What is Jesus Christ’s most embarrassing quote, that everyone avoids?

It’s not canonical, but (especially if you’re a liberal Christian) think about it. Does it not make sense that the Historical Jesus might have said it?

Parable of the assassin – Wikipedia

McKayla? Comment? (Not that I’m necessarily accusing you of being a liberal Christian. 🙂

What is a concise Latin translation of “Just because someone does bad things doesn’t mean bad things should happen to them”?

Etsi quis mala facit, mala ei ne fiant.

Before you get a tat with it, stay tuned for Alberto Yagos to say Yea or Nay.

Western Vernacular Music: what I do and don’t know

Stuff I want to know more about in boldface

  • Dixieland Jazz
  • Country Blues
    • I got 7 CDs of anthologies, just need to rip them now
  • Grateful Dead, Phish, those kinda guys
    • I don’t think I’ll get it, but humour me
  • James Brown
  • Hendrix
  • Chicago before they turned into mush
  • Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd
    • Love the Wall and Dark Side, need to know what else they did
  • 80s crap
  • 90s crap
  • 90s good stuff
    • Loved Nirvana. What happened next?
  • What happened after I stopped listening to Western Vernacular Music? (It was when I started the PhD, ’95)

How did the word “gaster” come to mean “stomach” in Greek?

You mean, there’s a story there?

(Checks Frisk.)

Hm. Looks like there’s a story there.

gastēr “belly” is likely derived from *grastēr, “something that does graō”. Graō in turn is a really, really obscure word for “gnaw, eat”, that shows up once in Callimachus, and that also turns up in Ancient Cypriot, which was an archaic dialect. So, gastēr is “eater”. This verb graō is apparently cognate with Old Indic grásate “eat, devour”.

There is an equivalent word to gastēr in Old Indic: grastar-. It’s an astronomical term, referring to eclipses; the moon, I guess, is described as devouring the sun.

So, if you ever see this Halloween costume:

Halloween pregnancy ideas

—the Vedas had the same idea.

I saw a marginal note in Frisk that threw me btw.

Gastēr has not survived in Modern Greek. The related verb engastroō ‘to make something be in a belly’ is alive and well as gastrono, the colloquial word for ‘impregnate’.

But a millenium after Greeks decided to take the r out of *grastēr, they decided to put an r back into the same spot. Language change is random like that. Gastra, a word meaning “a belly-shaped container, a container with a swelling in the middle”, went to *grastra > ɣlastra. Which is the modern word for a flowerpot.

Or by extension, a model paid to look decorative on a TV show.

I don’t know whether that extends further, to maternity wear models.

Is it possible to have a Greek-Turkish Confederation in the future?

You know how people put A2A at the top of their answers, because they like the asker, but are ambivalent about the question?

Sofia, if we ever meet up for coffee in Oakleigh (you’re a Greek in Melbourne, you probably live inside an Eaton Mall patisserie), I will be asking you: WHY YOU ASK ME IF CONFEDERATION!

Greece is already in a confederation, and has been in one since 1981. That hasn’t worked out wonderfully lately; and that was an identity that Greeks actually invested in. To a heart-breaking extent.

What Serdar said. The rapprochement Greeks and Turks have had since ’99 has been a wonderful thing. I’m deeply grateful for it. But you know, we have a saying in Greek.

And knowing how things work in our part of the world, there is probably an identical saying in Turkish.

Μακριά μακριά κι αγαπημένοι. Distant, distant, and [therefore] loving each other.

Greeks ruled by Erntoghan?! Turks ruled by Çipras?!

That would end the rapprochement pretty quickly.

(… although, then again: Turks ruled by Erdoğan?! Greeks ruled by Τσίπρας?!)

Will Quora ever add a notification for new responses to a particular comment thread?

Will they? No. Comments are essential to the social media nature of Quora, and the social media nature of Quora is not intrinsic to the stated mission of “to share and grow the world’s knowledge”™. In fact, I’ve read here that Adam D’Angelo wanted to do away with comments altogether, and had to be talked out of it.

No, I can’t find the source statement now, because Quora Search. And possibly because it was in a comment, and comments aren’t searchable. The source, I think, was the Facebook Secret TW Group.

The fact that comments aren’t searchable, though, is a kind of indirect confirmation.

Το αλάτι της γης

From Dimitra Triantafyllidou

ΤΟ ΑΛΑΤΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ

36 episodes, isn’t it, of an awesome ethnomusicologist inviting some Greek folk musicians for a banquet in the studio on Greek Government TV, where they jam and talk. And joining in the dance.

Only watched two episodes, and both were wondrous: one on Southern Italy, one on Istanbul.

There will be more. I will comment on each here as I get to them.

Another blog for Nick?

Another blog for Nick?

Yes, another blog for Nick. It’s not like I’m paying for extra. Or that anyone’s going to see it anyway.

*sigh* And why this one?

My Chrome browser has too many open tabs.

So? Why is this Quora’s problem?

My Chrome browser has too many open tabs, because I get suggestions of music, or poems, or movies I should be experiencing from the good folks on Quora, and I’m not keeping tracking of them properly.

And…

… and if I track them here, success!

*rolls eyes*

So I’ll jot down each request here, solicit others in moderation; and if I accept, I’ll post my reactions to each piece in comments.

How very self-indulgent of you.

And screw you too.

Aphy-… Aphyre-… Ameri… WTF?

Aphypnēsis Amichaiou.

And screw you too.

The inspiration for this, and oldest open tab on my browser, is this comment from Michael Masiello, when I finally listened to some Chopin:

https://www.quora.com/Chopins-pr…

The awakening of Nick Nicholas continues!

Aphypnēsis is Greek for Awakening, you see.

And Amichaiou is…

Greek for “of Amichai”. Which Uri Granta has informed me is the closest name Hebrew has to Nicholas: Uri Granta’s answer to If you were to Hebraize your surname, what would you choose?

So. Aphypnēsis Amichaiou. The Awakening of Nick.

You really are a pretentious shmuck, aren’t you.

And screw you too.

Chopin, #2

https://www.quora.com/Chopins-pr…

From Michael Masiello

Nick, I propose this as your next homework assignment. You can find six minutes, right? Resist this — I dare you. It’s a stupor mundi any which way one looks at it, but in Ivan Moravec’s hands it’s touched by something superhuman. What do you think, Curtis — good pick?

And then you might try this one on for size: