this one out.

Rarely do you find a photo that says so much. Let’s analyze it on the basis of the differences between male and female. Or perhaps on the differences between the sacrifices of the spouse staying in the U.S. and the one serving in a war zone. Or on the artistic merits of how much our feet say about us and our situation. Or maybe, just enjoy and appreciate. 

So far, I’ve broken down and bought my second copy of From Dawn to Decadence. Dearest brother, I believe my first copy is buried somewhere in your pile of books or you left it in the patio “cabinet” that Dad took, contents and all, and burned like he’d been threatening to for years. Who to blame? You or Dad? hmm… it’s not like I would have loaned the book to Dad is it?

Again, dear brother, did the same thing happen with The True Believer?

The last I remember seeing of The Scotch-Irish: A Social History and How the Scots Invented the Modern World is when a daughter or two and a son-in-law or two were looking them over. I’ve since searched both daughter’s bookcases and not found my books. I’m at a loss here. I can’t help but wonder if they left them in their uncle’s care.

How is it that Born Fighting, a book I’m not as likely to re-read is still safely on my shelf?

Now I’m not really complaining too much here. My daughters and my brother have provided me with lots of reading material. It’s just that I can’t understand why books I refer to often disappear. Maybe there’s a bookmouse in my house.

Etymology. Callimachus explores word-pairs. His post led me to wonder what the etymology of “punish” is. That search led me to Etymologically Speaking, where I’ve spent the last two hours.

Some of my favorites:

Charlatan

From the Spanish “charlar,” to chat.

Candidate

From the Latin Candidus word meaning, “bright, shining, glistening white.” The ancient Roman candidates for office would wear bright white togas. This same word also gave rise to “candid,” which candidates rarely are.

Cretin

From the French “Crétin,” which originally meant “Christian.”

Debonair

French for “of good air.” In the Middle Ages, people’s health was judged partly by how they smelled. A person who gave off “good air” was presumed healthier and happier.

Elite

From the Latin elire, meaning “to choose,” from which we also get the modern Spanish word meaning the same, elegir.

Genuine

Originally meant “placed on the knees.” In Ancient Rome, a father legally claimed his newborn child by sitting in front of his family and placing his child on his knee.

Heresy

Greek for “Choice.”

Kampf (German) Struggle

From the Latin “campus” — for their type of fortification, where the Roman soldiers had their military drills — from which we also drive the English words, “camp,” “campus” and “champion.” Thus, when we talk about a “college campus,” there are subtle militaristic overtones.

Knight

From the Old English “cniht,” which meant “boy, servant.”

Kopf (German) Head

From Latin “cuppa,” meaning “cup”; the Romans used the cup as a metaphor for the upper part of the head. Similarly, another Latin word for “cup,” “testa,” has now become the French “Tête,” for “head,” too. Note that both the Germans and the Celts used a “skullcap” “top of the human head”) as a drinking vessel; this was part of the honoring of the enemy ritual. Thus related to “chief” and “capital” (and “testicle” as well).

Liberty

The Latin words “Liber,” “Libera,” and “Liberum” — with a Long I — came from the root meaning, “to pour.” From this, we get the word “Liberty” (hence pronounced with a short I), from the freedom we feel when we get drunk.

Mistress

From the French “Maîtresse,” which originally meant “bride.”

Money

From the Latin word “moneta” which originally meaning, “warning.”

Nice

From the Latin “nescius,” for “ignorant,” and, at various times before the current definition became established meant “foolish” then “foolishly precise” then “pedantically precise” then “precise in a good way” and then our current definition.

Occasion

From the Latin Occasion, meaning, “accident, or a grave event.”

Old; and Alt (German) Old

“Alt” originally meant, “Grown up”; the participle of “growing”; related to “Alan,” which meant, “to grow” but no longer exists in modern German. In Old English, the word “Alan” was also used in this same sense of growing or nourishing. Related to the Latin “alt” meaning “high.”

Pagan

From the Latin paganu(m), for “someone who is not from the city, rather from the country.” In late Latin, this turned into pagensis, “one who is from the country,” and this utimately became the French pays and the Spanish País, both meaning “nation.”

Pay

Pay goes back ultimately to Latin, “pax” peace, by way of, appease, pacify. So “pay” originally meant “pay off,” to keep the peace.

Salary; Salt

In the early days of Rome its soldiers were given a handful of salt each day. The salt ration was subsequently replaced by a sum of money allowing each man to buy his own, and relieving the commisariat of the trouble of transporting it. The money received was referred to as their “salt money” (salarium in Latin). Eventually, the term would make its way into medieval France, where a soldier’s payment was known as his solde (which is still in use today as the term for a soldier’s or sailor’s pay), and it was in paid for with a special coin called a sol. By extension, the word also came to refer not only to a soldier’s wage, but also to the soldier himself, evidenced by the medieval French term soldat, which itself came from the Old French soudier. For its part, the English word “soldier” comes from the Middle English souder, which also derived from soudier [Footnote: Contrary to popular belief, salt–necessary as it was and unlike other spices–was never very expensive. It only became expensive towards the end of the twelfth century A.D., when it was used as a means of taxation and people often went without it, as a result–a fact not unconnected with the famines and deficiencies that afflicted so many generations of Europeans at the time).].

Senator

From the Latin “senex,” meaning “old”; thus related to “senile.”

Silly

From 1550 to 1675 was “very extensively” used in the sense of deserving of pity and compassion, helpless. It is a derivative of the Middle English “seely,” from the German “selig,” meaning happy, blissful, blessed, as well as punctual, observant of season.

Sinister

From the Latin “sinister” for “left.” Hence, left is evil. 

Sleazy

The Eastern European region of Silesia was known for its fine cloth. Eventually, so many low-quality imitations wound up on the market that Silesian turned into sleazy.

Utopia

Greek for “no where.”

Villain

From “Villaneus,” meaning, “inhabitant of a villa,” i.e., a “peasant.”

Wit

From the Old English “witan,” meaning to know; intelligence.

Oh, and “punish.”

Gue

Eric at Classical Values posts about IBM’s using chip cooling technology and lenses to amplify the power of the sun that a photo voltaic cell can produce. It doesn’t sound like technology that would work well (at its present stage) because, as his co-blogger and commenter, M. Simon, points out, of water vapor.

I could see maybe Phoenix working with this, but I suspect Louisiana’s humidity and rainfall might be a bit of a disadvantage.

However, at the end of the post, Eric points out that E-Fuel Corporation is marketing a home distillation unit that can produce up to 25 gallons of ethanol per week at a price of $1.00/gal. Considering the unit is going for about $10,000, it’s not economically feasible except for those much richer than I am.

However, I seem to remember some relatives in the not so distant past that knew all about the distillation process and obviously knew how to set it up for less. Much less. Dad, you remember how? I think there may be some copper tubing in our storage shed.

That techology is very suited to the South, where the technology has been understood for generations.

Grandparents, since they aren’t usually with their little angels 24/7 get to enjoy all the moods. In response to Grandchildren Are Angels, I’m posting these happy and sweet photos of my granddaughter, because while they don’t make me laugh as much as the other one, they portray her as she is 99 and 44/100% of the time and they make me smile, sometimes bring a tear to my eye.

She’s got big brown eyes and knows how to use them. She can be silly. She works hard, plays hard and loves to read her books. Sometimes she has bad hair days, which could be genetic.

Next month I get have her all to myself, all by myself for three days. I reserve the right to change any and/or all my opinions.

In August we’re visiting our other three grandchildren (the youngest will be born just before we get there) and for the first time I’ll have all of them together. Be prepared to be inundated with cute photos.

I have read some (by far in the minority, but enough to be easily noticed) horrid comments about Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor diagnosis - intimations that he deserves this because of past actions or because of his liberal politics.

Enough already. Very young children get malignant, non-operable brain tumors. What did they do to deserve theirs?

What did I do to get lucky and have a treatable benign brain tumor? I’m no better than those children, I guarantee you.

This is the same type of thinking that considered AIDS a punishment for being homosexual.

The  polity needs to grow up.  

UPDATE: DJ Drummond says it more eloquently and nicer than me.

…Cancer is a damnable enemy which respects no moral boundaries. It will attack a Republican just the same as a Democrat, a man or a woman with equal energy. Cancer is a horrifying malady, one which seeks to kill its victim, but only after excruciating torture. I know it too well, from my own cancer to my mother’s recent return of Breast Cancer, to the deaths of old friends and some new ones (and children - the damned thing goes after children as if it were the devil himself). No one deserves Cancer, and any victory over Cancer is a good one, one to celebrate.

How I would have loved for The Anchoress to be wrong. Her prediction:

Someone - probably Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews - will go completely over the top and say that the Kennedy illness will not mark the “end of Camelot…how fitting that it is being revived this very night by Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy’s handpicked successor to the enduring legacy,” or some such gag-inducing nonsense.

Unfortunately, she was not wrong. She accurately predicted the media malignancy that will make Ted Kennedy’s serious illness “all about Obama.”

Brain tumors, malignant or benign, are not about politics. This is a man’s life, his future quality of life, the ordeal his family will endure - that’s what we’re talking about here, not his past mistakes and foibles and certainly not about the next Democratic nominee, whoever that might be.

I’m also a bit disgusted about the “pre” eulogizing being done by some of Kennedy’s democratic colleagues. He’s not dead yet and from all the reports seems to be as alert and cognitive as ever. Imagine what it must feel like to hear your funeral years before it might happen.

That’s the breaking news on Fox right now. The “expert” they are speaking with is Dr. Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist. He says that most brain tumors in older people are benign, citing meningiomas.

He also made it sound like the surgery to remove any old meningioma is a breeze, patients recover and go on with life as before. Well, as the proud owner of a meningioma, I say not exactly.

For one, he’s a pathologist, not a surgeon. He probably doesn’t have many of his patients complaining about complications.

Second, he’s not a neurologist or neuropsychiatrist. He is probably as familiar with the physical structure of the brain as either one, but… perhaps he’s not as familiar with the peculiarities of minor damage to any area of the brain.

The thought that Kennedy might have a brain tumor has crossed my mind several times since I heard the news of his hospitalization. Mine was discovered when I thought I had a mini-stroke, or TIA. I was worried enough that I sat in the ER for 5 hours after all symptoms subsided to find out. I think Kennedy got, um… more aggressive treatment than I did.

For his sake, I hope it’s a meningioma, I hope it’s small, not near any major bloodworks, and that radiation is considered as the first course of treatment. This isn’t about politics, I wish him well.

Here’s one shot of my brain tumor, before radiation treatment.

UPDATE: AP is reporting that Kennedy’s tumor is a malignant glioma. Not good news.

At least some part of the body gets better with age. John McCain’s campaign should jump on statements like 

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

and

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

and

“If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they’re then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they’re going to have a nice advantage.”

Obama should be worried that the article indicates that an ability to ignore distractions, though quicker, ultimately results in assimilating incomplete information. In his case, I think it is not only a desire to not be ”distracted” but also an ingrained part of his temperament.  

via Instapundit

From the inimitable Dr. Boli:

Now observe that we could, without altering the lists at all, change the headings above the lists to “Things That Are Healthy to Eat” and “Things That Are Not Healthy to Eat.” The correspondence is perfect. Things that taste good are things that are healthy to eat. It follows, of course, that the things that taste best are the healthiest to eat.

I want one of these! Preferably turbocharged.

The poor child who is about to file his first income taxes.

I’m An Adult Now

Done With Mirrors explains exactly what John McCain may, or may not, have meant if he did indeed describe his wife using certain words. If I can be any less clear, please let me know. I do strive.

Eric, at The Fire Ant Gazette, is grasping at a higher standard of incompetence.

At the G Spot you can get your daily dose of Dolly Parton. She is an amazing talent with a unique voice.