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.
vrijdag 9 januari 2009
O’BAMA SELLS WASHINGTON
Did we elect Barack O’Bama governor of Illinois?
This is disgraceful, to say the very least. Today I received an e-mail from the president-elect, another from his wife, and yet another from David Phlunkey, telling me that if I send them just $5 I will have a chance to win a ticket to O’Bama’s inauguration.
The governor of Illinois is no worse than he is, and I am disgusted. No wonder his cabinet is full of sleazes.
Bert Hornback
c
Did we elect Barack O’Bama governor of Illinois?
This is disgraceful, to say the very least. Today I received an e-mail from the president-elect, another from his wife, and yet another from David Phlunkey, telling me that if I send them just $5 I will have a chance to win a ticket to O’Bama’s inauguration.
The governor of Illinois is no worse than he is, and I am disgusted. No wonder his cabinet is full of sleazes.
Bert Hornback
c
donderdag 8 januari 2009
UTILITARIAN BIOTECHNOLOGY AWARD
The Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought has made a significant grant to its Department of Utilitarian Biotechnology, for work on the cross-breeding of dogs and eyeglasses. One of the great wastes of human talent seems to be the misplacement of eyeglasses; this waste could be eliminated if eyeglasses could be taught to follow their humans around, the way dogs do. A team of researchers will be selected by Professor Susan di Nahm and her research associate, Doctor Norman D. Plumm. Applications may be submitted any time within the next six months to the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought.
SAVING THESE UNITED STATES
So far the response to the financial melt-down in the United States has been a typically American one: greed. Greed feeds greed. The “bail-out” of America, as sponsored by both the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration, is to let the future pay for it. For the next century, our children and grandchildren to the fifth or sixth generation will be paying for the greed and profligacy of our time.
George Bush financed his tax cuts for the rich with deficit spending, which is a polite word for increased debt. He paid and is paying for his bloody wars of aggression—and his absurd “Department of Homeland Security “—by increasing the national debt by three trillion dollars. And now the “bail-out” of long-failing but expensively-led corporations and greedy banks intending to make profits from the poor: we will pay for bailing them out by borrowing another few trillion dollars from the future. And it’s not the rich who will pay for all these loans: they and their wealth will be protected. It’s the poor who will be taxed.
The main problem with the supposedly United States that they aren’t united. They aren’t a culture, a society. These United States are made up of the rich—and everybody else. Our problem is not a lack of wealth, but the gross maldistribution of wealth. Our problem is greed.
The solution to the problem is relatively simple: redistribute the wealth. There is no civilised, social, moral reason for some people to have billions of dollars. So we must have a new law which says that every citizen of the United States has the right to own perhaps $100,000 a year of disposable wealth or property (excluding a single domicile) for every year of life left to him or her up to the age of seventy. All wealth in excess of that amount will become commonwealth.
If a family has but one bread-winner, and he or she has less that $50,000 in any year, the commonwealth fund will top that up so that the family will have $50,000 for the year. A citizen who is disabled or reaches the age of seventy will receive from the government $100,000 a year for the rest of his or her life.
If an individual fifty year-old citizen has more than $100,000 times twenty--$2,000,000—all money and property (excluding a single domicile) in excess of that $2,000,000 will be forfeit to the commonwealth. If a family of four—two thirty year-old parents, twins aged ten—has a combined wealth of more than $20,000,000, they will forfeit the excess.
A sixty-year old couple having a primary domicile fully paid for and worth $500,000, and another vacation home fully paid for and worth $300,000 may possess, jointly, $1,700,000. If the next year they own the same two homes, they may possess, jointly, $1,500,000. By the time they are sixty-eight, the can still have their two homes, but will be allowed only $100,000 jointly in addition. At age sixty-nine, they will have to sell the vacation home—and join the rest of the population who have but one domicile.
Rich institutions, like the Roman Catholic Church and Harvard University will likewise be required to disperse their gross wealth.
Why not? Why let Bill Gates sit on $50,000,000,000, and praise him for giving away $50,000,000? That’s but one-tenth of one percent of his wealth. That’s no more charity than my giving a dime a day to a homeless person.
Why let the Catholic Church pay no taxes on its wealth and property? The archbishop of Louisville complained at having to pay $26,000,000 for pedophile priests’s crimes; “I only have $52,000,000 in ready cash,” he said. Poor church!
Churches of all denominations are locked up most of the time; they are open to the public only six or seven hours a week. If they want tax exemptions, let them serve the public: let them be open for eight or ten hours a day, seven days a week, to provide comfort and shelter for the poor and the homeless. Let them feed the poor, every day. Otherwise, make them pay taxes. Require them to pay for their greed.
There is enough wealth in the United States to make a decent society for us all: to make a genuine commonwealth. It’s time for us to have a genuine revolution, and give ourselves the gift of freedom. In liberty, we each take care of ourselves, for ourselves; in freedom—which is friendly—we take care of each other, for the sake of us all.
I think I could pledge allegiance to such a country. And I suspect that the rest of the world would praise and admire us for being good citizens, and setting a good example for all of humankind. And then we wouldn’t have to be afraid of terrorist attacks or anything else bad.
9 January 2009
So far the response to the financial melt-down in the United States has been a typically American one: greed. Greed feeds greed. The “bail-out” of America, as sponsored by both the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration, is to let the future pay for it. For the next century, our children and grandchildren to the fifth or sixth generation will be paying for the greed and profligacy of our time.
George Bush financed his tax cuts for the rich with deficit spending, which is a polite word for increased debt. He paid and is paying for his bloody wars of aggression—and his absurd “Department of Homeland Security “—by increasing the national debt by three trillion dollars. And now the “bail-out” of long-failing but expensively-led corporations and greedy banks intending to make profits from the poor: we will pay for bailing them out by borrowing another few trillion dollars from the future. And it’s not the rich who will pay for all these loans: they and their wealth will be protected. It’s the poor who will be taxed.
The main problem with the supposedly United States that they aren’t united. They aren’t a culture, a society. These United States are made up of the rich—and everybody else. Our problem is not a lack of wealth, but the gross maldistribution of wealth. Our problem is greed.
The solution to the problem is relatively simple: redistribute the wealth. There is no civilised, social, moral reason for some people to have billions of dollars. So we must have a new law which says that every citizen of the United States has the right to own perhaps $100,000 a year of disposable wealth or property (excluding a single domicile) for every year of life left to him or her up to the age of seventy. All wealth in excess of that amount will become commonwealth.
If a family has but one bread-winner, and he or she has less that $50,000 in any year, the commonwealth fund will top that up so that the family will have $50,000 for the year. A citizen who is disabled or reaches the age of seventy will receive from the government $100,000 a year for the rest of his or her life.
If an individual fifty year-old citizen has more than $100,000 times twenty--$2,000,000—all money and property (excluding a single domicile) in excess of that $2,000,000 will be forfeit to the commonwealth. If a family of four—two thirty year-old parents, twins aged ten—has a combined wealth of more than $20,000,000, they will forfeit the excess.
A sixty-year old couple having a primary domicile fully paid for and worth $500,000, and another vacation home fully paid for and worth $300,000 may possess, jointly, $1,700,000. If the next year they own the same two homes, they may possess, jointly, $1,500,000. By the time they are sixty-eight, the can still have their two homes, but will be allowed only $100,000 jointly in addition. At age sixty-nine, they will have to sell the vacation home—and join the rest of the population who have but one domicile.
Rich institutions, like the Roman Catholic Church and Harvard University will likewise be required to disperse their gross wealth.
Why not? Why let Bill Gates sit on $50,000,000,000, and praise him for giving away $50,000,000? That’s but one-tenth of one percent of his wealth. That’s no more charity than my giving a dime a day to a homeless person.
Why let the Catholic Church pay no taxes on its wealth and property? The archbishop of Louisville complained at having to pay $26,000,000 for pedophile priests’s crimes; “I only have $52,000,000 in ready cash,” he said. Poor church!
Churches of all denominations are locked up most of the time; they are open to the public only six or seven hours a week. If they want tax exemptions, let them serve the public: let them be open for eight or ten hours a day, seven days a week, to provide comfort and shelter for the poor and the homeless. Let them feed the poor, every day. Otherwise, make them pay taxes. Require them to pay for their greed.
There is enough wealth in the United States to make a decent society for us all: to make a genuine commonwealth. It’s time for us to have a genuine revolution, and give ourselves the gift of freedom. In liberty, we each take care of ourselves, for ourselves; in freedom—which is friendly—we take care of each other, for the sake of us all.
I think I could pledge allegiance to such a country. And I suspect that the rest of the world would praise and admire us for being good citizens, and setting a good example for all of humankind. And then we wouldn’t have to be afraid of terrorist attacks or anything else bad.
9 January 2009
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