Notre Dame

In honor of President Obama speech there being interrupted by anti-abortionists.

Notre Dame - In Latin means Our Lady, referring to the Virgin Mary. The full name of the school, University of Notre Dame du Lac, translate as Our Lady of the Lake.

More famous, and unconnected to the Roman Catholic Virgin Mary, is the Arthurian Lady of the Lake. A water nymph, for lack of a better description, she was Merlin's lover and the source of King Arthur's sword, Excalibur.

In the third canto of Sir Walter Scott's epic poem "Lady of the Lake" a burning cross was used to summon the Clan Alpine to overthrow the king. The burning cross symbolism was adopted by the Ku Klux Klan. An interesting tidbit given the events of yesterday.

Prevaricate

Republicans have clung to this word like it were their religion when attacking Nancy Pelosi's statements regarding how much, or little, she knew about US torture policies. As if what she knew made a bit of difference.

Prevaricate (v) - A fancy word meaning to lie, more specifically to lie by constantly shifting one's position. From the Latin prae meaning before and varicare meaning to straddle.

Prevaricate is not, however, the fanciest word in the English lexicon meaning liar, liar, pants on fire. That award goes to:

Tergiversate (v) - Means to be evasive. From the Latin tergum (back) and vertere (to turn). Literally, to turn one's back.

Truth Will Out

Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son:
give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may, but at the length truth will out. ~ Merchant of Venice

Another Shakespearean phrase meaning that the truth cannot be hidden, it must become known eventually.

Itchy and Scratchy

Given I'm having my seasonal allergic awareness of the nerve endings on my skin.
Itch (n & v) - An Old English word that has passed through a thousand years of linguistic evolution unchanged.

Scratch (v & n) - As a verb dated back to the 15th century, probably a merging of two Old English words, scratten and crachen, meaning to scratch. As a noun the word is dated to 1586.

Itchy and Scratchy (cartoon, see above) - Violent parody of children's cartoons within the adult cartoon series the Simpsons.

The suffix -y appears to be an import from French.

Red as in Code Red

• In military parlance Code Red refers to unofficial orders that a subordinate is required to follow. In the movie A Few Good Men the Code Red was the order was to beat, to death as it turned out, an uncooperative Marine.
• In hospitals, Code Red calmly announces the building is on fire.
• Red in gem stones symbolized vitality and passion.
• Red as a color denotes power and importance as in the red carpet or the red power tie.
• Red also symbolizes danger as in a flashing red light.
• Red is the color of communism. Some sources say it symbolized the blood of working class martyrs. Others say that a red flag was chosen by Bolsheviks to symbolizes defiance and the color just stuck. Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed that red was the color of the Stalinist faction of the Communist Party but red referred to communism before Stalin's rise.
• Red Herring means deceptive. It comes from the practice of using herring to train hunting dogs. That led to using curred herring, which is red in color, to distract hunting dogs from their scent.
  

White Feather

The white feather is a traditional symbol of cowardice in England. It comes from the belief that fighting cocks with white in their tail feathers are poor fighters. Most sources say the tradition white feathers equals cowardice is hundreds of years old. A few sources believe that the tradition of giving white feathers to a coward was invented by novelist A.E.W. Mason in his novel The Four Feathers in 1902.

During World War I in England the Order of the White Feather encouraged young women to give young men white feathers to humiliate them into joining the army.

For Native Americans white feathers have benign meanings. Among the Cherokee, peace envoys would wear robes covered with white feathers.

Angels and Demons

Why not? There's a movie coming out and all.

Angels (n) - Celestial beings, servants of God. From the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. Archangel adds the Greek prefix arkh-, meaning chief or leader.

Demons (n) - Evil spirits. Again from Greek, daemon meaning a lesser god.

It is one of the oddities of modern religion that so many people who profess to being monotheists (the One True God) also believe in angels and demons. Yet, by definition all of these angels and demons are gods and demigods in their own right. Lesser gods, certainly, although Lucifer appears to be God's equal as they have fought to a draw these many millennia.

Taliban

Since being driven out of Afghanistan in 2002 the Taliban has taken control of parts of Pakistan. In hindsight, we were a lot better off with them herding goats around Kandahar than we are with the Taliban studying nuclear launch codes in the Punjab.

Taliban (n) - The Pashtun for Students because they were originally recruited from Islamic madrasahs. They are an extremely strict fundamentalist Islamic sect that believes women are less human than goats and that one should never take any time away from studying religious texts unless that time is spent tormenting and killing others in the name of God. They are similar to American fundamentalist Christian sects.

Vampire

Vampire (n) - Undead creature of the night that feeds on the blood of the living. First appeared in English in 1732 but dates back to a Serbian word vampir and ultimately to an ancient Tartar word, ubyr, meaning "witch."
Descriptions of vampires date back to the dawn of time. There is a story that Lilith, Adam's first wife, was a vampire. Archaeologists have dug up pottery in ancient Persia that depicted demonic creatures drinking the blood of men. Egypt, India, China, Africa, and, of course Europe all have folk tales about vampires.

Excluding Vlad Tepes (Dracula), the most famous historical figure suspected of being a vampire is Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Called the Blood Countess, Bathory was a 16th century Hungarian noblewoman who believed that she would maintain eternal youth by bathing in the blood of over 600 virgins during her life.

There are real support groups for people (undead?) who think they are vampires and are having a hard time dealing in a world filled with un-undead people.

Fire

The annual Southern California ritual of watching helplessly while our communities are burned to the ground has begun early this year. Santa Barbara is getting the first great firestorm of the season.

Fire (n) - One of the oldest words in the English language, fyr sounded and meant exactly the same thing a thousand years ago as fire does now.

Blaze (n) - From the Old English word for a torch flame.

Inferno (n) - An English import from Italian that comes from the Latin word infernus meaning hell.

Firestorm (n) - Has a technical definition describing a fire so intense it creates its own wind system constantly feeding fresh oxygen into the fire. Think a naturally occurring blowtorch. The more general definition is of a raging, unstoppable fire that is a force of nature like a hurricane. The word dates to World War II where it described the firebombing of cities like Dresden.

Rush Limbaugh

Apropos nothing, just curious what that name translates to.

Rush (boy's name) - English, means "dwells by the rushes."
Limbaugh (surname) - English from German lim=tree and bach=stream.

So the name of the leader of the only remaining wing of the Republican Party (the insane wing) translates to -

That guy who lives in the weeds by a wooded creek. Seems appropriate.

Quisling

Arlen Specter's conversion from Republican to Democrat and immediately promising to be the most disloyal Democrat in the Senate has got me thinking about one of my favorite words.

Quisling (n) - Traitor. Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian Hitler Mini-Me. When German captured Norway in World War II they wanted a local, puppet government. Norwegians were more interested in fighting Germans so the Nazis had to settle for Quisling who become know as Norway's Benedict Arnold. After the war, Quisling was executed for treason and his name became synonymous for traitor. Notice, Scandinavians never execute anybody yet they made an exception for this guy.

Benedict Arnold is not a great synonym for traitor.
It's too long and the components remind me of an egg dish and the cute pig on the TV show Green Acres.

Arnold the Pig

As a word for traitor, traitor itself is cursed by being Latin and, hence, stilted and lacking in passion.

Traitor (n) - From the Latin traditorem meaning to deliver over. Related to the English word, trade.

Quisling is a perfect word. In English the quis- letters make a squishing sound like walking through pig slop, while -ling is a diminutive suffix. The word reeks of vile ooze. I sounds like a little piece of shit pretending to be a big turd.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it never really caught on. You can't use the word in conversation today because everybody will stop you and ask what the hell that means. And that's a shame.

To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor... they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Actually it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous. ~ British newspaper editor, 1940

Building, Painting, Car

I was going to write about the Banana Proof of God, but it's been done to death. Zombie Lovers pretty much shares my sentiment. But looking into bananas I came across the Atheist Test.

Building (n) - A structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place.

Question #1: Do you know of any building that didn't have a builder?
Answer: Yes. They are called caves.

Painting (n) - Any work of art in which objects are represented in color on a flat surface.

Question #2: Do you know of any painting that didn't have a painter?
Answer: Yes. Sticking with the "flat surface" part of the criteria, butterfly wings.

Car (n) - A self-propelled vehicle used for transporting passengers.

Question #3: Do you know of any car that didn't have a maker?
Answer: Yes, but you won't like the answer. See below.

Immune System

Immune - From a Latin word immunis meaning not subject to public service. It was the term used to describe legionaries with special skills that were exempt from routine duties.

Think of the human body as a huge society. There are some 10 trillion cells and another 100 trillion other microbes in our bodies (your personal count may vary). NPR's Robert Krulwich described the human race as just one big chain of microbe hotels. Within this zoo of benign and even symbiotic beneficial microbes the body's society is constantly fighting off invading species, usually without bothering to send out a general alarm.

The body has a two-tiered defensive system. The innate system is fast acting but indescriminate. My body's innate immune system, for example, tends to panic when it encounters certain pollens and animal dandriff. It released histamine to flood my respiratory system with protective mucus - When it doesn't need any protecting!! Hence my annoying bouts of hay fever

The adaptive system is a biological gem. It creates defenses to order and also makes long-lived memory cells that allow for a quick reaction if that particular invader ever returns.