Society – Page 8 – Letter Never Sent

General / Personal / Society — Comments Off
01
Dec 05

Wacky Wednesday

Kyle and I met up at Highland Lanes last night to bowl a few frames. Every Wednesday, Highland Lanes here in Austin has unlimited bowling (including shoe rental) for $5 a person. Incidentally, have you ever looked at the word “Wednesday” and thought that n shouldn’t be there? Why is it there? Turns out that Wednesday is named after the Norse god, Odin otherwise known as Woden or Wotan.

Unlike many of the other days of the week, this day did not correspond roughly with the Roman designation for the day. (The Roman’s named Wednesday for the messenger God – Mercury – In Romanian, the day is still known as miercuri). The early Scandanavians and Germans believed that Odin was the chief God of Asgard and as such deserved to have a day of the week named for him. The Anglo-Saxons used the word, Wodnesdaeg.

General / History / Society — 2 Comments
22
Nov 05

Who’s your daddy?

Do you know where your surname comes from? Usually surnames are derived in a few standard ways, and up until a couple hundred years ago they were not fixed as they are today in our modern era of bureaucratic record-keeping.

Occupation surnames Before we had surnames, you might have been known by what you did in the community, like “Robert Stockbroker”.

Baker – the guy who makes the bread
Cooper – the barrel maker
Wright – one who makes something
Kellogg – literally, the guy who kills the hogs
Smith – the blacksmith, foreign equivalents for the same name: Schmidt (German, Danish), Ferraro (Italian)

Patronymics, using your father’s name as your surname This was popular in western europe until surnames became fixed, which is why it is popular today in western culture.

England: father’s name + son. Jackson, Jefferson, for example.
Scotland: Mac + father’s name. MacDonald, McCarthy, for example.
Spain: father’s name + ez. Hernandez, Rodriguez, for example.
French: illegitimate children were often given the surname form Fitz + father’s name. Fitzgerald, or Fitzpatrick, for example.

Toponymics, or place names Most people have surnames based on where their ancestors came from. This is actually the type of surname I have since at least one of my ancestors probably came from a place named Sybaris (destroyed by their neighbors) hence my surname, Sivori, or “one from Sybaris”. Other examples include:

Woods – from the woods
Heath – someone who lives out on the moores.
Thorpe – the guy from town

Descriptive surnames Let’s say you have red hair. In the old days, you may have had the last name of Reid, Ross, Rossi, Roth, Rousseau, Russell, etc. all of which describe you as being red or having red hair. Other examples include:

Grant – a tall man
Armstrong – a guy with strong arms
Brown – a guy with brown hair

Personal / Society — 1 Comment
22
Nov 05

Truckers Sailing the Asphalt Sea

I’m fascinated by the life of the truck driver. As an occupation, it is the modern equivalent of what being a sailor used to be three hundred years ago. Long stretches of time away from home and hearth, a crusty disresgard for landlubbers, and a life spent in unfamiliar places in the society of other rootless nomads. Instead of islands and ports, truckers have truckstops and loading docks. Like ships, their trucks are made for long distance and for living. At a modern truckstop, you will find all the modern necessities of life. When I stopped into the “Flying J” truckstop in Waco, I was amazed at how specialized the facilities were. There are private rentable shower rooms, sit-down telephone booths for private conversation, WiFi internet access, laundry facilities, DVD rental, and even a television lounge where you can sit and unwind (see photo to the right). You could live your life entirely on the road, especially these days with the Internet and cell phones. The only challenges as I see it, intense boredom and the need to sit for long periods of time.

Society — 2 Comments
22
Nov 05

Buy Nothing Day is Stupid

The idea behind “Buy Nothing Day“:

For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate — in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that’s become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course.

Yeah, man. Right on.

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Personal / Science / Society — 1 Comment
16
Nov 05

Breathe deep, me hearties!

Today be the first cold day of the year! I’ve been experimenting with “indoor roughing it”, which has led me to forgo indoor climate control in favor of clothing control. I woke up very cold this morning, and had to get up every few minutes to readjust my blankets. Brrrrrr.

Something about cold weather brings out my inner caveman. My mind retreats inward, the senses sharpen, my skin dries and thickens becoming less sensitive, and I get a strong impulse to stop shaving. There has to be DNA memory. I am feeling wild. It reminds me of that scene in “American Werewolf in London” where he has the dream in the forest after being bitten by the werewolf. In the dream, he’s naked and hunting down a deer with his bare hands.

When I was last in Oklahoma, Jody, her mom, and I went out to feed the “calves” (in this case, yearling bullocks who have yet to be castrated). At this age, they’ve bulked up around the neck and shoulders, on their way to becoming true bulls. This particular morning was cool and the young bulls were feeling their oats, butting each other with their hornless heads trying to dig in and push each other back.

I screwed up and let an unbred heifer into the same pen as the young bulls, and the reaction was immediate. Within a few seconds she had a train of bulls following after her their heads raised, eyes rolled back, and upper lip lifted to catch the seductive scent trailing behind her.

It’s a mirror of our own world. The center of it all is the same: survival and perpetuation of the species. Everything else we have serves to take up all the time we used to spend just surviving and procreating.

Literature / Religion/philosophy — Comments Off
15
Nov 05

On the importance of language

Notice how the following statements differ in meaning. This has bothered me.

Know thyself. Okay, the classic admonition to know thyself.
Know, thyself. A call of responsibility for your own understanding.
Know thy self. Consider the nature of self. Awareness of ego is fundamental to understanding.

Politics — 1 Comment
31
Oct 05

SCOTUS: Now With More Italian Seasoning!

The news was all over this morning about Bush’s new pick for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. Like everyone else, I don’t know anything about him aside from his support for spousal notification with regards to abortion, which is likely to create a lot of controversy. Ideological considerations aside, it is interesting to me that there would be two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court if he is confirmed. We are legion.

On the McLaughlin Group on Sunday, John McLaughlin put forth the compelling theory that Bush withdrew Miers’ nomination to swap in a more ideological Conservative so that he would have the motivated support of his base in the event the Plame-gate damage gets worse.

Business / Politics / Religion/philosophy — Comments Off
18
Oct 05

Plunge Protection Team

Jorn Barger linked to a provocative article today on the Plunge Protection Team, a secretive group charged with manipulating the stock markets in the event of a potentially market destabilizing crisis.

The markets seemed on the edge of a meltdown, but the abyss failed to open up. This lack of a meltdown has generally been attributed to the Federal Reserve Board’s (FRB) steady hand and promises of liquidity. But sophisticated research on the events of those two days indicates that a sudden and unprecedented rise in the Major Market Index (MMI) sparked a recovery across the board. There is good reason to suspect that this recovery was the result of concentrated buying by a few firms.

Religion/philosophy — 3 Comments
12
Oct 05

The search for God is the search for Father

These are just loosely connected thoughts, so please view them as such. In monotheistic belief systems, God is a remote, inscrutable being most often portrayed as male. In the mythology of the ancient Greeks the creator gods were the sky (male) and the earth (female). This has some logic. The sky father is remote and the earth mother is always near. The earth supports and nourishes us. We spring from the female body and it nourishes us as infants. On the other hand, when you are a child, where is your father? Above you and away from you, like the sky looking down on you. Before science, the natural world was alive with being and soul. It is logical that early man extended their relationships to interpret the systems of nature.

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