Zippy as Henry

[Zippy, January 14, 2017.]

Zippy rushes to tell the scientific community but stops himself: “Oh no! I just remembered that most Americans no longer believe in science — or even facts!”

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All OCA Henry posts : All OCA Henry and Zippy posts : All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Please imagine the links in the form of a Venn diagram.

Word of the day: tyrant

The classicist and translator Paul Woodruff on the ancient idea of the tyrant:

A tyrannos is not a legitimate king (Greek basileus, Latin rex), but a ruler who has won power by his own efforts . . .

In Greek thought at the time, a tyrant . . . is subject to insatiable desires, which drive him to a career of wanton injustice. This is the one mark of the tyrant in Plato‘s Republic, written sixty or more years after Oedipus Tyrannus. . . .

But Plato has captured only part of the classic notion of the tyrant. Several tragic plays of Sophocles’ period dwell on the tyrant as a model not so much of injustice, as Plato would have it, but of irreverent and unholy behavior — behavior that indicates a failure to recognize the limits separating human beings from gods, the principal limits being mortality and ignorance. . . .

Oedipus shares three traits with stage tyrants . . . : he is prone to fear of rebellion, he is liable to subvert the law when frightened, and he is a poor listener who flies into a rage when given advice that he does not want to hear.

Introduction to Theban Plays, by Sophocles, trans. Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003).

You get the idea. Our president-elect appears to possess the traits of both Platonic and theatrical tyrants.

What got me thinking about ancient tyrants was the president-elect’s recent extraordinary claim: “I will be the greatest jobs producer that God ever created.” I think we’re beyond hubris here. Another word made from Greek parts seems to apply: megalomania.

Words for these times

Throughout history, wherever there have been monarchs, dictators, or strongmen there have been crowds of followers eager to gain influence and reap material rewards by doing their leader’s bidding. English has a wide and colorful assortment of terms for such persons.

From the American Heritage Dictionary, words for these times: “Minions, sycophants, toadies, and other creatures.” Another word that’s relevant: tyrant.

Preventing discards

A tale of librarians seeking to prevent discards: “To save books, librarians create fake ‘reader’ to check out titles” (Orlando Sentinel, via Arts & Letters Daily).

Reader, have you ever checked out a book to try to save it from being discarded? I will admit to checking out from two libraries, as an adult, the formative book of my childhood, Clifford Hicks’s Alvin’s Secret Code. When one library finally discarded its copy, I was lucky enough to find it at the book sale. But I would rather have found it still on the shelf.

Speak, Emenee

Somehow it came to mind. Do you too — yes, you, in front of the screen — remember this commercial?

I’d like to hear the sounds that a “rockin’ band” might have made with these instruments. Instant outsider music.

[Post title with apologies to Vladimir Nabokov and Mnemosyne.]

Ten bits and a jar

[Zippy, January 12, 2017.]

Fresca linked to something helpful: John Scalzi’s ten bits of advice for getting work done in these times. Though the advice is meant for “creatives” (Scalzi’s word), it’s good advice for all.

Something Elaine suggested: every day we’re each writing down one good thing from the day on a slip of paper. The slips go into a jar. We decided that we’ll keep going no matter what happens this year. (Like the comics, I suppose.) For us, the jar is not an exercise in “gratitude”; it’s to remind us that life doesn’t suck. I know that what we’re doing involves an element of privilege: we don’t have to fear deportation, say, or the loss of health insurance, though we do have more to fear than fear itself. But see especially Scalzi’s nos. 5 and 8.

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[Elaine saw the jar idea somewhere on Facebook.That’s a straw in Zippy’s hand — the last straw?]

The making of soup

“To paraphrase the food writer M.F.K. Fisher, there is a slippery slope from water to soup. If you have water around, you can have soup”: so says “How to Make Soup,” a New York Times guide whose title needs no further explanation.

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Word of the day: emolument

The word is in the air. Merriam-Webster’s legal definition:

a return arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites <the President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation . . . and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument — U.S. Constitution art. II>

I would add: See also kleptocracy.

I wondered whether emolument is related to emollient, but the resemblance is just coincidence. Emolument comes from the Latin verb emolere, “to produce by grinding.” Merriam-Webster explains that by 1480, when emolument first appeared in English,

Latin emolumentum had come to mean simply “profit” or “gain”; it had become removed from its own Latin predecessor, the verb molere, meaning “to grind.” The original connection between the noun and this verb was its reference to the profit or gain from grinding another’s grain.

Emollient comes from the Latin emollire, “to soften.” A president who receives many emoluments might be said to live a soft (not to mention corrupt) life, but that president would still need to pay for creams and lotions to soften the skin, unless that president’s preferred emollients are already among his or her emoluments.

Snarking at waffles

A local restaurant, owned by a local man, a local mogul, our own Mr. Potter, has a large sign out front touting the breakfast menu, which includes “Belgium Waffles.” Sigh — not for the waffles but for the use of a country name as a modifier. Do they also serve cheese Denmark and England muffins and France toast at breakfast? Probably not — it’s easy enough to distinguish Danish from Denmark, &c. But it’s not really that difficult to distinguish Belgian from Belgium.

Google’s Ngram Viewer shows Belgian waffles taking off in American English in 1959 and reaching its height in 1996. There’s no trace of Belgium waffles before 1977, and very little sign of it thereafter. In 2008, the most recent year for which the Ngram Viewer has results, Belgian waffles outnumbers Belgium waffles 20.5:1. Which means that Mr. Potter’s restaurant is serving some fairly rare waffles. Reservations only.

[The 1959 starting point marks the Belgian waffle as a mid-century American adventure in food. Belgian waffles were sold at the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair. If anyone other than Mr. Potter owned this restaurant, I would not have written this post.]

Yes, again

From President Barack Obama’s farewell address: “Yes, we can. Yes, we did. Yes, we can.”

I take that to mean that the effort begins anew.

What I most noticed in Obama’s words: echoes of Bernie Sanders, the invoking of Atticus Finch in the call for people to understand the other person’s point of view, and the reminder that younger Americans will soon outnumber “all of us” and will have the future in their hands. Here come 2018 and 2020.

The New York Times has the text as prepared. You can watch at YouTube if you missed it.