Livonians in Latvia

“With a population estimated at just around 200, Europe's smallest ethnic group is fighting to save its language and culture from extinction”: the BBC looks at the Livonian people of Latvia. Smoked fish are part of the culture. Now I have a new way to understand Baltic Gold sprats.

x

Thinking alphabet thoughts made me wonder: why do we solve (or fail to solve but maybe at least get partial credit) for x ? Wikipedia, relying on a celebrated 1928 study of mathematical notation, credits Descartes: “The modern tradition of using x to represent an unknown was introduced by Descartes in La Géométrie (1637).” Speculation abounds about Arabic and Greek sources and about why Descartes chose x : Why We Use “X” as the Unknown in Math (Gizmodo).

A strange confluence: when I asked Murray, a mathematician, about x, I mentioned that perhaps the names of the x and y axes are explained by y ’s following x in the alphabet. And it turns out that Descartes gave us the x axis. The y came later. And then I realized that axes is yet another heteronym.

My favorite x is an X, in Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Motive for Metaphor”: “The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.” Yikes! That line makes me wonder how Wallace Stevens did in algebra class.

But seriously: the X of that poem names an ultimately unknowable reality that resists and exceeds the imagination. I think I should get at least partial credit for that last sentence.

Thanks to Murray for the Gizmodo article.

Heteronyms

In The Washington Post, John Ficarra, a Mad editor, writes about his problem with heteronyms:

The English language has something to confuse or annoy just about anyone — the mysteries of who and whom usage, the e.g. vs. i.e. standoff, the polarizing Oxford comma. I have a long-standing, personal problem with heteronyms — words that are spelled the same but don’t sound alike. Allow me to explain with a little story.

In order to graduate from the graduate program at my university, every student was required to take part in a group discussion of heteronyms. My group asked me to take the lead which, alas, went over like a lead balloon.

And we’re off.

Thanks, Murray!

[If there’s an excise tax on heteronyms, I may have to excise them from my writing.]

The alphabet and the encyclopedia

Encyclopedias haven’t always been alphabetical. The structure of a medieval encyclopedia was hierarchical, reflecting a divinely ordered universe. Begin with God, then human beings, animals, and on to inanimate things. The change to alphabetical order, Judith Flanders argues, marks a change in worldview. From A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order (New York: Basic Books, 2020):

Just as the spread of alphabetically organized dictionaries and indexes had indicated a shift from seeing words purely as meaning to seeing them as a series of letters, so too the arrival of alphabetically ordered encyclopedias indicated a shift from seeing the world as a hierarchical, ordered place, explicable and comprehensible if only a person knew enough, to seeing it as a random series of events and people and places.

As Flanders also points out, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that makes the principle of alphabetical order moot.

Also from this book
On “the preeminence of ABC” : Meaningful letters : Pen and paper and

Baltic Gold

The large print on the jar says “Sardines,” but the small print says “Sprats, Sprattus sprattus.” Baltic Gold whatever-they-ares are incredibly delicious: tiny, tender, lightly smoked fish from Latvia. The only catch, as it were: once opened, the jar goes in the refrigerator and the remaining fish are to be consumed within twenty-four hours. The label says so. So an 8.82 oz. jar requires some dedicated interest in smoked fish, and maybe more than a single eater. Add bread or crackers, a little olive oil (to supplement the jar’s rapeseed oil), and a few flakes of red pepper. The 8.82 oz. will disappear.

I found Baltic Gold in an international foods store and called Gold Star USA in Brooklyn after finding nothing about Baltic Gold on the company’s website. But no, this product has not been discontinued. It’s in their downloadable catalog. “They’re great!” I said to the person on the phone. “Very high quality,” she said. “Enjoy.” Yes.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[“Sprats are not sardines, but they are closely related”: Trevor Day, Sardine (London: Reaktion, 2018).]

Zombie cicadas

Brood X cicadas (coming soon to a yard near me) will be contending with a “death-zombie fungus.” Matthew Kasson, associate professor of plant pathology and mycology at West Virginia University, explains:

“Infected cicadas, despite the fact that a third of their body has fallen off, continue to go about their activities like mating and flying as if nothing happened.”

I think at this point it’s safe to say that “things” are never going back to “normal.”

“Let’s agree that if”

From the NPR podcast Consider This (from the weekday broadcast All Things Considered ). Akiva Eldar, Israeli political analyst and journalist, and Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, in conversation:

Eldar: I don’t see any way where the Israelis and Hamas can reach an agreement as long as the Israeli government is held by the Israeli right-wing parties, who don’t believe in a two-state solution. And in Gaza, what Hamas managed to do is to unite the Palestinian communities in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel proper. And this is not going away if we don’t deal with it in the roots of this seriously.

Abusada: Akiva, can — let me just interrupt here and say, let’s agree on one thing here, that the continuation of the Israeli occupation of West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, which has been going on for more than half a century now, since 1967, and the creeping annexation with settlement expansion on Palestinian territory is the source of the problem. Let’s agree that if Israel puts an end to its occupation of Palestinian land and accepts international law and U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, there is a good possibility for peace. There’s a good possibility for security and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.

Eldar: I fully agree with you, my friend.

[I’ve made slight changes from the NPR transcript. Comments are off for this post; I’m not interested in debating.]

Jaylan Butler v. Staes, et al.

The ACLU of Illinois has announced the resolution of Jaylan Butler v. Staes, et al. On February 24, 2019, Butler, a Black college student and swimmer, was at a highway rest stop near East Moline, Illinois, with his team and coach, all returning to campus from a meet. Police took Butler to the ground, handcuffed him, held him down with his face in the snow, a knee in his back, and pressure on his neck. One officer put a gun to his head and told him, “If you keep moving, I’m going to blow your fucking head off.” The police soon realized that they had been looking for someone else. That didn’t stop them from keeping Butler handcuffed, arresting him for resisting arrest, and placing him in a squad car before dropping the matter.

Here, from the ACLU’s announcement, is Jaylan Butler’s statement on the resolution of the lawsuit:

The memories of that night being pressed to the ground, with officers swearing at me and a gun pointed at my head, will remain with me forever. But I know that unlike other Black men who have been stopped and manhandled by police, I got to go home. For me, this lawsuit has always been about holding the officers accountable for their actions that night. I believe I have accomplished that goal. As a result, I am happy to dismiss the suit and move forward.

I want to thank all of the people from across the country who were supportive of me during this time. I value your well wishes and words of appreciation more than I can say.

The end of this lawsuit is not the end of the fight for police accountability. We must ensure that officers are held to account when they violate someone’s constitutional rights. This is an effort that I will continue to support for the rest of my life.

You can read the text of the lawsuit here. And here, from a swimming website, is an additional account of the circumstances around the incident.

A related post
Stopping at a rest stop with your swim team while black (With links to news coverage and an interview)

Some of Mary Miller’s votes

My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), votes with the worst of the worst. You wouldn’t know about most of her votes from reading her Facebook or Twitter posts, which cast her as the defender of guns, “life,” and freedom. Here are a few of her votes since arriving in the House:

~ Miller was one of 139 representatives who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election (January 6).

~ She was one of 206 representatives who voted against H.R. 5, the Equality Act, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation (February 25).

~ She was one of thirty-eight representatives who voted against H.R. 1652, VOCA [Victims of Crime Act] Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act of 2021 (March 17).

~ She was one of fourteen representatives who voted against H.Res. 134, Condemning the military coup that took place on February 1, 2021, in Burma (March 19).

~ She was one of seventy-one representatives who voted against H.R. 1392, the Protection of Saudi Dissidents Act of 2021 (April 21).

~ And she was one of sixty-two representatives who voted yesterday against S. 397, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Miller is still best known — if she’s known at all — as the new member of Congress who on January 5 told a “Moms for America” rally that

“Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’”

She may now became better known as one of ten members of Congress who are refusing to wear masks on the House or Senate floor. Here she is, all smiles, with Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others. Not clear, at least to me, whether any of them have been vaccinated.

*

CNN has a list (dated May 19) of members confirmed as vaccinated. Boebert, Cawthorn, Greene, and Miller are missing from the list.

*

May 20: As you might have guessed, Miller voted yesterday against H.R. 3233, National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act.

All the Mary Miller posts
January 5 and 6 in D.C., with Mary Miller : The objectors included Mary Miller : A letter to Mary Miller : Mary Miller, with no mask : Mary Miller, still in trouble : His ’n’ resignations are in order : Mary Miller in The New Yorker : Mary Miller vs. AOC : Mary Miller’s response to mass murder : Mary Miller and trans rights : Mary Miller on a billboard

[Votes from the incredibly useful GovTrack.us.]

“Anglaise!”

In a coffee-room in the fictional French-speaking kingdom of Labassecour, forty miles from the capital Villette, Lucy Snowe is alone in several ways.

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

Related reading
All OCA Charlotte Brontë posts (Pinboard)