Brendan O'Leary's A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I starts with a quotation from Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus: Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. I have labored carefully, not to ridicule, or detest, but to understand. That's Brendan's translation, which captures the relevant essence, although it leaves out the second […]
A Korean student was just in my office and saw this book on my table: mal-ui segyesa 말의 세계사. She said, "Oh, a world history of words!" But I knew that couldn't be right because the book is a world history of horses. It's actually a Korean translation of this book by Pita Kelekna: The […]
For nearly two years, we've been following the awesome Chinese toilet revolution. See especially the last comment to this post: "Toilet Revolution!!" (11/26/17) But see also the follow-up posts listed in the "Selected readings" below. In its frenzied race to catch up with the past of privies, it would appear that China has decided to […]
Representative Mo Brooks on Fox News, commenting on the proposed impeachment-inquiry resolution: Your browser does not support the audio element. I've yet to see the resolution, ((from)) I understand we probably won't see it until uh later this week, but if substantively it opens the doors so that the American people can see the travesty […]
Zabrina Lo has a new article in Zolima CityMag titled "Pop Cantonese: 裝假狗 – Installing a Fake Dog" (10/24/19). It begins thus: In film sets in Hong Kong, one often hears the phrase zong1 gaa2 gau2 (裝假狗) – literally “installing a fake dog.” It isn’t too implausible to associate the first two characters with installing props or […]
One of India's major tongues, Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by 83.1 million people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. For those who know Persian, it will sound uncannily familiar. According to Pushkar Sohoni, The Marathi language is heavily infused with Persian, which was widespread in administrative and military usage all over the […]
A curious phenomenon of Old European hydronymy that I've noticed for a long time is that many of the most important rivers in Central and Eastern Europe — Danube, Don, Donets, Dnieper, Dniester, and others — all have names that derive from the ancient Iranian (Scythian) word for "river" (cf. don, "river, water" in modern […]
The compound butt-dial, used as a verb meaning to call someone accidentally on a cell phone, or as a noun referring to such a call, is now commonplace enough to be used in the media without any scare quotes: "The butt-dial heard round the world"; "Giuliani butt dial story inspires ridicule, envy on social media" […]
And another thing. pic.twitter.com/r4NUrpmNqQ — jamie (@gnuman1979) October 23, 2019
Our current president learned the art of the "promo" during his days in professional wrestling. For those who many be unfamiliar with that culture, I recommend the Wikipedia Glossary of Professional Wrestling terms — or, as a place to start, the terminology illustrated in this strip from Pixie Trix Comix: From the Wikipedia Glossary: work […]
Freudian typo? ICYMI: Garrett Haake says Democrats called Bill Taylor’s testimony today “disturbing” and the most “complete testimony they had heard.” #MTPDaily@GarrettHaake: “No one is questioning the voracity of anything he said in that room, at least not that I have heard.” pic.twitter.com/k1ERO39LWQ — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 23, 2019