OYSTERS AND OSTRICHES
Oysters have been around a long time. Longer than ostriches.
For the ancient Greeks, an oyster was an OSTREON. The general word for shellfish was OSTRAKINOS, which then became the word for an earthenware pot or dish, an OSTRAKON. When the Athenians ostracized someone, they voted him out of the city, writing his name on fragments of earthenware pots which they used as ballots.
The OST- root also appears in the Greek word for bone, OSTEON, which is also the word for a rock, or the stone of a fruit. The ancient Sanskrit word behind OSTEON is ASTHI, or ASTHNAS: bone. For the Greeks, OSTEINOS says made of bone; an OSTARION is a little bone. And OSXE is the word for scrotum.
The OST- or OS- root for bone and rock and the stone of a fruit, an earthenware pot or dish, a shellfish and specifically an oyster, is a root meaning something hard. OSXE, the Greek for scrotum, is perhaps derived from the same root, but if so only secondarily: OSXE is more likely related to the SCRO- root that is used in the Latin word SCROTUM, the pouch or sack for the testicles.
According to eytmologists, an ostrich also gets its name from ancient Greek. For the Romans, AVISTRUTHIO or simply STRUTHIO was a large grey bird, which took its name from the Greek STROUTHION, and the earlier STROUTHOS. Actually, the ostrich was a MEGASTROUTHOS for the Greeks; the STROUTHOS was a sparrow. And a MEGASTROUTHOS was also called a STROUTHIOCAMELOS.
But a case—erroneous, but a case nonetheless—can be made, etymologically, for ostriches being related to oysters, not sparrows. Ostriches are large grey birds, whose bodies are shaped much like giant oysters—giant oysters with long necks and long, skinny legs. The ostrich might just as well get its name from an oyster as from a sparrow. Visually, ostriches are much more like giant oysters than giant sparrows, in shape and color. And if the Greek OSXE does derive from the OS root, making scrota related to oysters, the Greeks could just as easily have seen ostriches as related to oysters.
A Special Report from the
Speculative Etymology Section of the
Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought
dinsdag 10 februari 2009
SHAME ON THE PRESIDENT
Shame on President Obama. The world watches as the Obama administration hides kidnapping and torture behind the screen of "state secrets."
The whole world is aghast at the news of the CIA's seven years of torturing Binyam Mohamed, a British subject and citizen, and the Bush administration's blackmailing of the British government to keep them quiet about the torture. And now Obama wants to continue such shameful and criminal activities.
Shame on President Obama. Shame on our country.
Bert Hornback
The whole world is aghast at the news of the CIA's seven years of torturing Binyam Mohamed, a British subject and citizen, and the Bush administration's blackmailing of the British government to keep them quiet about the torture. And now Obama wants to continue such shameful and criminal activities.
Shame on President Obama. Shame on our country.
Bert Hornback
vrijdag 6 februari 2009
WORDS: ABOUT WAR, GAY RIGHTS, AND ABORTION
WORDS: ABOUT WAR, GAY RIGHTS, AND ABORTION
Americans need to learn that "bi-partisan" isn't necessarily good. Nor is "compromise” --as popularly understood--good, unless by a lucky accident. And "tolerance" isn't good, unless we are talking about tolerating cold weather or a toothache, or (if we are being generous) tolerating fools.
If half of us are racists and half of us aren't, will "bi-partisanship" work as a way of insuring equal rights? Of course not. Likewise, President Obama's inauguration "compromise" on gay rights was absurd. Either gays have equal rights with everybody else, or they are discriminated against and abused as second-class citizens. Having a anti-gay rights bigot and a gay bishop both pray to presumably the same god for him and for us is ludicrously bi-partisan, and demonstrates how idiotic our idea of compromise is.
If partisans on both sides can agree on something, then that something has bi-partisan support. If we reach a compromise on an issue, that means we agree on a course that we think is the right one--which may not be down-the-middle at all! A compromise is an agreement: the word says that those who compromise "promise together"--for the future. (I don't make "promises" about the past; that makes no sense.) We can achieve a compromise on how to end our war in Iraq, by agreeing on how to withdraw U.S. troops; but we can't have a compromise that is half-way between war and no war.
The Clinton "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military was a false compromise. It denied gay rights: it kept gays second class citizens. If the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had applied to all troops, heterosexual as well as homosexual, it would have been a decent if meaningless compromise.
Abortion is currently legal for the most part in the United States. Some people argue that abortion is murder, however. Is Roe v. Wade a compromise solution? No. It rejects the argument that abortion is murder, and accepts the argument for a woman's right to abort a foetus. The question was not decided by putting a woman's right to control of her own body above or ahead of the prohibition against murder; rather, it decided that abortion is not murder.
The U. S. Supreme Court made that decision without establishing precisely what determines whether or not a foetus is a living human child. Under U.S. law, if a court can't determine that a person has committed a crime--murder, for example--the accused must be acquitted: thus, if we don't know that a human child has been murdered we can't judge abortion to be murder. If the foetus is a human child, however, killing it intentionally is murder.
When we acquit the accused murderer because we cannot be certain of his guilt, we make our decision in order to avoid punishing the innocent. "Reasonable doubt" is the cut-off point: proof of guilt must be "beyond reasonable doubt." Can the reverse argument be made in the case of abortion? If the foetus is "beyond reasonable doubt" not a human child, the abortion is legal; but if there is a reasonable possibility that it is a human child, must its right to life be protected?
Our laws have as their first purpose the protection of the innocent, and from this derives the secondary purpose of punishing the guilty. In the case of abortion, however, there are further moral complications. The first is that, prior to Roe v. Wade, it was possible for all Americans except the poor to get safe abortions without fear of prosecution; all they had to do was find a doctor who would perform the operation. The poor could get abortions in back alleys, or abort themselves, but often died as a result. The law against abortion was, on the face of it, discriminatory. The second complication in trying to regulate abortion is that our society doesn't mandate proper care for children: once children are born, they may starve to death or be homeless or grow up uncared for and uneducated for life--and no laws have been broken. If we are to protect the rights of the unborn, shouldn't we also acknowledge that, once born, children have rights too?
We need to stop the partisan shouting of the "pro life" and "pro choice" advocates, and think our way through to an honest compromise: a way forward, to a proper future which will not require some of us to "tolerate" abortion that may be murder, and will not "tolerate" child neglect in any form in our society.
Americans need to learn that "bi-partisan" isn't necessarily good. Nor is "compromise” --as popularly understood--good, unless by a lucky accident. And "tolerance" isn't good, unless we are talking about tolerating cold weather or a toothache, or (if we are being generous) tolerating fools.
If half of us are racists and half of us aren't, will "bi-partisanship" work as a way of insuring equal rights? Of course not. Likewise, President Obama's inauguration "compromise" on gay rights was absurd. Either gays have equal rights with everybody else, or they are discriminated against and abused as second-class citizens. Having a anti-gay rights bigot and a gay bishop both pray to presumably the same god for him and for us is ludicrously bi-partisan, and demonstrates how idiotic our idea of compromise is.
If partisans on both sides can agree on something, then that something has bi-partisan support. If we reach a compromise on an issue, that means we agree on a course that we think is the right one--which may not be down-the-middle at all! A compromise is an agreement: the word says that those who compromise "promise together"--for the future. (I don't make "promises" about the past; that makes no sense.) We can achieve a compromise on how to end our war in Iraq, by agreeing on how to withdraw U.S. troops; but we can't have a compromise that is half-way between war and no war.
The Clinton "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military was a false compromise. It denied gay rights: it kept gays second class citizens. If the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had applied to all troops, heterosexual as well as homosexual, it would have been a decent if meaningless compromise.
Abortion is currently legal for the most part in the United States. Some people argue that abortion is murder, however. Is Roe v. Wade a compromise solution? No. It rejects the argument that abortion is murder, and accepts the argument for a woman's right to abort a foetus. The question was not decided by putting a woman's right to control of her own body above or ahead of the prohibition against murder; rather, it decided that abortion is not murder.
The U. S. Supreme Court made that decision without establishing precisely what determines whether or not a foetus is a living human child. Under U.S. law, if a court can't determine that a person has committed a crime--murder, for example--the accused must be acquitted: thus, if we don't know that a human child has been murdered we can't judge abortion to be murder. If the foetus is a human child, however, killing it intentionally is murder.
When we acquit the accused murderer because we cannot be certain of his guilt, we make our decision in order to avoid punishing the innocent. "Reasonable doubt" is the cut-off point: proof of guilt must be "beyond reasonable doubt." Can the reverse argument be made in the case of abortion? If the foetus is "beyond reasonable doubt" not a human child, the abortion is legal; but if there is a reasonable possibility that it is a human child, must its right to life be protected?
Our laws have as their first purpose the protection of the innocent, and from this derives the secondary purpose of punishing the guilty. In the case of abortion, however, there are further moral complications. The first is that, prior to Roe v. Wade, it was possible for all Americans except the poor to get safe abortions without fear of prosecution; all they had to do was find a doctor who would perform the operation. The poor could get abortions in back alleys, or abort themselves, but often died as a result. The law against abortion was, on the face of it, discriminatory. The second complication in trying to regulate abortion is that our society doesn't mandate proper care for children: once children are born, they may starve to death or be homeless or grow up uncared for and uneducated for life--and no laws have been broken. If we are to protect the rights of the unborn, shouldn't we also acknowledge that, once born, children have rights too?
We need to stop the partisan shouting of the "pro life" and "pro choice" advocates, and think our way through to an honest compromise: a way forward, to a proper future which will not require some of us to "tolerate" abortion that may be murder, and will not "tolerate" child neglect in any form in our society.
JUSTICE
How can the United States talk about "justice" How can American citizens talk about "justice"? The only kind of justice that exists in the United States is that which is radically modified by "liberty," the doctrine of irresponsible self-righteousness.
Our government suspends the right of habeas corpus, does away with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty; it condones torture, practices state kidnappings and "disappearances," and blackmails our supposed allies to keep quiet about our torturing their citizens. It starts illegal wars of aggression, and supplies obscene weapons--I'm thinking of phosphorus bombs, designed to burn, maim, and kill people indiscriminately--to vicious, uncivilised Israelis.
(The phosphorus bombs that the United States gives the Israeli army to use against Palestinians are not designed for use against military targets. They don't destroy buildings or guns; they aren't aimed at combatants. They are dropped, to explode before they hit the ground; upon detonation, they spew hundreds of large burning phosphorus pellets through the air. Phosphorus burns flesh--and keeps burning flesh, and keeps burning flesh. Of anybody: children, for example, as well as women and men and maybe even a few militants.)
Now, with the closing of the United States' main Concentration Camp at Guantanamo imminent, many Americans are complaining: they want "justice," they say, thining about the bombing of the USS Cole and the destruction of the World Trade Center. But Americans don't want justice; they want revenge. And revenge is not a worthy motive for anything.
After torturing people for six years, we have no right even to use the word justice. Only if the torturers--from the president down to the lowly scum who gave the direct orders and the craven creatures who carried them out--are brought to justice for their crimes can those who have been tortured ever be accused of crimes, and probably not even then: they have already been punished--illegally, inhumanely, and unjustly.
Americans can't ask for what they call "justice," and they can't be allowed further acts of vengeance. Rather, America must be brought to justice for its crimes.
Our government suspends the right of habeas corpus, does away with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty; it condones torture, practices state kidnappings and "disappearances," and blackmails our supposed allies to keep quiet about our torturing their citizens. It starts illegal wars of aggression, and supplies obscene weapons--I'm thinking of phosphorus bombs, designed to burn, maim, and kill people indiscriminately--to vicious, uncivilised Israelis.
(The phosphorus bombs that the United States gives the Israeli army to use against Palestinians are not designed for use against military targets. They don't destroy buildings or guns; they aren't aimed at combatants. They are dropped, to explode before they hit the ground; upon detonation, they spew hundreds of large burning phosphorus pellets through the air. Phosphorus burns flesh--and keeps burning flesh, and keeps burning flesh. Of anybody: children, for example, as well as women and men and maybe even a few militants.)
Now, with the closing of the United States' main Concentration Camp at Guantanamo imminent, many Americans are complaining: they want "justice," they say, thining about the bombing of the USS Cole and the destruction of the World Trade Center. But Americans don't want justice; they want revenge. And revenge is not a worthy motive for anything.
After torturing people for six years, we have no right even to use the word justice. Only if the torturers--from the president down to the lowly scum who gave the direct orders and the craven creatures who carried them out--are brought to justice for their crimes can those who have been tortured ever be accused of crimes, and probably not even then: they have already been punished--illegally, inhumanely, and unjustly.
Americans can't ask for what they call "justice," and they can't be allowed further acts of vengeance. Rather, America must be brought to justice for its crimes.
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