The Cairo Geniza (re-seen)

[Update 22 September 2013]  The Cairo Genizah as “a medieval Facebook, crammed with so much mundane junk that one could reconstruct an entire world from it.”

~ (Original Post) ~

The ancient Jews, whether learnèd or otherwise, were loath to burn any scrap of writing, lest it contain, somewhere within it, the name of God (or rather, in keeping with the Hebraic decencies, the name of G*d).   Accordingly  those  who lived in Cairo, buried all excess scrip and scripture, in storerooms and cemetaries.  

These rubbish-rooms  turned out to be the linguistic equivalents of prehistoric amber, preserving, to the wonder and eternal gratitude of philologists, a rich historic witness to the development of such languages as … Arabic.

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~ Commercial break ~

For our book-length semantic investigation,

in Arabic and the European languages,

click here

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~

Our G.I.s in the Afghan theatre  are, for the most part, neither theologians nor philologers.  Accordingly, when some of them were instructed to dispose of a certain mass of material, they said “Aye aye, sir”.  Alas, among the cumbustibles were some Korans. 

Unlike the idiot pastor in the imbecile state of Florida (whose peninsular form would allow it to be conveniently sawn off and floated out to sea), these soldiers had committed an innocent error.   A bonehead error, it may be;  but then, most folks are boneheads (and will tell you so themselves) when it comes to anything fundamentally unfamiliar (algebraic geometry comes to mind, along with the finer points of Islamic theology).  Still, many people have died as a result, in the furious Afghan reaction.

Let it however be noted, that there are boneheads on the other side as well, who do not pause to reflect that the World of God is imperishable, and cannot possibly be burned.  All anyone can set alight, is pieces of paper.  As for God Himself being directly harmed by this -- as they say in Arabic,

~ ta`âlâ ~

-- He is far above such things.

~

I should have preferred to let matters rest at that, with linguistics and theology.  But alas, the press of political events  requires comment.

(1)  Last night on NPR, everyone was sadly shaking their head about Yemen’s many problems;  and to show us the way forward, interviewed a Yemeni woman, sympathetically and at length.   The Yemeni people, we learn from her, feel hurt, and left out.  American aid projects are not enough.  The local people need to feel cherished.  They need us to come and read them bedtime stories, and tuck them in at night; to feed the chickens in the dooryard, and watch the children while the parents go off to mosque.  And all right-thinking people at NPR agreed that this would be a wonderful thing.

Here’s a different idea:  How about let's not.   We’ve seen how well the touchie-feelie cultural-sensitivity stuff went for us in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Sorry, Yems, I loveya a bunch, but you’re going to have to build your own nation, like everybody else.

(2)  Unlike his ineffable predecessor in office, whose name  now  not even Republicans can force themselves to bring to their lips, our deft and intelligent current President, putting the lives of our troops and allies first,  followed up the obviously called-for apologies from military officers for the Koran incident, with one of his own.  (Note:  I work with soldiers, and can testify that they prefer that someone refrain from placing them in gratuitous peril, for his personal political game, to crowing -- from a safe distance -- “Bring it on!”)

Well, amen, only -- True to form, the right-wing crazies are trying to make things even worse:

Speaking loudest from the Republican field, former House speaker Newt Gingrich called the apology an “outrage”.

Read about that travesty here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/the-art-of-the-presidential-apology/2010/07/28/gIQARVtnYR_story.html?hpid=z1

Penguins United against Newt Gingrich

A penguin named Sparky  attacked Newt Gingrich on sight, and bit him on the butt.  Read all about it in the Mainstream Media:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/14/11201576-after-being-bit-by-a-penguin-gingrich-says-hes-the-underdog?lite

'Nuff said.

There are millions of us... and we vote !

Sample penguin opinions of The Newt:

  Tubby:  Don't like him.
  Chubby: Blech.
  Sparky:  B'gum, b'dad, I'd peck him again !!



The latest from this morning:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-penguins-20120414,0,6965187.story

Ooh!  More good news.  Manymanymanymany penguins:
http://www.medi1.com/infos/actualite/actualite.php?idinf=22062

(To read more nasty things about Willard "Newt" Gingrich, click here.
 To read nice things about our wonderful friends the penguins, click here.
  For paintings of naked ladies, click here.
  For cool stuff about hot dames, click here.
  Oh plus -- I forgot to mention -- buy my books.)

On Historiography

(I)

A short but splendid article in this morning’s Washington Post, written by a genuine historian (Harold Holzer), rather than the Gingrich ersatz (he’s not a historian, but he plays one on TV) deserves your attention.   It concerns the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which everyone cites as a pinnacle and paradigm, but which very few actually know the least thing about.   The truth is very different from what is conventionally peddled.  The stereotype of that debate, thus, functions as a meme or mythogen in our Société du Spectacle.   Read the real dope here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lincoln-douglas-debates-werent-as-great-as-gingrich-thinks/2012/01/25/gIQABwX1VQ_story.html

(II)

Meanwhile, in the increasingly mano-a-mano knifefight known as the Republican Presidential Primary, the Romney camp has put out an ad  that some are depicting as an inadmissible escalation, but which, calmly considered, is more like a return to a bit of fact.  Instead of hiring some announcer paid by themselves, to utter -- who knows -- half-truths or some more exiguous fraction of same,  they simply reproduce a segment of an actual NBC broadcast from 1997, reporting on the Gingrich ethics scandal.

Predictably, the Gingroids call foul.  Remarkably, NBC has demanded that the ad be pulled.  Apparently Tom Brokaw, like the prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) is too sacred to admit of depiction.  (Would the New York Times, or the 9/11 Commission Report, holler objections if they were ever quoted?)

The NBC position is craven and absurd, a brain-belch of their lawyers.   For the rest of us:  Isn’t it nice to have some pre-spin testimony?  However adequate or inadequate NBC news may be or have been, they did not know in 1997 -- not in our more agonized nightmares did any of us then imagine -- that this creature would, years later, actually be front-running for the Presidency.

Word of the Day: “callipygian”

Logophiles were recently introduced to a rather beguiling-sounding name,

Callista

borne most prominently by Mr. Gingrich’s eighty-second paramour (and third wife).  The word derives from Greek,

καλλίστη

(transcribed kalliste), a feminine adjective of the superlative degree, meaning ‘most beautiful’.   Whether this epithet  accurately describes  the ex-mistress/spouse-of-the-month of Mr. Potato-Puff,  depends on your taste in helmet-haired bottle-blonde Barbies  with smiles like a constricted sphincter.   Such matters form no part of our scholarly concern;  our aims here are purely philological.

The -ist suffix is actually cognate with the English ending -est, used likewise to form adjectival superlatives.  That is, it does not form part of the root, which is simply kalli- ‘beautiful’.    This root has no English cognate, but it does show up in an English word  borrowed from the ancient Greek;  to wit

callipygian

For anyone who knows this word, it surely figures among the top ten favorites.  And its meaning is, um, well… that is to say…  Fact is, we here at the World of Doctor Justice run a pretty trim ship:  family-friendly, and dedicated to Wholesome American Values.   Not that being callipygian is necessarily out of line with Wh.A.V., not at all, it’s just … Unlike certain strutting public adulterers, who parade their paramours while posing as a paladin of the Moral Majority (and who previously, squatting in hiding, and still reeking from the bed of lust, hurled stones at President Clinton) -- unlike such gentlemen, I say, we are reluctant to utter here on this site  the least syllable that might bring a blush to a maiden’s cheeks -- either set of cheeks.  And so we urge you simply to consult (provided you are over eighteen, and for purely lexicographic purposes)  this sober and decorous encyclopedia article concerning classical scupture of the Hellenic isles,

Ἀφροδίτη Καλλίπυγος

A more plebeian appreciation of the feminine form  may be consulted here:

Dames, dames, dames !

A callipygian penguin, followed by an admirer

[Children cease reading here.  You must be 18 to view the following image.

Otherwise --  Don’t look down !!]

.

.

[no peeking !]

.

.

Not smut! Classical stuff! (Guess which one is Mrs. Gingrich)

For an even more educational and not-naughty vision of the callipygian, verify that you are over 21, then click here.

[Bonus adjective]  An even rarer form, describing buttocks-traces left on a beach:

a pair of huge pygal-shaped impressions  left on the sand

-- Vladimir Nabokov, King, Queen, Knave (1968), p.

Use it!  Impress your friends!!

Evitable After All

On the mist-enshrouded plains of Southern Carolina, His Inevitability met Mister Potato-Puff  on the field of battle.   And lost his brand-new rattle.  He got evited;  or, as the saying goes downromneyed.  Swelling even beyond his usual soufflé proportions, His Newtitude cavorted in celebration with Callista, his eighty-second mistress (and third wife).

~

“Victory has a hundred fathers;  defeat is an orphan.”   But defeat and victory both have a thousand kibitzers, from the commentariat, with instant analyses.   One I heard on NPR this morning as I was making coffee:  Exit polls reveal that Southerly Carolingians didn’t mind the Bain bit, they just don’t like Romney personally.   And the next headline I click on after logging on  says “Romney hurt by Bain”.  (“Which newspaper  d’ya read?”, as The New Yorker used to say.)

Others pointed to a venemous video attacking the downromney phenomenon.  Ironically given that his own SuperPac made that video, Newton was righteously-wrathfully denouncing the casting of aspersions during a political primary (admonishing a reporter who had asked an uncomfortable question, he rather grandly christened the Seven Dwarves' televisual mud-wrestling  as a "Presidential Debate").  In any case, we ourselves can rest content that our own sober, balanced testimony  has in no way impaired the political process;   proof may be found in our judicious and learnèd essay,

Mitt Romney: blood-sucking maggot

~

Many voters were put off, not so much at Romney’s wealth per se -- such ressentiment is really not characteristic of Americans, mythologues of Horatio Alger, though we do tend rather to look askance at perinatal silver-spoons -- as at the blithe (and lying) way he talks about it, and the careless way in which this vulture/venture capitalist can toss out a line like ‘I like being able to fire people who provide services to me’.   Now, he cried foul on this one, saying he’d been quoted out of context.  And indeed, in a narrow sense, that’s true,  though his choice of metaphor is still psychologically revealing.   But there is a larger context in which The Mitt’s choice of words was exactly on-target;  in this deeper sense, he did not misspeak.

[To be continued…]

~

 [Exciting updates to follow shortly;

in the meantime, Buy My Books]

Phrase of the Day: “Gingrich marriage”

“I hold this truthitude to be self-sacred:

 A marriage is between  a man;   a woman;   and another woman or two.”

-- Newt Gingrich, in effect (his deeds, not his words)

In origin, a "Gingrich marriage",  a.k.a. "open adultery", is simply the old traditional French ménage à trois, in which the wife tolerates the husband’s mistress in return for lots of loot. France is, after all, the home of Dior, Chanel, and many another caterer to woman’s vanity;  in the U.S., Gingrich had to cope by running a tab at Tiffany’s.(*)  The classic case of this is that of French President François “le Cochon” Mitterand, who begat a daughter on his longtime paramour; both the wife and the fille de joie attended his funeral side by side, each barely able to suppress a smile at how much swag they’d both garnered.  (He had plenty to distribute  since, like Gingrich, Mitterand was not only morally bankrupt, but financially corrupt -- read about it in Wiki.  Unlike Gingrich, who was heavily fined for his crimes, Mitterand got off scot-free.)

So, Newt does it French-fashion:  but with an American twist.  In France, with Gallic cynicism,  the public just shrugs;  but in America, Newt gets to pursue his steamy sex-escapades  while at the same time posing and pontificating  as a defender of marriage and traditional values.  (Actually he is defending traditional values, just not American traditional values, but rather  those of the Bourbon monarchy.)

Newt playing dress-up

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péchéirrémissible ???

*

[Update 28 Jan 2012]

Further evidence of Gingrich’s essential Frenchness (testimony bearing the full faith and credit of the New York Times):

Mr Potato-Puff is really a French-frie

(At first that was a typo;  but it looks good:  frie, like Brie.)

~   ~   ~

(*) Note:   In all candor, I was pretty much winging it  here, intuiting a causal explanation for a perplexing pattern (what C.S. Pierce dubbed  abduction).  But the hunch is confirmed by an article in this week’s New Yorker:

Callista did not want him to run for President.

That’s why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry.

-- former Gingrich strategist, who quit in disgust with the candidate

Incidentally --  This is the second excellent New Yorker article about His Newtitude  in roughly as many weeks.  (The earlier one we alluded to here .)  The new one, deftly crafted by Ariel Levy, focusses on El Newtitudamen’s previous paramour and current (third time’s the charm) "wife", Callista.  (As the omniscient Wikipedia informs us, the word comes from Greek καλλίστη, meaning ‘most beautiful’, although it also refers to “a genus of bivalve” -- the latter presumably not the original motivation for the choice of her rather odd-sounding name, though it does suggest an anatomical detail which some might find alluring.)

The article is titled “The Good Wife”; though to be fair, it would be wrong to focus on a politician’s spouse of whatever gender.  Not the issue here.  Merely from a sociological standpoint -- nothing that should influence your vote -- one does perforce note this further confirmation of Republican infatuation with Helmet Hair (which Der Newt himself sports -- unless it’s a toupee):

Her hair is platinum blond and very stiff, with one remarkable lock  styled into an immobile, upward swoosh.

(Her hairstylist calls this "the Callista".)  What is it with Republicans  and being fake  right down to their fingernails?   (“She has the style and smile of an astronaut’s wife,” notes Levy.)

More disturbingly, Levy observes the similarity of The Newtina to that amped-up psychopathic android  Michelle Bachmann:

She is slender, with … bright-blue eyes that are always wide open.

We also learn -- Too Much Information ! -- that, while Romney married his high-school sweetheart, The Gingrich married his high-school ... geometry teacher.  Ohhh-kayyy .....  Not that there's anything wr--    ((vomits)).

Reluctantly, we must enter the gutter -- for it is the gutter where Gingrich lives -- and learn (to our sorrow) that at the time that Gingrinch was “leading the charge against Bill Clinton  for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky” (and dalliance is not a euphemism here, for they never Went All The Way:  something decent in Clinton, that does not exist in Gingrich, held him back. -- Cf. the really touching scene with Kevin Spacey and Scarlett Johansson in “American Beauty”), the object of his lust

Callista was a congressional staffer  twenty-three years Gingerich’s junior,  the same age as his daughter Jackie.

There is more -- but enough, but enough.  Let her epitaph be simply this, quoted from the president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America:

~ The third wife doesn’t get to be the First Lady. ~

Amen.

~     ~     ~

[Update 29 January 2012]  Monsieur le comte de Gingrich dismisses all sniping at how he garnered his millions (not by any actual useful labor, as it happens, but by la plus vielle profession du monde).  Hear him lecture here, in French (I assume it is he -- sounds like him, anyway):

L’argent n’a pas d’odeur.

(And yet, if that be true, what is that stench of sulphur ?)

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

~     ~     ~

[Update 5 February 2012]  The Queen of Snark at the NYTimes  has a go at Callista.

Sample:

When Barack is cocky and looks at Michelle, he might see her thinking: “You’re no messiah. Pick up your socks.” But when Newt is cocky and looks at Callista, he sees her thinking: “You are the messiah. We’ll have your socks bronzed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/dowd-the-great-mans-wife.html?_r=1&ref=global

[Update 5 April 2012] You ... can ... not  make this stuff up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gingrich-health-care-think-tank-files-for-bankruptcy-protection/2012/04/05/gIQAvgy2xS_story.html?hpid=z2

Sharia Judges Stalk the Land !!

The current issue of The New Yorker  has an incisive, insightful portrait of Newt Gingrich and his rather dizzy supporters,  by an author new to me, Kelefa Sanneh, written with dry wit (which is all the New Yorker editors allow their non-fiction staff -- for keel-over-funny you need to visit this blog).  It recounts a recent stump speech by that irrepressible political chameleon:

He earned one of the night’s warmest responses by proposing that drug tests be mandatory for anyone receiving federal assistance -- in essence, a small-government rationale for state surveillance.

Whether The Gingrich meant this as a jest (it is indeed a merry one) or a serious proposal, is unclear (he is probably vague on the distinction himself), but it is not as outlandish as you might think:  Already smoking is banned in several federally-subsidized housing-projects.

But Der Newt went on to put forward a much more disturbing assertion:

The audience applauded again  when he answered a question about the creeping influence of Islam  by promising to keep sharia law out of American courtrooms, possibly by “rebalancing the judicial branch”, which might involve impeaching recalcitrant judges  or abolishing their courts.

We were skeptical that the problem could already be actually that bad, so we sent the assertion to our crack team of Fact-Checkers  (they work out of the gleaming forty-storey headquarters building of Dr J World-Wide Enterprise, in Geneva) -- and whaddaya know, sure enough, Gingrich was spot on target.   Here are some recent, shocking rulings:

=>  In Georgia, a judge, ironically named Learned Hand, having convicted a youthful defendant of shoplifting a Snickers bar from the local Piggly-Wiggly, sentenced the miscreant to having the right hand amputated at the wrist.  (The case is on appeal.)

 

=> In Amarillo, Texas, a former executive and elected official named Richard Cheney  was convicted of serial lying to the American people, and sentenced to one hundred lashes.

But what probably tipped the applecart for Newt  was this case:

=> In Lost Gulch, Idaho, one Newton Leroy Gingrich was tried in absentia for serial adultery coupled with extreme hypocrisy, and, in accordance with the law of Allah (whose name be exalted) sentenced to death by lapidation.

--

[Update 19 February 2012]

A similar faux flare-up, this time in France:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/02/19/01016-20120219ARTFIG00035-viande-halal-les-industriels-rejettent-la-charge-de-le-pen.php

You can watch an American-style televised shout-fest  here:
http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/02/18/selon-le-pen-toute-la-viande-distribuee-en-ile-de-france-est-halal_1645353_1471069.html#ens_id=1556164

Mme. Le Pen is a high-decibel lady, but with more mental fibre than her nearest U.S. equivalents  Palin or Bachmann.

“An Invented People”

Newt Gingrich (whom we would fain ignore; but like a pesky mosquito, he simply will not go away) has pulled his thumb out of his mouth  long enough to opine, that the Palestinians are an “invented” people.

As you all know, we never, ahem, discuss politics on this site, but only logic.   So without attempting to weigh the relative inventedness of such other stateless nations as the Armenians, Berbers, or Kurds  (the idea being, after all, a rather novel addition to the political-economical stock), we can only observe that, by that yardstick, the American people must be invention-squared -- a granfalloon, in Vonnegut’s useful terminology -- since we are a mishmash of all the apatrides from every corner and gutter of the globe.  In fact -- being President of such a patchwork rabble as we are   is beneath the dignity of so great a thinker as Professor Gingrich;  he should therefore withdraw from the race.

Q.E.D.

Why are these Dwarves so Stunted?

Watching the Max-und-Moritz-style shenanigans of the Republican Presidential hopefuls or rather hopelesses, after the pained laughter has died down, you are left with this thought:  How did things ever get this bad?  Barry Goldwater by comparison was the bronze statue of a statesman. 

Two theories present themselves.

(Hypothesis 1)  Contrary to what you constantly read, it may be that the smart money long ago figured the incumbent for a shoe-in.   Those who, for form’s sake, toss their bonnets into the ring, are sacrificial lambs or rather goats or rather lobsters -- sacrificial lobsters.  Accordingly, the exercise attracts only those with no real political future and who don’t mind being losers, since in the meantime they get face-time, campaign perks, and (probably the Secret Sauce for this whole affair) book deals.

(Hypothesis 2)  Much more disturbingly, it is possible that the Republican Party has itself become so corrupted, so degraded, that this is actually the best it can do.  See what it has fielded:  a parasitical speculator, a hypocritical adulterer, a clueless pizza-delivery man, a swollen phallus, a hysteric … and those are just the front-runners.  Beholding the Seven Dwarves puts you in mind of the Seven Deadly Sins:  it is as though each candidate has been selected (perhaps in the interests of Diversity) to illustrate a separate and distinct vice or disease:   Avaritia (Romney), Iracundia (Perry), Gula (Cain -- granted, he’s more a gluttony-enabler than a glutton himself, just workin’ the metaphor here) , Luxuria ('lechery' -- His Newtitude), ...

The spectacle has ceased to be amusing. They should all bow out.  Perhaps Pigasus could be lured out of retirement and persuaded to run.

[Udate, 26 Nov 2011] Another entertaining op-ed on the subject, by Alexandra Petri, in the print edition of the Washington Post.  Good luck finding it on their Website, though.