Month: July 2016

Wogs is the Australian equivalent; and yes, emphatically so, although it’s starting to be dated now, as Greeks and Italians go into third generation. There was overt reclamation in the 90s, though the residue left is more a matter of the more-assimilated using it against the less-assimilated. See Wikipedia on Wog.

JM Cortese speaks for what happened in the US. Her perspective is certainly not mine. And I know the difference between being called a wog by a skip (Anglo-Australian), and being called a wog by a fellow wog.

Like Niko Vasileas said, we don’t have deciphered writings from the Minoans, so we don’t know for certain much of anything. But:

• We know the Greeks were Indo-European, and the Minoans likely were not.
• We know much of Greek mythology has Indo-European content in it.
• We know some things about Minoan religion from their sculptures and frescoes: Minoan religion. And they don’t look Greek.
• We suspect there was at least some Mother Goddess stuff going on in Minoan religion. Or at least a lot of stuff involving boobs and snakes.
• We know there were some faint echoes of something in later Greek mythology, including the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, but also the infancy of Zeus in Crete.

But no, the pre-Greek Cretans would have had their own mythology. The Dorian Cretans would have had Greek mythology, though maybe with some admixture. The people speaking Eteocretan language a thousand years after Minoa may have had Greek mythology, or they may have had syncretism: there is a bilingual Eteocretan–Greek inscription (Dreros 1) in a Delphinium, a temple of Leto, Apollo and Artemis.

As for Greek potamos, I’ve checked in Dictionnaire-Etymologique-Grec : Chantraine (It’s online?! Download while you can!!!)

Its likeliest source is as a noun derived from e-pet-on “to fall” (so, waterfall, torrent); but the meaning means that rivers always fall, which doesn’t sound right. The alternative derivation given, proposed by Wackernagel, is a relation to German Faden “embrace” (which would indeed go back to Proto-Indo-European pot-). More detail in Frisk’s etymological dictionary.

No, I don’t know how “embrace” is more plausible than “waterfall”.

EDIT: Frisk’s dictionary is at the same place. (For now.)

Oh! Faden “embrace” is related to the Greek verb pet-annumi, and its noun petasma, “spread, broadening”. So “something that gets wider”. Ok. And the Old English parallel is flōdes fœðm, “spread of the flood”?

Derivations Frisk rejects: potamos < *topamos, cf. Lithuanian tekù “to run”; and some guy who inevitably said “I dunno, therefore Pelasgian”.

On Sunday, I met another Quoran IRL for the first time.

Was it Dimitra Triantafyllidou?

Noooo… I don’t live in Greece, I just sometimes act like it.

Was it Michael Masiello?

… Nooo, despite Gigi J Wolf’s best efforts, I do not live in the US (let alone the OC), I live in Australia.

Was it Lyonel Perabo?

… Wha? No, PAY ATTENTION. Australia. I live in Australia.

Was it…

NOT AUSTRIA!!!

… Was it Tracey Bryan?

*facedesk* Fictive Quoran Interlocutor, you are getting on my goat. MELBIN, Australia. Mel-boooourne. Melbourne. Not Brisvegas. Melbourne

Was it David Stewart?

… Nah. Not seeing it. But at least you’ve got the right city now.

Was it Miguel Paraz?

Well, he probably works two blocks from me, but I did say to him once that I promised to ignore him. I think I meant it as a joke. Miguel! It was a joke! And my pen was running out of ink! (Sorry to you too, Trace.)

Was it Brian Collins?

You’re getting warmer, Fictive Quoran Interlocutor, but Brian hasn’t moved here yet. Brian! Move over here already!

… So who was it?

I rejoice that you have asked, Fictive Quoran Interlocutor. It was a most felicitous happenstance: I approached this Quoran about his non-work–related content, and it has turned out since that we have day-job business together, which was bringing him into the country next door.

And so it was that I met, direct from the frozen wastes of Nunavut, via the only slightly less frozen wastes of Toronto, the Dispenser of one-line fortune cookie wisdom, the Scourge of the Mountain View Mensa,

Scott Welch:

That figures, you Jimmy Liu-loving reprobate…

What the hell, Fictive Quoran Interlocutor!

… Hang on. Adam DiCaprio, is that you?

I can neither deny nor asseverate that this is how we spent our Sunday lunch:

It was ace fun, Scott. And you’ve got a very slickly engineered system in Edsby! Looking forward to more, and safe flight home!

To Toronno.

There is the general answer, and then there is my answer.

For the general answer, I could not hope to rival the eloquence of Michael Masiello. But as a grotesque injustice to Michael, I think the anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin does rival him.

Mikhail Bakunin, What is authority? (1882)

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

---

That’s what we all should do.

What do I do?

I look for a tone that suggests the person knows what they’re talking about. Depending on the subject matter, it includes preparednesss to concede weaknesses in their argument, extent of supporting detail, professional-sounding phrasing, orderly presentation. Those things aren’t proof, but they are correlated with an argument that I can follow, and verify to myself.

There are plenty of ideological answers that start from different axioms. There’s no real point questioning axioms; they are departure points, not conclusions. One can only ultimately reject axioms by rejecting the whole edifice built on them. As a shortcut, there are perspectives I have rejected—as have we all; so I will be biased towards answers that share my axioms.

But I am prepared to be convinced by answers, phrased in good faith, that have different starting points to those I favour, but still are coherent and persuasive.

I’m less open than I’d like, but not completely closed.

Formal qualifications don’t mean that much to me (and I find Quora’s preoccupation with them amusing). I got a PhD, and I know how the sausage is made. A PhD doesn’t guarantee you know what you’re talking about, though it does mean you have some project management skills. Being exposed to a discipline’s norms and discourse, however, does mean a lot to me. To give an example, I don’t reject Tim O’Neill for being an amateur historian; he’s as thorough and as well-read as any professional. He’s also as unpleasant as any professional, which is why I don’t particularly seek his answers out; but his reasoning, as opposed to his tone, are legit.

To give a second example, Brian Collins is still finishing an MA in linguistics; and from the breadth of what he discusses, and his familiarity with the literature, I’ll take what he has to say as seriously as any linguistics PhD on here. (There aren’t that many.)

Nicomachean Ethics

OP’s excerpt:

“Verbally there is a very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing like pleasure, wealth or honour…”

The original, 1095a:

ὀνόματι μὲν οὖν σχεδὸν ὑπὸ τῶν πλείστων ὁμολογεῖται: τὴν γὰρ εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ οἱ χαρίεντες λέγουσιν, τὸ δ᾽ εὖ ζῆν καὶ τὸ εὖ πράττειν ταὐτὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσι τῷ εὐδαιμονεῖν: περὶ δὲ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας, τί ἐστιν, ἀμφισβητοῦσι καὶ οὐχ ὁμοίως οἱ πολλοὶ τοῖς σοφοῖς ἀποδιδόασιν. οἳ μὲν γὰρ τῶν ἐναργῶν τι καὶ φανερῶν, οἷον ἡδονὴν ἢ πλοῦτον ἢ τιμήν

All three instances of happy in the passage are translated as eudaimonia; the “being happy” word is just the equivalent verb, eudaimonein.

There are a lot of words for happiness, with different etymologies and connotations. The LSJ gloss of eudaimōn (literally, good-daemon) is “blessed with a good genius”. So: your guardian angel is good to you. (The “genius” is the old-fashioned equivalent of the guardian angel.)

Then again, happy in English originally means “lucky” (as in hap-penstance), which is what eutykhēs means. The etymology pushes the word down a certain track; but it it isn’t the full story of what the word means.

To my modern ears, eudaimonia means you’re in a good place, things have worked out well for you. (Etymologically, the daemon has seen to that, though you don’t need a guardian angel to end up in a good place.) And as Aristotle says, that’s not just because you happen to be a stud, loaded, or a celebrity.

EDIT: Lau Guerreiro, you have checked out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eu… as well, right?

Only duplicates.

For my own practice, I’m with Tikhon. I view comment deletion without due cause with acute distaste. I won’t do it, and I resent it when people do it to me.

It can be argued that such a sentiment is a result of privilege. Clarissa Lohr had a good articulation of the opposite perspective: https://www.quora.com/Have-you-e… . And she concludes with “It would be a significant loss for Quora if we restricted the answers to those that are up for public debate.”

For Quora in general, it would, just as it would be a worse place without the contributions of say Ernest W. Adams, who does not allow comments, because he’s on a Q&A forum, not Reddit.

That’s Quora in general. But my own choice (exercise of privilege though it might be) is to be reluctant to engage with that writer, or that kind of topic. I think I do have less to gain from an author who is not prepared to engage with me in good faith. And there are authors I avoid as a result.

There are shades of grey in between. I don’t like, for example, that Jae Alexis Lee deletes comments, and normally “I’m not here to provide a public debate forum” is a trigger for me to avoid the writer. But I like what she has to say; the one or two comment interactions I’ve had with her have been entirely pleasant; and of course the kinds of interaction she’s likely to block in advance are not philosophical debate, they’re the ten gazillionth rehash of content-free transphobic ickiness. So I’m OK to try not to let any libertarian distaste colour my view of her.

And I don’t comment much, because there are times it’s best just to listen. That’s OK too.

The photo is a cultural touchpoint as a depiction of harassment of women. It is often cited as such, including on Quora. And people are astonished (including on Quora) to find that the photo was likely not intended as such at all.

I’m throwing the question up to see what others think; what I’m finding, from googling, is no.

See the following on the series of photos:

American Girl in Italy: Behind the Iconic Photo

The question is opened up by the discussion at Michael Margolies’ answer to What are some of the most widely circulated fake pictures?, between Michael Margolies and Sarah Jansen. As Michael argues, based on the model’s reminiscences (in the link above),

At the time no, if you read what the model writes about the series and this image it’s interesting to see how even her point of view evolves. What she and the photographer wrote about after making the series and what she writes more recently has evolved just as our politics and perspectives have changed.

Sarah retorted with:

So why was she directed to look fearful?

And was not satisfied that the model’s reminiscences reflect what the photographer had in mind.

---

Well, let’s try and reconstruct what Orkin had in mind from what evidence we have.

Biography : “At 17 years old she took a monumental bicycle trip across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City to see the 1939 World’s Fair, and she photographed along the way.” (Style of Sport features Ruth’s bicycle trip from 1939)

Ruth Orkin: “The photograph was part of a series originally titled “Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone.”” (and almost all the other photos in Michael Margolies’ link show Jinx having a ball). The titling was the creator’s.

Orkin’s daughter relates: American Girl

The two were talking about their shared experiences traveling alone as young single women, when my mother had an idea. “Come on,” she said, “lets go out and shoot pictures of what it’s really like.” In the morning, while the Italian women were inside preparing lunch, Jinx gawked at statues, asked Military officials for directions, fumbled with lire and flirted in cafes while my mother photographed her.

Orkin herself relates: Ruth Orkin | American Girl in Italy | The Met

“We were having a hilarious time when this corner of the Piazza della Repubblica suddenly loomed on our horizon,” the photographer recalled. “Here was the perfect setting I had been waiting for all these years…. And here I was, camera in hand, with the ideal model! All those fellows were positioned perfectly, there was no distracting sun, the background was harmonious, and the intersection was not jammed with traffic, which allowed me to stand in the middle of it for a moment.”

From the link American Girl in Italy: Behind the Iconic Photo, Orkin staged a shot with the same model going for a vespa ride with the guy that was leering at her, a few shots before.

My guess about the answer to Sarah’s question? I think Orkin was subverting the notion that the tourist was right to be afraid, in the iconic shot, and her overall message is the “look at the good times you can have as a single female tourist in Italy, if you’re not afraid” theme of the rest of the shoot. With a shout out to her own cross-country adventures at 17 in 1939.

It doesn’t look like the viewer was meant to take the fear any more seriously than the confused squinting:

And in her diary: (An Image of Innocence Abroad), Orkin described the shoot as a “satire”.

The linked article concurs with the analysis:

In its rebirth, however, the photograph was transformed by the social politics of a post-“Mad Men” world. What Orkin and Allen had conceived as an ode to fun and female adventure was seen as evidence of the powerlessness of women in a male-dominated world. In 1999, for example, the Washington Post’s photography critic, Henry Allen, described the American girl as enduring “the leers and whistles of a street full of men.”

You can argue that the sexual politics I’m claiming of Orkin is as naive as you’d expect out of the 50s. But it looks like it’s authentically naive: Orkin may well have thought that she was making a statement for emancipated, empowered single women (like herself and Jinx) travelling the world, and shrugging off the street harrassment.

I mean, you tell me. If that’s not what Orkin had in mind when she had Jinx look scared, then why does she have Jinx on the back of the vespa in the next shot? The resolution is appalling, but she does not look like she’s on the vespa unwillingly…

This is a very poorly phrased question, Anon; hard to tell what you’re after.

Wikipedia: Megasthenes

Megasthenes (/mᵻˈɡæsθᵻniːz/ mi-gas-thi-neez; Ancient Greek: Μεγασθένης, c. 350 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indika. He was born in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and became an ambassador of Seleucus I Nicator of the Seleucid dynasty possibly to Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra, India. However the exact date of his embassy is uncertain. Scholars place it before 298 BCE, the date of Chandragupta’s death.

Megasthenes’ Indica survives only in quotations from later authors, such as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, and Arrian in his own Indica. The Wikipedia article links to

• Ancient India As Described By Megasthenes And Arrian by Mccrindle, J. W : an 1877 publication of the fragments;
• http://www.sdstate.edu/projectso… : PDF of the same
• http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Ind… : excerpt of Arrian’s Indica, citing Megasthenes.

Megasthenes and Ctesias are the first two Western sources on India, and Ctesias’ was Persian hearsay, so Megasthenes’ is the first account at first hand. It still had a lot of fairy tales such as “people with backwards feet, ears large enough to sleep in, no mouths, or other strange features”.

You’ll need someone with more expertise in history than my glance at a Wikipedia page, Anon, to work out how important Megasthenes’ account is historically. If that indeed is what you are after…

Reposted from: To my wife, on our five-year anniversary

My love, whose smile is wide enough to clasp
the heavens in; whose sorrow can expend
the deep-dug wells of earth; whose anger’s grasp
no whisper can unravel; whose amend

no benison of rainbows can surpass;
whose passion strides where armies never went,
and lays what claims it pleases; and whose glass
flashes with all the sunrays it has bent,

much like a crystal: Love, on this our day
of memory of cycles run complete
and cycles yet to be, our eyes will meet

and recognise once more the subtle play
of light and night. We’ll laugh through dreary weather,
and toast another year of us together.