Dog Days in School Years

I was telling you (whoever you are) yesterday about my journal book, the one given me by my student. There's a dog pictured on the front cover - and the same dog on the back cover! This dog looks a bit like a beagle, but more scholarly.  He's settled himself into a chair and has both front paws on the desk before him. His head is clad with one of those graduation caps (a mortarboard, I think it's called), and on the desk is his diploma. But what would a dog study? Ah. Obedience. At obedience school. Of course.

Less was Less, So Aim for More

I have a journal given to me by a student, and I've written in it every day since November 21, 2015. But I've actually been keeping a journal since 1985. Until the advent of the internet, I wrote long entries in my journal, writing experimentally. I imposed rules on my style, such as forbidding myself any use of the word "be" unless it were being used in an "-ing" form. That forced me to think harder in expressing myself. But my journal entries became perfunctory and have been for the past decade or longer. I will continue writing shorter entries, but I'll work harder at offering more substantive entries.

It's about "dingnity"

The bill finally comes due. Google tells me I'm almost out of storage:

You're almost out of storage.

I have a free account of 15 GB. What's a GB? An economic unit based on Great Britain's economic power? Anyway, my GB space is 93 percent full, but Google tells me:

To continue backing up your photos and videos in original quality, buy more storage.

Nah, I think I'll just stop posting photos. So no photo of this vacation spot here in Korea:

Sono Felice Village
To Satisfy Your Dingnity.
The Honorable Relax In Sono!

The place looks like Disney . . .

Learning to Walk

My Aunt Pauline shows how hard raising a new baby doll can be in these days of religious pluralism:

I was shocked and had to gasp:

"Gasp!"

I also had to explain my gasp:

"That doll is wearing a hijab! This is exactly how Islamization begins."

But warnings trickle through our heads like water through a sieve . . .

Escape from . . .

The Korean poet Kim Seung-hee says that "Korea is a Karaoke Room" from which one must try to escape. Professor Kim Seong-kon translates an attempted escape:

Alone, you escape the karaoke room
The glittering red neon lights
Have engulfed the night and stars
Wiping tears, you come to realize
That karaoke rooms are ubiquitous
Nothing exists beyond the karaoke room
And Korea is a karaoke room.

There is no escape. Like in "The Cube." I mean a drama production from the sixties and seventies.

For more of the professor's column, see this TKH link.

Richard Kostelanetz on American Avant-Gardes

Avant Gardes

Carter Kaplan calls our attention to the recent publication of A Dictionary of the American Avant-Gardes, by Richard Kostelanetz.

Kostelanetz, you may recall, is the man who nominated my garbled proverbs for a Pushcart Prize, which I did not win because the judges were biased toward works of higher quality.

Dammit! Aren't there any judges who have standards low enough to vote for me?

Anyway, follow the various links, and you'll eventually end up somewhere . . .

Big Words: Why?

ou-  and  eu-

"LIGATURED

ORTHOGRAPHICALLY"

"Bound Together in Spelling"

The other day, I mentioned that Coptic prepositions are proclitic to the word they govern, but they will be spelled separate in Lambdin's book.

An exception is the preposition epsilon (e (to, for)), which will be "ligatured orthographically" to the following omicron (o) of omicron upsilon (ou), such that ou- becomes epsilon upsilon eu-.

I think.

And "ligatured orthographically." Big words. Really fascinating, eh?

Thomas Harris

Thomas Harris
(Believe it or not!)

According to Wikipedia, Thomas Harris - creator of the brilliant serial killer Hannibal Lecter - attended Baylor University, where he studied English literature, graduating with an M.A. in 1964, about a decade before I arrived on the scene there, where I also studied literature.

There's hope for me yet!

(No, not as another Lecter.)

Coptic Stuff

COPTIC

PREPOSITIONS!

Lambdin tells us that Coptic prepositions are proclitic, namely, unstressed and bound to the word that they govern. But how does he know this? In the ancient Coptic writings, words are not separated by spaces. How, then, does he know that Coptic prepositions are bound to the word that they govern?

Really how does he know this? Every Coptic word is bound to every other Coptic word sometime or other. How does anyone know when a word has a special bond?

And unstressed? Ha! Just look at the stress we're under right now . . .

Knowledge of Good and Evil in China-Supported Newspaper

ChinaWatch

Whoever dreamed up this substitute for the sort of paper normally found in an American bathroom certainly lacked a subtle sense of the nuances intrinsic to native-speaker fluency in English.

The large-lettered wording of the title,  China Watch, turns one's mind to the warning implicit in the word "Watch," as in Human Rights Watch. Meaning: Watch them or they'll take away your human rights. In short, a warning to keep a close eye on a tricky, untrustworthy China. But why would China want to warn us about China?

And just above the title, we see the ominous words, "All You Need To Know." In other words, don't try to find out more than this. We know best.

Why do I have this paper? It comes about once a month as a paid-for advertisement supplement inserted into my New York Times.

That's all you need to know!

So Much for Brotherhood in Islamism . . .

'Dutch'

News Brief: MEMRI TV Clip No. 7168 tells us:

"Former Dutch ISIS Fighter Regrets Having Joined ISIS, Says Syrians, Immigrants Were Treated Poorly Because Leadership Became Dominated By Iraqis"

Just as nationalism undermines communism, so does tribalism undermine Islamism.

I'm No Linguist, But . . .

Coptic Again!

. . . I've decided to refresh my Coptic, after having been away from it for about ten years, maybe even fifteen?

I used to know Coptic pretty well, well enough, anyway, to correct Alexander Boehlig.

The Most Beautiful Redheads in the World

Read-Headed Woodpecker

Birds have the most beautiful red heads in the world . . .

Fine-Tuning Tech

Fine-Tuning Tech

In the beginning . . .

Once Upon a Time . . .

e=mc^?

There was a problem . . .

But the problem was solved: e=mc^2

And they all lived happily ever after . . .

Joyfully Wrecking a Poem! Watch!

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Watch me wreck this poem, "The Windhover," in mere seconds:

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
"Hi there!" . . .

Poem wrecked. So much for Gerard Manley Hopkins and his sprung rhythm . . .

Science Hints: Eggs

A Braking Egg

Eggs brake instantly against a hard surface.

Radicalized at the Root of Islam?

Hamed Abdel-Samad

I've often stated that Islamism (e.g., the ideology of ISIS) is not Islamic extremism, but is, rather, radicalization at the root of Islam. I now see that the "Egyptian-German scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad [has] said that Islamic extremism and terrorism stem from the 'core of Islam' – from its texts, its history of conquests, its founder, and its ideology." In short, he says what I've been saying.

This is reported in Memri Special Dispatch No. 8056 (May 12, 2019), which can be seen online via this link.

E-ville?

God and Moral Evil

Kevin Kim is talking about evil, both moral and natural, and I have obliquely suggested that the existence of God raises the possibility that natural evil might be God's moral evil.

This may sound shocking, but it's implicit in theodicies and the like.

Fraudian Analysis Again!

Freudianism w/o Freud

I posted something transactionally funny last night and woke up to this:

* * * Empty Space * * *

I had probably written something like:

"Freudianism without Freud is almost like Ianism without Joy."

And then I probably added something hilarious like this:

Parent (Superego) - Adult (Ego) - Child (Id)

And was that.

Fraudian Analysis?

Freudianism
without a
Single Freud

Remember Transactional Analysis?

Remember "I'm Ok, You're Ok?"

Remember Parent - Adult - Child?

Not Freudian Analysis, but Fraudian Analysis?

Memri Report: Syrian Moonshine

Memri Report

Moon

I didn't even know that the Israelis had a moon mission until some part of the spacecraft's flight went awry, giving rise to varied remarks in the Arab world, Syria's reaction being the most bizarre :

There were also bizarre reactions, like that of former Syrian MP Ahmad Shalash, who hinted that Syrian intelligence had caused the spacecraft to crash, apparently in retaliation for the airstrikes in Syria that are attributed to Israel. He wrote on his Facebook page: "An Israeli spacecraft has crashed on the moon. We have said previously that the operations of the Syrian intelligence [apparatuses] would surprise everyone and that the arena of conflict is unlimited. I do not want to say anything more explicit."

Yeah, I can understand that one wouldn't let too much of that intelligence get out.

Sounds Like Psych

Freud or Freud?

Someone took Freud's Es, Ueberich, and Ich and rendered these words in 'English' as the more scientificky-sounding terms Id, Superego, and Ego, but how much better wouldn't It, Overi, and I have sounded . . .

Analysis without Freud

Freudnichts

Freud didn't posit the Id, the Superego, and the Ego. He posited the Es, the Ueberich, and the Ich. English should have rendered these as the It, the Overi, and the I.

I may have said this before. Or maybe Overi said it. It didn't say it.

The Id is a Short Idiot!

 Big Short? Nah, it ain't that short!

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "Oh, no, not you again. Well, just for the record, everything I do, I do it as its own reward for me."

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Eagle

Not Our Ego

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "Oh, do shut up!"

Superego: "You never tell Ego to shut up."

Id: "That's 'cause Ego has at least thought a lot and sometimes says something interesting, whereas you're just a yes-man's ego-echo."

Superego: "Yeah. Right."

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Virtue is What?!

Virtue Signaling?

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: I take great pleasure in looking back on the origin of our word "virtue," namely, directly in its present form, from Middle English, which borrowed from Old French vertu, which came from Latin virtus, "valor, merit, moral perfection," and all these wonderful attributes come down to us from the Latin word vir, which means "man," meaning that true virtue can be only masculine, but such masculinity can be had with ease for men, for men have it with ease, by definition.

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Throw me a Real Lifeline

Not Salman Rushdie!

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "I like my vice a little naughty but nice."

Superego: "You shouldn't plagiarize Salman Rushdie!"

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Perish the Taught!

Psycho-Analysis

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "But vice is also nice, and would suffice."

Superego: "Would you want to perish twice?"

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Tortured Talks

Grave Jones and Earnest Import

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "You said that already."

Superego: "It bears repeating."

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"

Freud's Joyful Science

Freud

Superego: "Virtue is its own reward."

Id: "So's vice. Do it till you're satisfied."

Ego: "Might I address what, in principle, our reality is?"