Planet power, plus dinosaurs and dragons: myth and reality of heaven and earth
Given that we've been discussing astronomy / astrology and their relationship to the alphabet so intensely in recent weeks, I'm pleased to announce this important conference that is about to be convened: “The Power of the Planets: The Social History of Astral Sciences Between East and West”, May 20–21, 2024, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali – Università di Bologna (Ravenna, Italy).
I warmly recommend that you take a close look at the header images of two objects in The Cleveland Museum of Art: Mirror with a Coiling Dragon, China, Tang Dynasty 618-907 (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1995.367), Drachma – Sasanian, Iran, reign of Hormizd II, 4th century (https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1966.738).
The quality of the photographs is extraordinarily fine and detailed. Using the zoom and expand functions, you can see things not clearly visible to the naked eye. Especially noteworthy is the jagged dorsal fin / frill / spine that runs along the back of the dragon on the Tang mirror and is a conspicuous counterpart of many species of dinosaurs.
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Problems with Japan's writing system, pt. 873
My, my, my!! Who'da thunk it?
Japanese beef brand faces marketing mess as kanji creates confusion, Japan Today (5/4/24):
The government of Ibaraki Prefecture has hit a marketing snag in the promotion of its local Hitachiwagyu Beef specialty after a survey showed a significant percentage of young Japanese adults cannot read the kanji characters in its name.
Japan boasts numerous wagyu luxury beef variants, most famously the Kobe Beef from Hyogo Prefecture in the country's west. The Hitachiwagyu name refers to Hitachi Province, the pre-1875 name for Ibaraki Prefecture.
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New frontiers in dataset corruption
In a comment on yesterday's "Software testing day" post, ernie in berkeley offered a nice "QA Engineer walks into a bar" joke, and pointed us to its origin in an old xkcd comic "Exploits of a Mom":
…which in turn reminded me of an old problem, discussed in "Excel invents genes", 8/26/2016:
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From Chariot to Carriage
In our studies of the transmission of Indo-European language and culture across the Eurasian continent, one of the most vital research topics is that of horse-drawn wheeled vehicles. During this past semester, I taught one of the most satisfying courses of my entire half-century career, namely, "Horses and humans". Among the many engrossing subjects that we confronted are the nomenclature for wheeled vehicles, how horses were hitched to them, and so forth. Many of these questions are now authoritatively answered in the following paper by three of the world's most distinguished scholars of equine equipage.
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-fourth issue:
"From Chariot to Carriage: Wheeled Vehicles and Developments in Draft and Harnessing in Ancient China," by Joost H. Crouwel, Gail Brownrigg, and Katheryn Linduff.
https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp344_chariot_to_carriage_in_ancient_china.pdf
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Winged lions through time and space
We're talking about the griffin / griffon / gryphon (Ancient Greek: γρύψ, romanized: grýps; Classical Latin: grȳps or grȳpus; Late and Medieval Latin: gryphes, grypho etc.; Old French: griffon), "a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle with its talons on the front legs". (source)
Wolfgang Behr called my attention to an interesting paper by Olga Gorodetskaya (Guō Jìngyún 郭静云) and Lixin Guo 郭立新, who teach at National Chung-cheng University in Chiayi, Taiwan and at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, which hints at early West-East (Mesopotamia-East Asia) contact, an ongoing concern of ours here at Language Log:
Liǎng hé liúyù ānzǔ shényīng zài dìguó shíqí de yǎnbiàn jì yīngshī yìshòu xíngxiàng de xíngchéng
两河流域安祖神鹰在帝国时期的演变暨鹰狮翼兽形象的形成
"The evolution of the Anzu condor in Mesopotamia during the imperial period and the formation of the image of the griffin-winged beast
The paper is available from Academia here. Although the text is in Chinese (11 pages of small print in three columns), it is replete with scores of illustrations (mostly drawings of seals and seal impressions), and has a lengthy bibliography consisting of dozens of publications, mostly in European languages and again mostly about seals and their impressions.
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Mike Johnson blesses MTG
From The Hill on Xitter — Mike Johnson on Marjorie Taylor Greene:
Q: “Marjorie Taylor Greene. No fan of yours.”
Mike Johnson: “Bless her heart.”
Q: “Is she a serious lawmaker?”
Mike Johnson: “I don't think she's proving to be. No. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about her.” pic.twitter.com/YDcFFVhMJm
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) May 1, 2024
Host: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Johnson: Mmhmm.
Host: No fan of yours.
Johnson: Bless her heart. Bless her heart.
Host: Is she a serious lawmaker?
Johnson: I don't think she's proving to be. No. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about her. I’ve gotta do my job.
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Data Science graphic of the month
stephsmithio, "Swear words in Taylor Swift albums [OC]", r/dataisbeautiful:
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An eccentric translation of the bible
[This is a guest post by IA]
Speaking of religion and language, among the various 'sacred name Bibles' the most interesting I've seen is called the Literal English Version. (Though there is certainly nothing 'literal' about it in the sense of Young's Literal Translation.) It's online here.
Here are some quotes from it.
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