Month: November 2004

Qapla’!

So I was watching this episode of DS9 where Dr. Brashir is whining about the fact he was salutatorian rather than valedictorian at Starfleet Medical (because, as revealed in another episode, he deliberately missed a question on a test [because, as revealed in yet another episode, he is a genetically modified human who didn’t want to blow his cover]).

And I get to thinking about the word valedictorian.

Obvious Latin roots.

Looks like it has the roots to mean "farewell" and "to speak" in it.

And, indeed, it does.

Latin: valedicere = vale (farewell) + dicere (to speak); to bid farewell.

A valedictory is thus a "farewell speech" and a valedictorian is the person who gives it at a commencement, usually the highest scoring student.

Then I started thinking about the word vale.

Where does it come from? Looks like an imperative form of valere. But what does valere mean?

"To be strong, to be powerful, to be healthy, to prevail, to succeed."

To succeed?

So "Vale!" might be translated as "Succeed!"

That’s (more or less) what Klingons say to bid each other as a farewell: Qapla’!

I wonder if on Qo’noS they call valedictory a Qapla’SoQ? (Qapla’ = success + SoQ = speech).

Probably the most combat-proficient student gets to give it.

Bat Ye'or on Arafat's Legacy for Europe

Bat Ye’or (a pen name meaning "Daughter of the Nile") is the foremost chronicler of Dhimmitude. The Dhimmi (THEM-ee) are the "protected" peoples in Muslim lands–i.e., non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians) who are "protected" by Muslim laws (to keep them from being killed outright by fanatical Muslims). The "protection," like protection from the Mob, involves extorting special religious taxes out of them to punish them for not being Muslim, as well as numerous forms of degradation, humiliation, and oppression.

HERE’S A PIECE BY BAT YE’OR ANALYZING ARAFAT’S LEGACY FOR EUROPE.

Bat Ye’or on Arafat’s Legacy for Europe

Bat Ye’or (a pen name meaning "Daughter of the Nile") is the foremost chronicler of Dhimmitude. The Dhimmi (THEM-ee) are the "protected" peoples in Muslim lands–i.e., non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians) who are "protected" by Muslim laws (to keep them from being killed outright by fanatical Muslims). The "protection," like protection from the Mob, involves extorting special religious taxes out of them to punish them for not being Muslim, as well as numerous forms of degradation, humiliation, and oppression.

HERE’S A PIECE BY BAT YE’OR ANALYZING ARAFAT’S LEGACY FOR EUROPE.

The Legitimate Use Of Force

Robert Kagan has an excellent (if long) analysis of what he terms the "crisis of legitimacy" regarding the use of military power in the world today.

Kagan is the author of various works on geopolitics, including the excellent (short!) book Of Paradise And Power, which is the most insightful analysis of the current disconnect between the U.S. and Europe regarding the use of military force. He wrote it in the run-up to the Iraq War, and it sheds a lot of light on what was behind French, German, and similar European thinking.

It is also useful to help understand what European ecclesiastics were (and are) thinking on the subject. At the risk of oversimplifying, his basis thesis there is that the Euros have had it good for the last sixty years. American power helped stabilize Western Europe and keep it stable after World War II and allowed Europeans to neglect their defense interests. As a result, the Western Europeans have been living in an artificial paradise (historically speaking) created and sustained by American power. Now they have developed the idea that everything can be achieved through dialogue and process rather than through the use of force. After all, they’re living in a paradise (judged in historical terms by the absence of wars between their nations).  They haven’t needed to use force for anything. Why should anyone else? Dialogue will do everything that needs to be done.

They’re also scared of the use of military force because they have so little themselves. The only power they have to influence world affairs today is through dialogue, not through military power. Therefore, they’re going to accentuate the former at the expense of the latter.

In his new online piece "The Crisis of Legitimacy," Kagan carries this last thought further. He explores the sudden change of standards Europeans have proposed (or imposed) on the legitimate exercise of military force in the last couple of years. It has only been just now that Europeans have proposed all of a sudden that one needs the approval of a corrupt and dysfunctional body like the U.N. before a nation can take actions it perceives as necessary to its self defense.

The Europeans who opposed the Iraq War on these grounds themselves have not applied this test to their own uses of force, but they want to apply it to us. And, Kagan argues, the reason isn’t hard to see. They don’t really believe that legitimacy is conferred upon the use of force by getting a consensus of nations to sign off on it. The real motive is baser: France and Germany want their blessing to be required for wars to be legitimate. The U.N.-confers-legitimacy argument is just a temporarily expedient smokescreen being used to try to preserve what influence on world affairs France and Germany still have or think they ought to still have.

Once the mask is taken from this duplicity, the natural American instinct is to dismiss the whole claim. But Kagan argues that we can’t totally ignore the issue of legitimacy in world opinion. The reason isn’t that we don’t have the power needed to ignore it. The reason, instead, is that we don’t have the internal political will to ignore it forever. And so he argues that a balance of sorts needs to be sought.

READ THE PIECE.

"Your Namesake"

So right now I’m reading Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, in which the

definition of knowledge is discussed, and the edition I’m reading from

is a diaglot with English on one page and Greek on the other. The Greek

is a different dialect than I’m used to, but I can still make out a

good bit, and when I encounter an interesting word or phrase in

English, I’ll look over at the Greek out of curiosity to see what it is

translating.

I’m finding that the translation (by Harold North Fowler) is not as literal as I would have hoped. Oh, well.

But I ran across a funny.

At one point Theaetetus (a young man) is talking to Socrates (the famous philosopher) about one of his compansions, and he says:

It may seem easy just now, Socrates, as you put it; but you

are probably asking the kind of thing that came up among us lately when

your namesake, Socrates here, and I were talking together [147c].

"’Namesake’ . . . ?" I thought. "That’s an interesting word." So I

looked over in Greek for the phrase corresponding to "your namsake" and

saw that it was tO, sO, homOnumO, [little o is omicron, big O is omega, and comma is an iota subscript].

tO, is the dative form of the definite article (i.e., "the"), which Greek likes to throw into noun

phrases a lot more than English does, so this phrase is

literalistically "the your nameake."

sO, is apparently the dative form of the pronoun "you" in Plato’s

dialect (Attic Greek). From Koine Greek I’m used to the dative "you"

being soi.

homOnumO, is the word equivalent to "namesake." It’s also a dative form. I kind of wrinkled my nose for a second while I analyzed its meaning, then suddenly it hit me like a flash: Of course, that’s the Greek word for "namesake"! It makes perfect sense! There’s even an English equivalent!

Continue reading “"Your Namesake"”

“Your Namesake”

So right now I’m reading Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, in which the
definition of knowledge is discussed, and the edition I’m reading from
is a diaglot with English on one page and Greek on the other. The Greek
is a different dialect than I’m used to, but I can still make out a
good bit, and when I encounter an interesting word or phrase in
English, I’ll look over at the Greek out of curiosity to see what it is
translating.

I’m finding that the translation (by Harold North Fowler) is not as literal as I would have hoped. Oh, well.

But I ran across a funny.

At one point Theaetetus (a young man) is talking to Socrates (the famous philosopher) about one of his compansions, and he says:

It may seem easy just now, Socrates, as you put it; but you
are probably asking the kind of thing that came up among us lately when
your namesake, Socrates here, and I were talking together [147c].

"’Namesake’ . . . ?" I thought. "That’s an interesting word." So I
looked over in Greek for the phrase corresponding to "your namsake" and
saw that it was tO, sO, homOnumO, [little o is omicron, big O is omega, and comma is an iota subscript].

tO, is the dative form of the definite article (i.e., "the"), which Greek likes to throw into noun
phrases a lot more than English does, so this phrase is
literalistically "the your nameake."

sO, is apparently the dative form of the pronoun "you" in Plato’s
dialect (Attic Greek). From Koine Greek I’m used to the dative "you"
being soi.

homOnumO, is the word equivalent to "namesake." It’s also a dative form. I kind of wrinkled my nose for a second while I analyzed its meaning, then suddenly it hit me like a flash: Of course, that’s the Greek word for "namesake"! It makes perfect sense! There’s even an English equivalent!

Continue reading ““Your Namesake””

Scalia???

Over yonder at Southern Appeal, Steve Dillard has a post on an NPR interview he heard with new Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada in which the latter expressed more openness to having Antonin Scalia as chief justice rather than Clarence Thomas. He said:

"If they [Republicans], for example, gave us Clarence Thomas as chief
justice, I personally feel that would be wrong. If they give us Antonin
Scalia, that’s a little different question. I may not agree with some
of his opinions, but I agree with the brilliance of his mind."

Setting aside the obvious, if implicit, insult that Thomas is a dumb-dumb, I think Reid is being disingenuous. It isn’t the brilliance of Scalia’s mind that he admires (Thomas is brilliant, too). It isn’t that he thinks Scalia would be a lot more palatable to a Dem point of view, for the two share the same general judicial philosophy and usually vote the same way. The reason is this:

Scalia is older.

A while back I did some calculations on the future of the Supreme Court based on when justices are likely to retire. While there is no guarantee that particular justices will retire in particular years, based on recent trends, Scalia would most likely retire about 2014, while Thomas isn’t expected to retire until about 2026.

(Here’s the math: Of late the average justice has retired at age 78, Scalia was born in 1936, Thomas in 1948. Would need more medical/family data to provide a more refined estimate of retirement.)

Reid is trying to keep an originalist from occupying the chief justice’s seat for longer than he has to.

The hypocrite.

I hope Bush nominates Thomas–one among several reasons being precisely the one Reid is afraid of.

Operations Note

There’s been some discussion in the comments box about a problem in the comments boxes.

Apparently, something in the html is causing certain fields (Name, E-mail, Web page) not to appear if you view the site through Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

I’ve contacted TypePad and they are working on the problem.

In the meantime, thought I’d note that you *can* still use the comments boxes in I.E. You just won’t be able to fill in the missing boxes. I’d suggest (so that we know who’s talking) that you sign your comments so we’ll know who they’re from. (It makes it difficult to respond to someone if you don’t know who to refer to in a comments thread.)

Also, do keep the comments coming. Getting to read people’s feedback (even when it takes issue with me) is one of the key rewards for me for the effort and money I put into producing the blog.

Thanks!

Incidentally, you could also switch to another (safer!) browser, such as Mozilla or Firefox or Opera and get around the problem.

The more people switch away from I.E., the better off we’ll all be. 🙂

Alter's Unaltered Five Books Of Moses

ORDER THIS BOOK NOW!

(If you’re secure in your faith, can exercise critical thinking skills, and want to learn, that is.)

Robert Alter’s translation of the Pentateuch is out!

For those who may not know, Alter is a major figure in the study of biblical literature. Though he is a secularist and doesn’t even believe that the Bible is the Word of God, he has led a revolution in biblical studies to take the Bible seriously as a work of literature and stop trying to deconstruct it into ever smaller and more dubious sources. He further has adopted a translation philosophy that allows the style and literary genius of the original text to show through into English, instead of trying to mask it with an artificial cloak of English style.

He’s been publishing excellent books on biblical literature for some years, and a few years ago he published a translation of Genesis, whose Introduction (concerning the flaws in contemporary translations) is worth the price of the volume all by itself.

Now he has supplemented his Genesis volume with translations of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, making it a complete set of the Torah, or Pentateush.

Here’s a CNN story on the subject (and, being CNN, it doesn’t fully appreciate what Alter is doing).

Alter’s work will help you view the Pentateuch through new eyes.

This guy may not be a Christian, but there is a lot one can learn from him, even if he’s not right on everything.

I’ve already ordered MY COPY!