[hijack] Okay, I’ll back up my Hamlet reference … Hamlet wants not only revenge against his uncle but the throne itself. Evidence in the play points to the fact that Claudius wasn’t doing too bad a job as king, so any direct action against him would result in accusations of treason and/or assassination. This would get Claudius off the throne, but Hamlet would be in jail, facing execution. He has to wait it out if he wants everything … pretend madness so he looks harmless, and wait until he can prove that Claudius offed his father. But waiting is never easy.
His two choices: to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” – wait it out, deal with the horrible spot he’s in and the crap he has to put up with – or “take arms against a sea of troubles” – give up his little political games and try to take the throne by force. Forgive me on this half-arsed summary, it’s been a while and I’ve been dealing with some killer finals this week.
Incidentally, this evaluation of the speech is mainly from Isaac Asimov’s guide to Shakespeare. I just happen to agree with the late Doctor on this count. [/hijack]
And the only moon of the planet Uranus not named after a Shakespearean character is Uriel – the first two were named Uriel and Ariel after spirits from classical literature (forget what exactly), and the next person to discover some moons assumed that Ariel was a reference to “The Tempest,” and named the next two Titania and Oberon.
What, then? To exist or not to exist. To suffer or oppose one’s troubles. If not about suicide, what? Or are you throwing out a reference to another speech?
I used to be a big Roman history buff back in college. I remember reading that the word “forx” was responsible for the eventual creation of the word “fornication.” The forx was the lowest arch of an aqueduct, that of course ran through the length of an entire city. In the city of Rome Herself, in selected quarters, the “forx” was also a meeting place of prostitutes and potential customers. The activities were later deemed to be seedy, hence the definiton of the word “fornication” today. I don’t actually know the exact history of the definition itself though, but I gather that the church may have had some serious input.
I know that swiving means partaking in orgiastic debauchery.
I know that the explorer Simon Fraser, during his famous travels through BC in 1808, was referred to by natives as the Sun, because of a shiny emblem he wore on his hat.
I know that Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the exact same day.
I know that Cervantes, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexander Pope all died the year after they published their best works (Don Quixote, 1984, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Dunciad, respectively).
Um, get thee to Snopes for another think on that one, DF.
Speaking of music:
In Renaissance madrigals and chansons (especially French and Italian ones), references to “death” and “dying” often actually referred to sex. (Don’t believe me? Have a listen to a recording of Monteverdi’s “Si ch’io vorrei morire” sometime.)
The opening of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony represents a orchestra tuning up. Also, the music for the “Froh!” section (tenor solo and male chorus in the last movement) is essentially a “Janissary band” or Turkish military marching band, characterized by the use of cymbals, triangles and martial rhythms. Another of Beethoven’s little musical jokes.
The famous Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni was actually written (“reconstructed”) in 1945 by Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, based on a fragment (a bass line and six bars of melody) by Albinoni found in the Dresden State Library. (I don’t know whether the rest was destroyed in the firebombing, or if that’s all the Library ever had.) Which is not to say that it’s not a good piece of music; only that it ain’t by Albinoni.
The year 1453 is significant in that it marked the end of the Hundred Years War, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, and the death of John Dunstable (or Dunstaple), possibly the most influential English composer on the Continent ever.
Xapno Mapcase is from Harpo Speaks! , the autobiography of Harpo Marx. He took a trip to Russia to do comedy there, and remarked that his name, transliterated into Russian, looked like it spelled “Xapno Mapcase.” It’s one of those phrases that never leave you once you’ve read the book.
Re. Hamlet and suicide: Nonsense. He has been contemplating suicide since his first soliloquy (“Or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon/'Gainst self-slaughter!”), and in the “To be or not to be” bit, when he examines his options: “or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing end them,” he means that one option for fighting against all the bullshit in your life is to fight against yourself, i.e., commit suicide, and you are sure to end the troubles. The problem is that you won’t end them in a satisfactory way, since the awful situation will still be there, just without you. (All quotes from memory; line breaks may be misplaced, but words are correct, I am certain. I used to teach this.)
Youngest person to serve as U.S. President: Teddy Roosevelt.
Four: Only number which denotes its number of letters.
Michelin Tire Man’s actual name: Bibendum.
First oil well in the U.S.: Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Oldest continuously inhabited city in North America: Saint Augustine, Florida.
First spot in Asia that the sun hits every morning: Mt. Fuji, Japan.
Top-selling band of all time whose band-name starts with the letter X: X-ray Spex.
Let’s call him up at 3AM, & ask if his refridgerator is running! Or, if he has Prince Albert in a can!
Or ask him to page Mr. Freely–first initials “I.P.”.
Not directly disputing this, as it’s probably just coincidence, but I remember reading that the (Etruscan?) word for death was the same or similar as the Basque word for “sickle”, which was used as a symbol for death. (Or vice versa, Basque death=Etruscan sickle).
However most theories linking these two languages are considered to be crank. But interestingly Etruscan is related to another mountainous language - Raetic, recorded in the Alps.
And I also remember hearing that the first five numbers in Basque are similar to the first five numbers in Tibet. Again that’s easily explained by a wandering Tibetan monk teaching numeracy, if it’s true.
Fascinating. But also totally perplexing. Please elucidate.
I suspect this information is out of date. In the mid-1990s, XSCAPE had four top-40 hits in the U.S., including three that made it to the top 10. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if XTC has also outsold X-ray Spec. (Both XTC and X-ray Spex are British bands. XTC had one Billboard Hot 100 hit in the U.S, X-ray Spex had zero).
After exhaustive (for me) research I find that jackelope is correct!
From the White House web site, which contains biographies of all the presidents:
Theodore Roosevelt … “With the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation’s history.”
John F. Kennedy … “On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.”
Kennedy was born May 29, 1917. In November 1960, when he was elected he would have been 43, right? Also 43 when he took office the following January.
Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858, and if elections were also held in November then, he would have just turned 43. So, this means he WAS the youngest, beating Kennedy, who turned 44 four months into his term, by a few months. So why does the White House site say both were the youngest elected president?? Grr.
It’s from Nahuatl ahuacatl. Language of the Aztecs. Gotcha!
Ojalá is from Arabic in shâ’a Allâh ‘if God wills’. In medieval Spanish, the letters j and x were used to write the sound of “sh” which has been lost in Modern Spanish. This explains why x stands for the unknown quantity in algebra. Algebra (from Arabic al-jabr meaning ‘reassemly of broken pieces’) was invented by the Iranian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, who wrote in Arabic. For the unknown quantity, he used the Arabic letter shîn, abbreviation of the Arabic word shay’ ‘a thing, something’. When his work was translated in Spain into Latin, the translator used the Spanish equivalent of shîn: the letter x.
Incidentally, the word shay’ ‘a thing’ is derived from the verb shâ’a ‘to will’.
Not Indian. Malay.
Another fun fact about the Malay kris: each individual kris is believed to be inhabited by a spirit.
Not really a coincidence, they both go back to the Proto-Indo-European plural forms.
English have comes from Proto-Indo-European *kap- ‘to seize’, source also of the verb capture (from Latin). Apparently for the Proto-Germans the way to “have” something was to grab it. Latin habere comes from Proto-Indo-European *ghabh- or *ghebh-, also the source of English give. It could mean either ‘give’ or ‘receive’. For the Proto-Indo-Europeans, to give was to receive and vice versa. A society of mutuality and sharing?
Let’s verify that, shall we? Fighting ignorance and all that.
Basq Tibetan
1 bat gtshig
2 bi gñis
3 hiru gsum
4 lau bzhi
5 bost lnga
