Tag: learning

Did you ever check out what measures are used to define how much species are threatened?  Since I have been using the terms repeatedly in my photo essays, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to summarize them.

Café Discovery has been, after all, mostly about words and phrases and meaning.  Or at least, it has tried to be.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature maintains a Red List. of threatened species.  The categorization they used ranks species as, from worst on down, extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, conservation dependent, near threatened, or least concern.  Of course, there are also situations in which there is not enough data and also cases where species have just not been evaluated.

Conservation dependent (CD) is a category no longer used except for species who were previously in that category and have yet to be re-evaluated.  A taxon was considered CD if it was “dependent on conservation efforts to prevent the taxon becoming threatened with extinction.” (Wikipedia entry)  So one will still encounter the label, as with giraffes, for instance.

Onward:

I was busy cropping and resizing pictures for the next photo extravaganza.  I inserted a little levity into the piece by labeling a cheetah as “Predator” and some antelope-like creatures as “Assorted Food” (see inside).  In the way of these things that thinking started gnawing at me a bit at a time throughout the day.  Was this fair to the cheetah?  Was it fair to the various springbok and gerenuk, blackbuck and wildebeest, and their kin?

Maybe this was a time to learn something.  And maybe it was time to search for some sort of mythical center.

Needing something to talk about for this edition of Café Discovery, I turned to the Online Etymological Dictionary, from which I quote liberally, while adding my own comments.  The etymologies given are a mixture of that, so don’t hold them responsible for my thoughts. 🙂

What I discovered is that we had it backwards…

While I was writing last Friday’s piece, I decided to do a bit of follow up today.  I’m always interested in words and thought I would drag some along behind me.

Please note: These words are about the subject of that other essay, Despondency. They have nothing to do with my present state of mind. Suggestions that I need anti-depressants just might be inconsistent with what that essay said and with my current state of mind, although people commenting in my essays without seeming to have actually read them is a bit depressing in and of itself.

The closest word at the Online Etymological Dictionary (quoted liberally here) to despondency is despondence, a word dating from 1676.  It derives from the Latin despondere:

“to give up, lose, lose heart, resign” (especially in the phrase animam despondere, literally “to give up one’s soul”), from the sense of a promise to give something away, from de- “away” + spondere “to promise” (see spondee [we shall return to this]).  A step above despair.

So, okay.  How about despair?

The Storyteller took a deep breath and cast back for another memory, another story to tell.  The Listener was patient, but did require the occasional feeding.  The Storyteller chuckled at the observation.  The Engineer glanced backward and nodded.  And the Train switched to another happentrack.  

The Storyteller began to sing.  The Listener leaned forward.  The passenger turned over, but otherwise remained sleeping.

Pine was at it again, hectoring all of creation.  Canyon rolled its eyes as Sun passed overhead.  Canyon preferred peace.

The other day I ventured into an essay.  God forbid that I read an essay here.

Dude, I read almost all of the essays here.  Telling me I should just not read them I think misses the point of the whole exercise.

And I observed something written by someone trying to write about identity politics, someone with whom I have had extreme disagreements about the exact same subject in the past.  I might have actually read the whole thing through at once, but I got trapped pretty close to the beginning because, like he has a habit of doing, the author assumed a power-over position.  So I stopped before finishing to address it.  

He didn’t intend to do so.  At least I’ll give him that benefit of the doubt.  The power-over position is so natural to some folks that they assume it without a thought most of the time.  In what I thought was a crude attempt at humor, he decided that the alternative to use to the set of men and women, out of all the words available to him, was “hermaphrodites.”

I made a cultural faux pas at that point.  I assumed a position of equality in order to point out that he was invoking his power and presumed to try to educate him about his choice of words.  He spent the rest of our discussion trying to deny me that position of equality, to reassert his manhood and restore order in the universe.

Mind you, this is only my view, from the position as a member of a traditionally powerless group.

Every year is the same.  Father’s Day shows up, an uninvited guest which has already used up the first three days of its visit (as per the old saying) and is beginning to resemble the dead fish way too much.

father

O.E. fæder, from P.Gmc. *fader (cf. O.N. faðir, Ger. vater), from PIE *p@ter (cf. Sanskit pitar−, Gk. pater, L. pater, O.Pers. pita, O.Ir. athir “father”), presumably from baby-speak sound like pa. The classic example of Grimm’s Law, where PIE “p−” becomes Gmc. “f−.”  Spelling with −th− (16c.) reflects widespread phonetic shift in M.E. that turned −der to −ther in many words; spelling caught up to pronunciation in 1500s (cf. burden, murder).  Fatherland (1623) is a loan-translation of Ger. Vaterland, itself a loan-translation of L. patria (terra), lit. “father’s land.”  Father’s Day dates back to 1910 in Spokane, Wash., but was not widespread until 1943, in imitation of Mother’s Day.

—Online Etymology Dictionary

I mostly want to go hide somewhere, so I’ll mostly be watching men play golf.  Go figure.  It’s most assuredly not a good way to avoid Father’s Day.

Last year I wrote the following, which flashes back to an even earlier post in another SpaceTime.  It made the Rec List at the Orange.  Think of it as a way for me not to have to write something new.

Last month, to far (FAR) less attention than it merited, the House of Representatives (facing an Administration veto threat) passed the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act with $20 billion for greening public schools across the nation.

Taking aggressive action to green schools is about one of the smartest steps the nation can take, action that should go beyond bipartisanship to true unity of action as it is a win-win-win-win strategy along so many paths:

And, well, other benefits. In the face of these benefits, “The White House threatened a veto, saying it was wrong for the federal government to launch a costly new school-building program.”

Nine Comments

Yesterday was interesting.  There were so many comments I made which I could have expanded upon…whole chapters in their own right.  What generally happens at a time like that is that nothing happens.  The comments just drift away into nothingness.

So I grabbed an assortment and decided to comment on the comments.  And stuff happens.  If it weren’t for the fact that my computer is currently crashing, I might have selected an assortment of thoughts from those responses and turned them into a poem.  Sometimes, however, stuff doesn’t happen.

For those looking for an etymological moment, I give you

woman

From late O.E. wimman (pl. wimmen), lit. “woman-man,” alteration of wifman (pl. wifmen), a compound of wif “woman” (see wife) + man “human being” (in O.E. used in ref. to both sexes; see man).

You see, the thing is that originally man (or homo in Latin) meant human being.  Wer (or Vir in Latin) meant male man.  Wif  meant female man.  They were less knowledgeable about other possibilities at that time than we should be today…one would think.

In the late 1200s (after the signing of the Magna Carta, one might notice) wer stopped being and man became the word used to refer to a male human.  Those things we said before about human beings?  They now mean males only.

Cf. Du. vrouwmens “wife,” lit. “woman-man.” The formation is peculiar to Eng. and Du. Replaced older O.E. wif, quean as the word for “female human being.” The pronunciation of the singular altered in M.E. by the rounding influence of −w−; the plural retains the original vowel.  Women’s liberation is attested from 1966; women’s rights is from 1840, with an isolated example in 1632.

I have a fascination with words and how they came to mean what they do and take on the connotations that they have.  

Of Queers and Fags, Hussies and Catamites

queer – 1508, strange, peculiar, eccentric, from Scottish, perhaps from Low Ger. (Brunswick dialect) queer (oblique, off-center),  related to Ger. quer  (oblique, perverse, odd), from O.H.G. twerh (oblique), from PIE base twerk (to turn, twist, wind), related to thwart. The verb “to spoil, ruin” is first recorded 1812.   The sense of “homosexual” was first recorded in 1922; the noun in this sense is 1935, from the adjective.

I admit to being queer.  But I am not spoiled or ruined.

The word homosexual dates from 1892, in C.G. Chaddock’s translation of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, from homo-, a combination form from the Greek homos (same) and the Latin-based sexual.

‘Homosexual’ is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it.

— H. Havelock Ellis, Studies in Psychology, 1897

Homosexual was first used as a noun in 1907 in French, in English in 1912.  Interesting comment in the etymological dictionary:  In technical use, either male or female; but in non-technical use almost always male. The slang shortened form homo first appeared in 1929. The alternative homophile was coined in reference to the homosexual regarded as a person of a particular social group, rather than a sexual abnormality, in 1960, but it didn’t catch on.  Homophobia is from 1969.

Well, I’m sure homophobia is from way before that, but the word is from 1969.

Treatise (or Treacle) on Insanity

I am intensely interested in how words have come to mean what they do.  Since words are all I have to argue for my inclusion into human society, how could I not need to be interested in those long forgotten thought processes.

With help from the Online Etymological Dictionary and its many contributors, I do the research so you don’t have to.

Insanity – 1432, (referring to health of body, or rather lack thereof), deriving from Latin sanus (health)

Interesting question:

Why insane?  Why not unsane?  Nonsane?  Presane or postsane?  Protosane?

insane – 1560, mad, outrageous, excessive, extravagant

sanity – 1602

sane – 1721 (back created from sanity, which was back-created from insanity.)

When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

But when you wish upon a gum wrapper, it makes a whole lot of difference.  If you are not rich, you are going to be labeled something.  Even if you are rich, you may do.  See below.

[Note:  I wrote this review many moons ago.  The book is mostly very hard to find now…unless you want a pdf version.  When I was looking or something to publish for this Mother’s Day, I rejected my own letter to my mother (Dear Mom), also written many years ago, and selected this.

The sheer number of issues the concept of gender variance raises is sometimes overwhelming.  Just exactly what does it mean to be differently-gendered?  How did we get to be this way?  How are we supposed to live our lives?  How do we build respect for ourselves in this culture?  How do we ask to be treated as any human being would/should be treated, while simultaneously asking that our difference be acknowledged in the world community?  How do we establish that we are not crazy and simultaneously acquire the medical treatment we desire?

One question which has been addressed all too little is, “How should we be raised?”  Given the number of transgendered people who have spoken in less than glowing terms about their treatment as children, the lack of positive writings in this regard is disheartening.  Are we not shirking our duty to future generations of gender-variant people by failing to address this issue?

We are starting work on next year’s programming for Women’s Studies already.  We’ve decided to try to work on relationship violence as an issue.

We recognize the problems this presents us.  As Reverend Todd put it:

…films are a good idea…but only after men are on board.  If films are shown that show male abusers/scumbags/therapy-recipients (heaven forfend anyone should find himself in therapy!*) before our men are on board, the message will likely bounce off the surface without getting through.  I believe what’s needed first are programs aimed at manliness: what does it mean to be a real man, gentlemanliness, male spirituality, the role of men in a rapidly changing society (read: the feminization of society), male sexuality, etc. In that context, issues of how men sometimes perceive women should also be addressed and fleshed out, issues like: “She was asking for it,” “Women lie,” “Women try to ‘trap’ men,” sporadic true stories that get stretched and distorted and used to define all women.  Until this territory is covered, anything that could be seen as taking “bad” men and rubbing their noses in the mess they’ve made will probably be met with emotions ranging from guardedness to hostility.

*Just thinking to myself: Do we really want to show only the “bad guys” getting some emotional therapy?