The Power of Words and Language, with Ian Lang

Calling once again on Ian Lang, at Quora, for this post on the topic:
What powers do words and language have?

Ian has given me blanket permission to use any of his Quora answers on my blog. Thank you, Ian! Here is what he wrote in answer to the above question. A round of appreciative applause from yours truly, Ian!

From Ian Lang, Leading Technician:

Ooh, words.

It’s often said that the pen is mightier than the sword, thanks to Bulwer-Lytton. With this in mind I went into Harrods and got myself a really nice Cross-Townsend and went and poked some members of the Blues and Royals with it during the Trooping of the Colour last year.

Bulwer-Lytton, you were not right I’m afraid. This year I’m going to try it with a Montblanc but I’m not terribly hopeful.

Words though. They do have a power. In Western languages we have an alphabet based on the Roman one, and in English there are twenty-six ugly little characters (thirty-six if you count numerals too) which, when strung together in just the right way, can delight, enthrall, cause despair, joy, pain, love, hate, jealousy, anger and all emotions between.

Daily I thank God for the circumstances that caused me to be able to read and write for I’m sure I would have made a most miserable illiterate, and words cast to paper (or as in these days to the server) are the shapers of our history, and the echoes of our lives.

Writing and Oratory are the two most important skills any person can have. Applied properly, they can cause the world to shake. Let’s have a look at this chap:

Cicero. His letters and speeches were of such perfection that they ringed for two thousand years and still today anybody who does Latin at school will be tormented with and influenced by him. He could strike chords in men’s souls and such an accomplished gobshite was he that they had to murder him to shut him up.

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet). Jesus, I thought I was a snarky bastard, but this bloke could take snarkiness to an art form. His writings so chimed with the stroppy, awkward squad of pre-revolutionary France that he was exiled and his books were burnt. He’s widely thought to have made the first serious cracks in the Ancien Régime.

Then there’s this bloke:
I’m sure he needs no introduction. Now think what you like about him personally and politically. But can you, through the power of your voice alone, persuade millions of people that have seen the slaughter of a great war in Europe a mere twenty-one years previously, take a course of action that’s going to land them in an even bigger one and make them think that this is a good idea? Because I can’t.





Up against him was an equally brilliant gobshite:

Sometimes I just wish I’d been around at that time because I don’t think there’s ever been anybody before or since that’s been better at using the English language to do something really on the face of it monumentally stupid, and yet fire up enough spirit to not only actually do it but do it so well that the opposing side is completely crushed. The German War Machine rolled right over Europe unstoppably. It got to the English Channel. It’s a hop, skip and jump over twenty-two miles. All it’s got to do is get to London and the game’s finished. We couldn’t stop them in France and Belgium. They’re on the Channel Islands. It’s bloody hopeless. Except-

A fat little bloke educated at Harrow who likes a drink and a smoke stands up and effectively says:

“Right. No. We’re not giving in to this little bastard. We’re going to kick his arse roundly and if we all have to die in the attempt so be it.”

But he delivers a factual account of how hopeless it looks and then at the end puts in shining words:

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

God almighty. The British Army’s been booted out of Europe. The Luftwaffe is at its highest glory. The Wehrmacht just can’t be beaten. There’s U-boats everywhere and we could easily starve. The only advantage we’ve got is the Royal Navy and the Home Radar. Neither going to help if the Germans can get air superiority. And it’s a BIG and very cocky Luftwaffe now. The sensible thing is to sue for peace. And yet……and yet………

What did Winston just say? Hey, do y’know what? He’s right! "Bollocks to Hitler! If he thinks he’s just walking in here he’s got another bloody think coming. Right. Sleeves up. Boots on. We’ve stuff to do.”

And it rang with every man and woman in the UK, and didn’t stop there. Men of the Empire came. Men of Europe came. Men from countries who had nothing whatsoever to do with it came. All because they’d read and heard the words of power emanating. Who’d have thought that some ink and some electro-magnetic waves could do that?

To our shame, in so many ways we today are not the equal of what our grandparents were and one of those deficiencies we suffer is in the field of literary and oratory works. There is no Orwell writing his simple but resonant sentences now. There is no Churchill stirring us on to punch well above our weight. Where is the Voltaire that can mock for millions? Perhaps our lives are too easy; perhaps our days are filled with business and we have no time for the craft now.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Which doesn’t mean that some woman threw up in my van at the beginning of the week. But it’d be nice to think so.

Truth, Lies, Words - Why Bother?

Sam Smith - not the popular British singer - this is a different Sam Smith. He covered Washington DC under nine presidents, edited the Progressive Review for over 50 years, wrote four books, helped to start six organizations including the national Green Party, the DC Humanities Council and the DC Statehood Party, and played in jazz bands for four decades.

FROM THE WRITINGS OF SAM SMITH -
POCKET PARADIGMS


I've picked out just a few currently appropriate examples of Sam Smith's paradigms for this weekend:

Lies

The endless argument about who said what to whom about what demonstrates an illusion about honesty shared by all sides. America – including its politicians, media and ordinary citizens, have accepted a legal definition of honesty, to wit: if a public person can not be proved to have lied by the rules of a criminal court, he or she can’t be called dishonest and, in the case of a nominee, remains qualified for office. In other words, our standard for confirmation to high office had become no better than that for acquittal of a common thief.

But lying often has little to do with court-defined perjury. It more typically involves hyperbolic hoodwinking, unsubstantiated analogy, cynical incitement of fear, deceitful distortion, slippery untruths, gossamer falsehoods, disingenuous anecdote, artful agitprop, and the relentless repetition of all the foregoing in an atmosphere in which facts are trampled underfoot by a mendacious mob and their semantic weapons.

One does not have to analyze such language legally to understand its evil. One need only have enough understanding of the manner of the honest, the sincere and the candid to know almost instinctively when their opposite is in command..

Truth

The endless argument about who said what to whom about what demonstrates an illusion about honesty shared by all sides. It is yet another iteration of a phenomenon I first noticed during the Edwin Meese nomination hearings. It became clear then, and so many times since, that America – including its politicians, media and ordinary citizens, had accepted a legal definition of honesty, to wit: if a public person can not be proved to have lied by the rules of a criminal court, he or she can’t be called dishonest and, in the case of a nominee, remains qualified for office. In other words, our standard for confirmation to high office had become no better than that for acquittal of a common thief.

In real life, the truth must always be spoken, but the truth need not always be told. In politics, neither are necessary and both are sometimes fatal.

In 2003, I was asked by Harper’s to compile a history of the beginning of the Iraq war told entirely in lies by Bush officials and advisers. As I began to work on the project, I was reminded over and over of how little lying often has to do with court-defined perjury. It more typically involves hyperbolic hoodwinking, unsubstantiated analogy, cynical incitement of fear, deceitful distortion, slippery untruths, gossamer falsehoods, disingenuous anecdote, artful agitprop, and the relentless repetition of all the foregoing in an atmosphere in which facts are trampled underfoot by a mendacious mob and their semantic weapons.

One does not have to analyze such language legally to understand its evil. One need only have enough understanding of the manner of the honest, the sincere and the candid to know almost instinctively when their opposite is in command.

Yes, some of the Bush capos may have done it so poorly from time to time that they can be successfully prosecuted. But our ultimate standard for judging their words and claims – whether as a Sunday talk show commentator or as an ordinary citizen – should be an ethical and not a legal one. If we let such con artists get away with their ultimate trick – which is having us believe that if we can not prove their swindle we must accept it – we will have fully surrendered to their treachery.

I thought the truth would set us free. Instead it just seems to have made us lethargic.


Words

We don’t have to worry about Trojan horses much any more. The real danger comes from Trojan words and phrases — appealing statues of rhetoric concealing the enemy.



Why bother?

Let’s turn off the television, step into the sunlight, and count the bodies. As we were watching inside, the non-virtual continued at its own pace and on its own path, indifferent to our indifference, unamused by our ironic detachment, unsympathetic to our political impotence, unmoved by our carefully selected apparel, unfrightened by our nihilism, unimpressed by our braggadocio, unaware of our pain. Evolution and entropy remained outside the cocoon of complacent images, refusing to be hurried or delayed, declining to cut to the chase, unwilling to reveal either ending or meaning.

We shade our eyes and scan the decay. We know that this place, this country, this planet, is not the same as the last time we looked. There are more bodies. And fewer other things: choices, unlocked doors, democracy, satisfying jobs, reality, unplanned moments, clean water, a species of frog whose name we forget, community, and the trusting, trustworthy smile of a stranger.

Someone has been careless, cruel, greedy, stupid. But it wasn’t us, was it? We were inside, just watching. It all happened without us — by the hand of forces we can’t see, understand, or control. We can always go in again and zap ourselves back to a place where the riots and tornadoes and wars are never larger than 27 inches on the diagonal. We can do nothing out here. Why bother?

Why bother? Only to be alive. Only to be real, to be made not just of what we acquire or our adherence to instruction, but of what we think and do of our own free will. Only, Winston Churchill said, to fight while there is still a small chance so we don’t have to fight when there is none. Only to climb the rock face of risk and doubt in order to engage in the most extreme sport of all — that of being a free and conscious human. Free and conscious even in a society that seems determined to reduce our lives to a barren pair of mandatory functions: compliance and consumption.

Life is a endless pick-up game between hope and despair, understanding and doubt, crisis and resolution.

Saturday & Sundry Mostly Useless 'Porphirical' Facts

Porphyry. What does that word mean to you? I'm imagining an apathetic shrug coming from my passing reader. I'm vaguely familiar with one facet of the word's meaning: it's the name of an astrological House System. More on that in a mo.

Wikipedia's page for 26 February lists that date as a Christian Feast Day in honour of
Porphyry of Gaza. Hmm, thought I, can't see a venerated and sainted Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church lowering himself to play around with astrological houses. Saint Porphyry was bishop of Gaza from 395 to 420, known for Christianizing the recalcitrant pagan city of Gaza, and demolishing its temples. He died on February 26, 420.
(See here)

It was another Porphyry - Porphyry of Tyre - who gave astrologers another House System to play with. He was a prominent Neoplatonic philosopher who flourished in the late 3rd century CE. He is primarily known as the student of the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, although he was regarded as an important philosopher in his own right in Late Antiquity. He occasionally made references to astrological doctrines in his philosophical works, and there is at least one surviving text on astrology that was attributed to him: an introduction to Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, which mainly consists of a series of definitions of basic astrological concepts. Most of the definitions were copied verbatim from a lost work of definitions by Antiochus of Athens.

In the House system known as Porphyry, each quadrant of the ecliptic is divided into three equal parts between the four angles. This is the oldest system of quadrant style house division. Although it is attributed to Porphyry of Tyre, this system was first described by the 2nd-century astrologer Vettius Valens, in the 3rd book of his astrological compendium known as The Anthology.
(See here)

Ooooh kaay.

But Porphyry is more - much more.

The term porphyry, from Ancient Greek, means "purple". Purple was the color of royalty, and the "imperial porphyry" was a deep purple igneous rock (formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. ) with large crystals of plagioclase. Some authors claimed the rock was the hardest known in antiquity."Imperial" grade porphyry was thus prized for monuments and building projects in Imperial Rome and later. (See here)

Also

In Greek mythology, Porphyrion was a giant, one of the sons of Uranus and Gaia. After the Olympian gods imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus, Porphyrion was one of twenty-four anguipede giants who made war on Olympus. During the Giant's revolt on Olympus, Porphyrion attempted to strangle Hera. An arrow from the bow of Eros inspired Porphyrion with lust for Hera, and he tore her robes and would have forced her, but an enraged Zeus shot him with a thunderbolt.



There's more.... there's

Porphyrius the Charioteer (also known as Calliopas) who was a renowned Roman charioteer in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. In the time of Porphyrius, Roman chariot-racing was at its height. Charioteers were celebrities, and Porphyrius is famous for having seven monuments built in his honor in the Hippodrome. These monuments serve as a glimpse into the history of the time, and into the life of Porphyrius. The age of Porphyrius is often referred to as the age of the Byzantine Charioteer.
(See here)




Still more...it's an island!

HERE

Porphyry Island is an island in Unorganized Thunder Bay District in northwestern Ontario, Canada. It is the last island in a chain stretching south west of the Black Bay Peninsula in Lake Superior. It is located about 6 kilometres (4 mi) from Edward Island Provincial Park, 13 kilometres (8 mi) from Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, 14 kilometres (9 mi) east of Silver Islet, Ontario, and 42 kilometres (26 mi) east of the city of Thunder Bay.
The island and nature reserve take their name from the characteristic quartz and feldspar crystals, or porphyries found in the volcanic rocks. (See here).

WORDS ~ Foreign Feelings Following "I read the news today, Oh boy!"

As Arika Okrent wrote in her 2016 piece titled How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz, familiar words in the English language sometimes just don't hit the spot. The piece begins:

English has many words for the feelings that can arise when a good, hard look at the state of the world seems to reveal only negatives. Hopelessness, despair, depression, discouragement, melancholy, sorrow, worry, disconsolation, distress, anxiety …there are so many that it would hardly seem necessary to borrow any more from other languages. But English never hesitates to borrow words that would lose certain subtleties in translation, and angst, ennui, and weltschmerz have made their way into English by offering a little something extra.

The article is fairly brief, but if it's still TL;DR (= too long; did not read)- nutshell:

Are you dissatisfied and worried in an introspective, overthinking German way? You’ve got angst.

Are you tired, so tired of everything about the world and the way it is? Do you proclaim this, with a long, slow sigh, to everyone around you? You’ve got ennui.

Do you have sadness in your heart for the world that can never be and sensible shoes? You’ve got weltschmerz.

I'm trying to diagnose my own state of mind - I'm swinging between weltschmerz and "I've no more f..ks to give" - I wonder if there's a foreign word for that?

WORDS - odd to the ear

'Widdershins', when I hear that word, or read it, for some reason it brings to mind witchcraft.
Wikipedia tells me that it:

...is a term meaning to go counter-clockwise, to go anti-clockwise, or to go lefthandwise, or to walk around an object by always keeping it on the left. Literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, (the centre of this imaginary clock is the ground the viewer stands upon). The earliest recorded use of the word, as cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, are from a 1513 translation of the Aeneid, where it is found in the phrase "Abaisit I wolx, and widdersyns start my hair." In this sense, the "to start widdershins" means "to stand on end".

Wiki also goes on to say that

Because the sun played a highly important role in older religions, to go against it was considered bad luck for sun-worshiping traditions....It was considered unlucky in Britain to travel in an anticlockwise (not sunwise) direction around a church, and a number of folk myths make reference to this superstition...

In much the same 'ballpark' as they say in these parts, another odd-sounding word I've come across occasionally in the USA relating to direction: 'cattywampus' meaning misaligned, askew, oblique, diagonal:
"I bumped into the bookcase and now the books are all cattywampus".

Also, somewhat related: cater-corner often corrupted to 'catty-corner' or 'kitty-corner' meaning of, or pertaining to, something at a diagonal to another - diagonally opposite.
"The store is catty-corner to the park."


Quite unrelated to the above, but a nice example of a bit of mind twisting fun with the English language:

WORDS ~ black swan; gaslighting.

Reaching, now, for an extra strong word magnifying glass to refresh memory about hidden meanings behind two terms used in modern journalism and commentary.

First: black swan.

Yes, any stray British readers might initially connect "The Black Swan" to something rather pleasant - a pub sign, common enough in the British Isles. The words, as used these days, have a more sinister meaning.

Swans are generally expected to be white, sight of a black swan would be surprising. A 2007 book by Lebanese American writer, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan explains use of the term "black swan" as a metaphor, to encapsulate the concept that a given, impactful, event came as a significant surprise, completely unexpacted by any known measure. The event, however, does usually become rationalized in hindsight, as if it could have been expected.

Wikipedia:

The term black swan derives from a Latin expression, its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno"- translated: "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan." When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the simile lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the phrase's underlying logic, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.

A few examples of what are, and are not, black swan events:
9/11 was; the Fukushima event was; sinking of the Titanic was; result of the Brexit referendum was not; Donald Trump becoming president of the USA was not. The last two events, while surprising to many, were hardly outside the realm of regular expectation - in both cases there was a 50/50 chance of their happening - before our very eyes!


Nassim Taleb stated that a black swan event is an outlier, because it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Additionally, it

carries an extreme 'impact' and in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

AND, gaslighting, another term used metaphorically nowadays.

Gaslight, back in the 19th century and early 20th century before electric lighting was generally available, was light for street and domestic lighting was produced by the combustion of illuminating gas. There are probably not too many people still around who remember gas lighting in homes and streets. I do! I remember the lamplighter - a guy who, each winter evening, would walk along with a long-handled tool, lighting the wicks of street lamps powered by gas. I remember, too, that one of my parents' first homes had gas lamps in the downstairs rooms. I always felt wary of these, relieved when electricity replaced them.

The term gaslighting, now, is almost exclusively used metaphorically, to describe an insidious mind game. A method of intentional emotional and psychological manipulation, a form of mind control and intimidation used to confuse and debilitate the person targeted.

This metaphorical use of the term had its origins in a 1938 play Gas Light, in which a man seeks to convince his wife that her mind is unravelling. When she notices that he has dimmed the gaslights in the house, he tells her she is imagining things — but they are as bright as they were before. The British play became a 1944 American film starring Ingrid Bergman, with Charles Boyer as her abusive husband.




I guess it was inevitable that the metaphorical meaning of gaslighting might be in danger, over time, of becoming devalued or misunderstood. As Amy Glynn wrote at Paste magazine in a piece headed Zeitgeist by Gaslight

Gaslighting does not occur en masse. You cannot be gaslighted by the government, the media, the Koch Brothers or Monsanto. By definition, gaslighting is personal, intimate, and can only be done to you by someone you trust. A gaslighter is a specialty narcissist or sociopath who uses intimacy, personal approval, knowledge of the specific details of your life and personality, and importantly, isolation, to unhinge you If you think you’re being gaslighted by the government, the media, Big Pharma, the Pope or that guy on Twitter who said you were wrong and wouldn’t back down? You’re not.

WORDS ~ Weaponized, Intersectionality, Microagression.

I've been noticing some newly "fashionable" words cropping up frequently during my online political reading rambles:

Intersectionality
Weaponized
Microaggression

It's easy enough to look up definitions in online dictionaries or at Wikipedia, harder to be sure the meaning has been grasped ten minutes later, or next time one meets these words!



Weaponized is probably the easiest of the three to understand. Traditionally the word means "adapt for use as a weapon". In current journalese they're not talking about weaponizing a pitchfork or carving knife for use in injuring somebody, but about using specific information to affect the reader's or recipient's perception about something or someone, with the intention to cause harm or warp understanding. Here's a headline as example;
How Fox News Is Weaponizing the Harvey Weinstein Scandal


Microaggression - "a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority)".
Wikipedia offers a lot of detail.
For helpful illustrated examples of various forms of microaggression see HERE.


Intersectionality - I try to remember what this means by thinking of it (in a slang nutshell) as referring to someone who experiences a "double-whammy" or even a "triple-whammy" due, basically, to "who they are".
Borrowing from care2.com

What Is Intersectionality?

Intersectionality is a sociological theory describing multiple threats of discrimination when an individual’s identities overlap with a number of minority classes — such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, health and other characteristics.

For example, a woman of color may face sexism in the workplace, which is compounded by pervasive racism. Similarly, trans women of color face exceptionally high levels of discrimination and threats of violence. Looking through the lens of intersectionality, it’s not hard to see why: these women potentially face anti-trans prejudice, sexism, misogyny, racism and — due to the ignorance surrounding trans identity — homophobia.

While intersectionality is traditionally applied to women, a person of any gender may be affected by this phenomena of overlapping minority status. A man from a Hispanic background could face xenophobia in today’s America despite being a naturalized citizen. If that Hispanic man is in his 50s, ageism might add to the discrimination he could face in trying to secure employment.

Jots & Tittles

Jot and tittle? Both jot and tittle refer to tiny quantities. The phrase passed into English via William Tindale's translation of the New Testament in 1526 (Matthew 5:18:). Better is the
more familiar language of the King James Version, 1611:

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

More from phrases.org.uk

A jot is the name of the least letter of an alphabet or the smallest part of a piece of writing. It is the Anglicized version of the Greek iota - the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, which corresponds to the Roman 'i'. This, in turn, was derived from the Hebrew word jod, or yodr, which is the the smallest letter of the square Hebrew alphabet. Apart from its specialist typographical meaning, we still use the word jot more generally to mean 'a tiny amount'. Hence, when we have a brief note to make, we 'jot it down'.

A tittle, rather appropriately for a word which sounds like a combination of tiny and little, is smaller still. It refers to a small stroke or point in writing or printing. In classical Latin this applied to any accent over a letter, but is now most commonly used as the name for the dot over the letter 'i'. It is also the name of the dots on dice. In medieval calligraphy the tittle was written as quite large relative to the stem of the 'i'. Since fixed typeface printing was introduced in the 15th century the tittle has been rendered smaller.

The use of the word 'dot' as a small written mark didn't begin until the 18th century. We may have been told at school to dot our i's; Chaucer and Shakespeare would have been told to tittle them.

If a passing reader is fond of internet jousting with person or persons whose opinions differ from those held dear, these "commandments" are well worth keeping in mind. There's more detail at the linked website: Relatively Interesting

The 10 Commandments of Rational Debate

Personally, I've grown ever more wary of impulsively stepping, willy-nilly into any internet debate, preferring to follow Sir Terry Pratchett's line from The Light Fantastic:

"… there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner."

For any who are partial to a nice love story, with a bit of a twist, I'd recommend (with some petty reservations) the 1997/8 movie Déjà Vu. We saw it on (I think)Amazon Prime last week. This version of the film sometimes has "(A Love Story)" tacked onto the title to differentiate it from other movies of the same name. It's the tale of one of those "I've been here before" experiences. You know - the feeling put to music by Rodgers & Hart in Where or When



My reservations about the movie Déjà Vu stem from the director, Henry Jaglom's penchant for using improvised dialogue. Actors need to be skilled enough at improvisation to make this style work well. One or two actors in this movie were improvisationally challenged, tended to keep repeating the same lines/thoughts over and over, making for rather uncomfortable viewing. Also, and husband and I both commented on this: one particular segment of the story seemed to be totally out of place in the theme. Roger Ebert's review HERE attempts to explain a possible reason, but we still didn't see it that way. The film did, though, provide a pleasing change from police procedurals, medical dramas, and long drawn-out detective tales about serial killers.

"'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone."
- Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer (1830)

Well...this isn't a rose and it isn't strictly the last, but our Crepe Myrtle bush in the back yard is well past its best, though still providing spots of colour among endless green. Thanks to anyjazz (husband) for the photograph.

Saturday and Sundry Words and Things: guayabera, Klein bottle, & woke.

I've learned a few new, to me, words this week: guayabera, Klein bottle, and woke.

Guayabera : I came across this one at The Sartorialist, a daily stop on my wander through the streets and back alleys of the internet. It's a garment once, possibly still, favoured by males living in certain countries.

The origin of the garment is something of a mystery, thought to be the result of a mixture of Native American and Spanish styles, developed in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Various claims for the distinctive style have been made, from Mexico to other Latin American countries to the Philippines.(Wiki.)

Klein bottle : this one appeared in a comment thread on a political website, context of its metaphorical use, in that instance, would be a little too involved to fully explain here, and in any case I'd probably get myself into political trouble. So, just the words. Wikipedia tell us that:

In mathematics, the Klein bottle is an example of a non-orientable surface; it is a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined. Informally, it is a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary (for comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary). The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein.

Picture a bottle with a hole in the bottom. Now extend the neck. Curve the neck back on itself, insert it through the side of the bottle without touching the surface (an act which is impossible in three-dimensional space), and extend the neck down inside the bottle until it joins the hole in the bottom. A true Klein bottle in four dimensions does not intersect itself where it crosses the side.

Unlike a drinking glass, this object has no “rim” where the surface stops abruptly. Unlike a balloon, a fly can go from the outside to the inside without passing through the surface (so there isn’t really an “outside” and “inside”).

More detail HERE.

Clear as mud? It was to me too. This little video might help.

Or, there's this (hat-tip HERE)

A German topologist named Klein
Thought the Mobius Loop was divine
Said he, "If you glue
The edges of two
You get a weird bottle like mine."


My own encounter with the Klein bottle was in a metaphorical sense, for which it has much fertile ground (without boundaries!)

From http://lisamaroski.com/2010/11/11/introducing-mobius-strips-and-klein-bottles/

It exemplifies the concept of a merging continuum or union of opposites. The Klein bottle embodies the type of paradox that could be incorporated into language to be able to speak into being a world that works for everyone—us and them, old and young, rich and poor, conservative and liberal, black, white, yellow, and brown—at the same time. For the world to work for all, I propose a linguistic structure based in the notion of both/and.

Woke : It's a word, of course, a common one; but it's being used nowadays as a concept.

A David Brooks' piece in the New York Times a few weeks back:
How Cool Works in America Today

Mr Brooks' article begins:

If you grew up in the 20th century, there’s a decent chance you wanted to be like Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Humphrey Bogart, Albert Camus, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean or Jimi Hendrix. In their own ways, these people defined cool.

The cool person is stoical, emotionally controlled, never eager or needy, but instead mysterious, detached and self-possessed. The cool person is gracefully competent at something, but doesn’t need the world’s applause to know his worth. That’s because the cool person has found his or her own unique and authentic way of living with nonchalant intensity.

He later continues:

I started to look around to see if there might be another contemporary ethos that has replaced the cool ethos. You could say the hipster ethos you find in, say, Brooklyn qualifies. But that strikes me as less of a cultural movement and more of a consumer aesthetic.

A better candidate is the “woke” ethos. The modern concept of woke began, as far as anybody can tell, with a 2008 song by Erykah Badu.

He expands on "woke" individuals:

The woke mentality became prominent in 2012 and 2013 with the Trayvon Martin case and the rise of Black Lives Matter. Embrace it or not, B.L.M. is the most complete social movement in America today, as a communal, intellectual, moral and political force.

The woke mentality has since been embraced on the populist right, by the conservative “normals” who are disgusted with what they see as the thorough corruption of the Republican and Democratic establishments. See Kurt Schlichter’s Townhall essay “We Must Elect Senator Kid Rock” as an example of right-wing wokedness.

To be woke is to be radically aware and justifiably paranoid. It is to be cognizant of the rot pervading the power structures. The woke manner shares cool’s rebel posture, but it is the opposite of cool in certain respects. Cool was politically detached, but being a social activist is required for being woke. Cool was individualistic, but woke is nationalistic and collectivist. Cool was emotionally reserved; woke is angry, passionate and indignant. Cool was morally ambiguous; woke seeks to establish a clear marker for what is unacceptable.

Postscript: A couple of my own archived posts on the subject of old-fashioned "cool": HERE (2009) and part 2 is HERE; there are some comments too.

Music Monday ~ Nimrod : Word, Music, Why We Cry

Nimrod, the classical piece, part of Elgar's Enigma Variations, used in countless movies, most recently in the final scenes of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, raising lumps in many throats. The piece is also played every year on Remembrance Sunday at the London Cenotaph, and is often heard during funeral services.

Who or what is, or was, Nimrod?

Once upon an Old Testament Time Nimrod was a mighty hunter, leader, founder of the city and tower of Babel and, rebel "against the Lord". He was son of Cush; grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah. There's a good read about him, written by Shaul Wolf in a lighthearted style: The Life and Times of Nimrod the Biblical Hunter. I've mentioned Nimrod myself in an archived post about Sir Edward Elgar HERE.


In more recent times the name Nimrod has been given to ships and a fighter plane; but has also, overtime
gathered moss and become somewhat less "mighty". In modern American English the term nimrod has come to be used to describe a dimwit or stupid person, thanks in great part to cartoon character Bugs Bunny. Bugs ironically refers to hunter Elmer Fudd as "nimrod", as being an incompetent hunter (I guess!) Personally I have never heard the term used in this way exactly....except, perhaps, that a very dear one of mine, now long gone, did occasionally, and I should add affectionately, call me "Nimrod" as a nickname. I was unaware, at the time, of the name's origins and - I'm guessing - so was he!

Back to Nimrod the music. It's a piece that evokes emotion, not only because of the circumstances of its use, but due to something within the form of the music itself. I found partial explanation on the internet via "Guardian Answers". I hope I'm not overstepping fair use regarding copyright rules by including here two answers, from newspaper readers, to the question: Why do some tunes, like Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations, make you want to cry?

SOME music arouses sad or happy emotions because of past events that we associate with it (the 'Listen, darling, they're playing our tune' syndrome) but this doesn't account for the fact that some tunes seem to have the power to affect different individuals' emotions in an apparently similar way, even when the people concerned have no shared history of experience to account for this reaction. Music scholars and philosophers have long disputed whether or not music actually 'means' anything, and if so, what. The late Deryck Cooke comes closest, in my view, to explaining this contentious area of musical aesthetics. In his book, The Language of Music (OUP, 1959), Cooke suggests that all composers of tonal music from the Middle Ages to the mid-20th century have used the same 'language' of melodic phrases, harmonies and rhythms to evoke the same emotions in the listener. If true, this could account for the fact that Nimrod seems to communicate the same feeling of melancholy to different people. This is a hideous oversimplification of Cooke's complex theory. He argues that it should be possible to compile a dictionary of musical idioms and their corresponding 'meanings' to identify which sequences of notes convey joy, grief, innocence, erotic love, etc. (Linda Barlow, Reading, Berks.)

IT IS a very rare tune which would cause a listener to want to cry. But a harmonised piece of music can very easily do so. Music often depends for its interest on creating and resolving tension. Tension is given to a passage by, for instance, moving away from the key in which the piece started. When the 'home' key is returned to it comes with a feeling of resolution. The classical sonata form is basically an exercise in waiting for the return of the tonic key. Composers started to use devices such as a long dominant pedal (signalling that we are about to return to the home key) and then delaying the final resolution longer than expected, giving added weight to the home key when it is finally reached.

Another way of creating and resolving tension is through dissonance. Two or more notes that do not sound pleasant together are changed for some that do. The more dissonant the interval, the more it can make you physically tense up (I find my neck and shoulders tightening). And probably the simplest trick of all is like a rhetorical device much loved by Hitler - start quietly and get louder. If you're really out to milk the emotions you are more subtle and reach the loudest point about nine-tenths of the way through and subside back to peacefulness.

Nimrod uses all of these tricks. The theme itself is harmonised using dissonances (some of which resolve into further dissonance, heightening the effect); it starts quietly and gradually builds up; just before the final statement of the theme there is a long roll on a timp while the brass extend the feeling of 'here we go back to the tonic key' by waffling in the dominant, and after the loudest bit of all it recedes to a quiet conclusion. Music can also make you cry if it is crap. (P S Lucas, Birmingham 18.)

And so...here's the version of Nimrod used in the movie Dunkirk, now doing the rounds, and which I blogged about last week HERE. The movie's full original score was composed by Hans Zimmer, who arranged Elgar's iconic piece to fit in seamlessly for the final scenes.

A Serving of Friday, Saturday & Sundries

A couple of slivers of arty-farty:

Meet painter Pollyanna Pickering, an internationally renowned wildlife artist and environmentalist. Her birthday is this weekend, she was born on 30 July in 1942.

And (with Hat-tip to Avedon's Sideshow)
If Norman Rockwell painted African-American culture today. -
By Jake Johnson [9 pictures by Sam Spratt]







A pouring of politics:

Jon Walker has written about an interesting plan to rectify US's failing health insurance system:
Here’s A National Single-Payer Health Care Plan That Would Work.

A soupçon of astrology:


Back in 2008, just for fun, I Just for fun, I coined twelve collective nouns (you know, similar to "a murder of crows", "an exaltation of larks"), for each zodiac sign, for possible descriptive use in a natal chart where a cluster of planets appear in one zodiac sign, alternatively, for those attached to Sun sign astrology, to describe a group of people who share the same Sun sign.

A rush of Aries
An affluence of Taurus
A chatter of Gemini
A nest of Cancer
A parade of Leo
A proficiency of Virgo
An arbitration of Libra
A collusion of Scorpio
A magnification of Sagittarius
An institution of Capricorn
A metamorphosis of Aquarius (I did write that in 2008, but now prefer An innovation of Aquarius)
A mirage of Pisces

And to pull together the whole caboodle:
A cadence of zodiac signs!

A whiff of words: at The Bureau of Linguistical Reality







A trickle of TV:

We've lately been watching the 10-part series Ozark, starring Jason Bateman (who also co-directs), and Laura Linney, plus a cast of interesting character actors.

Most reviewers compare Ozark to Breaking Bad, I can see why, but for me it felt more akin to Justified, due to its rural, mid-America, background location with lots of attendant quirkiness as well as criminality in local residents. Bateman plays Marty Byrde a cool-headed wheeler-dealer financier from Chicago who, with his early-on murdered partner, had been laundering (and skimming) drug money through their business. He escapes, with his family, to an area of Missouri around Lake of the Ozarks, in the hope that supposedly less-sophisticated (in the ways of finance) locals with be easy to entangle in the money laundering lark away from the FBI's gaze. The laundering must carry on, in order to protect Byrde's own life and those of his (cheating) wife and two (fairly obnixious) teen-ish offspring. He'd thought Ozark locals were going to be unsophisticated in the ways of crime - he had some fast lessons to learn. Some locals could give him a run for his money - quite literally too!

While Ozarks isn't quite up to Breaking Bad or Justified standards, all in all it's not bad, and better than many other offerings available at present. The series could have used a wee bit of lightness to contrast so much darkness, the odd joke or touch of wit, a one-liner or two would have helped anchor the tale in viewers' memories.



The dish garnished with ~

A pinch or two of Pratchett

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.


Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
~ Sir Terry Pratchett.