Tag: books

Botched American Symbols in Safronov’s Artwork | April 22 2025, 21:29

The “artwork” by Safronov that the American delegation didn’t dare to show publicly, simply because the unskilled artist in the process of sketching the photo of the flag under the photo of the president decided not to bother with the 50 little stars, just drawing however many he did, where the stars look quite drunken. It’s impossible to fit 50 there, but if you roughly follow the pattern, you end up with 46, or if you strain to imagine perhaps another hidden one, then 47. There’s simply nowhere to put the other three. That means, three or four are missing. Well, okay, we get the hint about Alaska, but what about the other two? Any ideas?

P.S. Regarding the fact that on the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty from the facial side there’s no New York to be seen, and that the pedestal is depicted in reverse perspective — probably just minor details 🙂

Chasing Horowitz: A Pianist’s Journey Through Manageable Masterpieces | April 21 2025, 03:29

When you turn on modern virtuoso pianists (about 70% of them are Chinese), everything is great, but it never even crossed my mind to go look for the sheet music because they just don’t play anything even remotely at my level. If I were to start learning today, I might barely manage the first two pages by retirement.

But with Horowitz, it’s a completely different story. For the third time on my playlist, I come across pieces that are technically manageable, which I immediately rush to the internet to download and print for myself, thinking, how did I miss these before? And for the third time, I realize that in these seemingly simple pieces, Horowitz sets such a “bar” in performance, in sound, in the character of the performance, that all that seeming simplicity evaporates (and maybe by retirement, I’ll manage two pages).

Today, I printed out four pages of Consolation No. 3 in D-Flat Major by Franz Liszt. It’s very beautiful and not very difficult technically, but to play even close to Horowitz…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGDJZgQPK8E

But that’s for later. Right now, I’m learning a short piece, Träumerei by Robert Schumann. It’s the same story — technically simple, but not at all simple in its sound.. especially after listening to Horowitz… The link is in the comments.

Easter Traditions: Påskekrim, Bunnies, and Ancient Pizzas | April 20 2025, 15:24

It turns out that Norway has a unique Easter tradition called “påskekrim (translated from Norwegian as “Easter crime). Every Easter, Norwegians voraciously consume detective novels and thrillers, watch crime series, and listen to audio investigations. This tradition is so well-established that bookstores before Easter create special sections featuring new detective stories (marked as “påskekrim), crime-themed TV series are broadcasted, and sometimes even milk cartons carry short detective tales.

The tradition began in 1923 when two young Norwegian authors—Norrdahl Gryug and Nils Lie—released a detective novel titled “The Train to Bergen Has Been Robbed at Night. On the eve of Easter, the publishing house placed an advertisement for the novel on the front page of one of the largest newspapers, styled it as real news. People mistook it for an actual event, and the book instantly became a hit. Since then, the tradition has taken root.

Additionally, it turns out that the “Easter Bunny” originates from German Lutheran practices, where the bunny initially played the role of a judge, evaluating children’s behavior—whether they had been obedient or disobedient—at the beginning of the Easter period, similar to Santa Claus’s “naughty and nice” list. Moreover, according to lore, this creature carries a basket filled with painted eggs and sometimes candies and toys, which it leaves in the homes of children. Thankfully, not in a stocking!

By the way, it’s sometimes a bunny and sometimes a rabbit. Apparently, it’s not that important.

There’s another dubious but quite popular interpretation. According to it, the name “Easter” comes from Eostre (Eostra), a Teutonic goddess revered as a goddess of spring and fertility. According to Teutonic myth, a little girl once found a dying bird and prayed for assistance from Eostre. The goddess appeared, crossing the rainbow bridge—the snow melting under her feet. Seeing the bird gravely injured, Eostre transformed it into a hare and told the girl that from then on, the hare would return every year, carrying eggs dyed the colors of the rainbow. However, it’s noted that Eostre’s name is only mentioned once—by Bede the Venerable in his work De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”). No other mentions of this name exist. Moreover, there are no tales or legends associated with Eostre; thus, anything told about her is considered apocryphal. Yet, no better explanations seem to exist.

And shifting from hares and goddesses to something more down-to-earth, it turns out that even pizza has an Easter past. The earliest recorded use of the word pizza dates back to May 997 and is found in a Latin notarial document from the city of Gaeta, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire. The text says that a tenant was to annually give the bishop twelve pizzas and a pair of chickens on Easter. So, who knows—perhaps the first festive Easter pizza was not a margarita but something between a ritual and a rent.

Curating a Diverse Bookshelf: Art, Science, and Beyond | April 18 2025, 17:28

The books requested a new home. Brought the home, settled the home, group photos from the housewarming.

Fed the pics to ChatGPT, got a booklist. Edited a bit, it makes mistakes.

Top shelf – art. I only keep the best in the list:

1. Alla Prima II by Richard Schmid

2. Virgil Elliott – Traditional Oil Painting

3. Anatomy for Sculptors – Uldis Zarins

4. Anatomy of Facial Expression – Uldis Zarins

5. Form of the Head and Neck – Uldis Zarins

6. Impressionism by Bomford, Kirby

7. Lessons in Classical Painting by Juliette Aristides

8. The Practice of Oil Painting & Drawing by Solomon J. Solomon

Second shelf – science and other science pop

Sergey Yastrebov “From Atoms to the Tree” (biology, chemistry)

Kukushkin – Clapping with One Hand (biology)

Burlak — The Origin of Language (linguistics)

Eric Kandel – In Search of Memory (biology)

Andrew Solomon- Far from the Tree (biology)

Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (biology)

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens (history)

Yuval Noah Harari – Nexus (history)

The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene (physics)

Carl Zimmer – Life’s Edge (biology)

Carl Zimmer – She has a mother’s laugh (biology)

Semikhatov — Everything That Moves (physics)

Poluektov – Mysteries of Sleep (psychology)

Noga Gál – The Living and the Dead Word (linguistics)

Kitaigorodsky – Entertaining Theory of Probability (mathematics)

Steven Pinker- How the Mind Works (biology, psychology)

Robert Sapolsky – Determined (biology, psychology)

Neil deGrasse Tyson – Accessory to War (astrophysics)

Flavor by Bob Holmes (biology)

Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel (biology)

Marilyn Sheldrake – Entangled Life (biology)

Wolfram – A New Kind of Science (mathematics)

Frans de Waal – Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (psychology)

Eidelman – How Propaganda Works (psychology)

Peter Godfrey – Metazoa (biology)

Asya Kazantseva – Who Would Have Thought! (hard to say)

Asya Kazantseva – Someone Is Wrong on the Internet (–“–)

Asya Kazantseva – The Brain is Material (–“–)

Gordon – Structures, why things don’t fall down (architecture)

Thomas Heatherwick – Humanize (? design, architecture?)

Ed Yong – I Contain Multitudes (biology)

Po Bronson, Arvind Gupta – Decoding the World (biology)

Jonathan Haidt – The Anxious Generation (psychology)

Plus, some books there are biographies and fiction. Unfortunately, many good books I’ve read and would like to put on the shelf are not in paper but in digital or left behind in a past life.

Recommend what else I might like.

Exploring the Intriguing History and Ecology of Kangaroos and Camels | April 17 2025, 22:47

Interesting. It turns out that before Russia imposed a temporary ban on kangaroo meat imports, it consumed 70% of all kangaroo meat produced in Australia.

It turns out that not only do camels roam in Australia, but there are more of them than in Central Asia and the Middle East, and Australia actively sells them to Saudi Arabia, for instance. Moreover, camels were introduced to Australia from the Middle East by Afghans, who left quite a significant (and positive) mark on the history of Australia.

For example, here’s a photo of the Ghan train — it features a camel on its logo. This is no coincidence; it is actually named after those Afghans who brought the camels.

Also interesting is that camels are originally from our regions. Yes, the USA is, in fact, the homeland of camels. According to some estimates, camels first appeared in North America between 40 and 50 million years ago, and 3 million years ago, they crossed into Asia via a land bridge in the Bering Strait area, and then made their way to Africa. In recent years, convincing evidence has been found that these animals inhabited almost all of North America. And of course, the climate was different back then.

Moreover, I read that there is such a thing as “kangatarianism” — a practice of following a diet that excludes the meat of all animals except kangaroo, for environmental and ethical reasons.

Also, it turns out that there are tree kangaroos (Tree-kangaroo). Also, in English, a group of kangaroos is called “a mob” – a gang 🙂 However, in Australian English, mob is not used in the same connotation as “mafia” or “gang”. Indeed, a group of crows with their “murder of crows” isn’t too far off either.

Oh, how could I not mention etymology! There is a legend that the word “kangaroo” means “I don’t understand”. I thought so too until I looked into it.

Actually, “kangaroo” originates from the Guugu Yimithirr language, an Indigenous language of northern Australia, where gangurru specifically refers to a type of kangaroo. But it’s not that simple 🙂

It all starts when James Cook asked the Guugu Yimithirr what the animal was called — they answered gangurru, which did indeed denote it. The English borrowed this word as kangaroo.

Latter, half a century later, the etymology starts to get tangled. In 1820, a certain Philip King sailed along a river near Cook’s landing place and recorded a list of words from the local Guugu Yimithirr dialect. Everything matched Cook’s records — except for one word. When asked “what is that animal called?”, they didn’t answer gangurru, but minha. It means that Cook clearly made a mistake. If minha is “kangaroo”, then what is gangurru?

This is where the myth begins. Some begin to think: maybe Cook misunderstood? Maybe he asked about the animal, and they didn’t understand him — and gangurru meant “I don’t know”? This version is a fabrication, and it didn’t go further than speculation, but it’s a funny story, historically plausible, and it began to be repeated. Thus, it turned into a persistent legend.

Then the confusion reversed. “Kangaroo” — then and now — became the stereotypical word from the “aboriginal language”. Every European settler coming to Australia knew exactly one word from Guugu Yimithirr — and only that one. The problem is that there were hundreds of languages in Australia, many of which were weakly or not at all related to Guugu Yimithirr. They simply did not have the word gangurru or its equivalent.

That’s where the problems arose. For example, settlers arrived in the area of modern Sydney and tried to “communicate” with the local people, i.e., they just yelled “kangaroo” at them. This would hardly have helped, but it is important to remember the geography: the Guugu Yimithirr lived on the Cape York Peninsula, in the far north of Australia, and the Sydney aborigines — the Iora people, speaking Dharuk language — lived almost at the other end of the continent. They didn’t know what the word “kangaroo” meant, so they assumed the Europeans were particularly interested in their domestic livestock. When cows began to be unloaded from the ship, the locals asked: “Is this your ‘kangaroo’?”

Such is the story.

Also, it turns out, kangaroos are good swimmers. In the second photo, a kangaroo tail sold in our town. For the dogs to gnaw on.

Subtitle Struggles in Opera Streaming | April 13 2025, 01:00

I am currently listening to the opera “Samson and Delilah” on the paid Royal Ballet And Opera platform. The opera is in French with English subtitles. My first question — where are the French subtitles? So, if I’m a Francophone, I’m left with no options but to catch the meaning by listening alone? And there’s “Boris Godunov” which I haven’t listened to yet. I think I wouldn’t mind having subtitles there either.

Once again, I catch myself thinking that apparently, no one who translates librettos into English ever considers those who have to read them with one eye (the other must watch the stage).

By God, how can one immediately understand what “auspices” in “Let us consult the auspices // and pour the sacrificial wine for Dagon” mean if an ordinary person doesn’t normally come across the word “auspices” in English and won’t grasp its meaning on the fly? The original goes, “Du grand Dagon consultons les auspices // Versons pour lui le vin des sacrifices!”, but the original can be forgiven (although I am sure that modern young French speakers could also use subtitles).

Or take “Grant that my wiles may lead to Samson’s capture tomorrow.” Wiles? The word “wiles” in English is literary, archaic, or high style. It denotes tricks, cunning, deceitful strategies, especially in the context of enticement or manipulation. In the original French it’s “Fais que, vaincu par mon adresse, Samson soit enchaîné demain!” — well, couldn’t it have been translated as “Make it so that, defeated by my cunning, Samson shall be chained tomorrow!”

I found a translation by Frederic Lister from 1893. Those two lines are poetically and not super accurately translated there, but, damn, they are a million times clearer: “And reign supreme within his heart, // Binding him fast in my control.”

And there’s a lot of that good stuff. Okay, archaic words, but the sentences are also composed in a poetic style, which, to some extent, is fine because the spirit of the original must be conveyed. However, this does not make it any more accessible for the audience because again.. how can you understand what this “prostrate” is, while “Lying prostrate in the dust // we lifted up our voices to him” in half a second? Yes, lying prostrate means lying face down, but who generally knows that?

Damn, it would have been better to have French subtitles, that would have been more understandable.

Plus-tard, le front dans la poussiere,

Vers lui nous élevions la voix.

(meaning, “Later, with our foreheads in the dust, We lifted our voices to him.”)

Again, in Lister’s translation, although not close to the text, it is at least clearer – but then again, this translation is at least 130 years old.

I’m not pleased with the Royal Ballet And Opera. To read their subtitles, you need to specifically prepare.

And then, another interesting thing arises. It’s quite difficult to find the libretto of this opera. I will leave a link to the scans in the comments — try to find a good version of the text somewhere in the libretto. That is, the subtitles are skewed, and you can’t even find the original. One might ask, what prevented them from making a video player that would have French subtitles, poetic English translations, and modern English translations? They are charging money for it, and the work on preparing the subtitles is essentially a week of work for an Internet-connected specialist. I don’t know about the rights, but if they are showing the opera, they could definitely have put the original subtitles, and translations.. Well, I am sure that getting a proper translation commissioned or licensing an existing one wouldn’t be a problem.

Exploring the Intriguing Origins of Words | April 09 2025, 03:51

Well, shall we continue with the fascinating etymology? I’ve been writing scripts for processing an etymological dictionary, and I’m finding all sorts of interesting stuff.

It turns out that the word “ciao” comes from the word “slave”. It derives from the Venetian expression s-ciào vostro or s-ciào su, which literally means “(I am) your slave”. The Venetian word for “slave” — s-ciào [ˈstʃao] or s-ciàvo — comes from the medieval Latin sclavus, which, in turn, was borrowed from medieval Greek Σκλάβος (“sklavos”), itself related to the ethnonym “Slavs”, as most of the slaves during that time came from the Balkans.

Also, it was a revelation to me that the words Kubernetes, governor, and cybernetics are etymologically related. They all derive from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) — “helmsman, one who steers a ship”. Consequently, governor came through Latin and Romance languages, cybernetics as a scientific loan through French, and Kubernetes as a direct calque from Ancient Greek, via Latin transliteration.

The words fuel and focus originate from the same Latin word focus (“hearth”). Focus was actually coined by Johannes Kepler, who used it as a geometric term for ellipses: “the point where rays converge”.

The words Madeira, mata, mater, matrix, matter, and mother are related and all trace back to the same Proto-Indo-European root *méh₂tēr — “mother”.

The words madam and madonna come from the Latin mea domina — “my lady”.

It’s hard to imagine, but the words merry (cheerful) and brief (short) originate from the same Proto-Indo-European root *mréǵʰus, which means “short”.

The words lobby and leaf also have a common origin — both stem from the ancient Germanic *laubą or its derivatives, related to foliage, leafy shelters, and coverings. In old buildings, laubia/lobby was a covered gallery or arbor, literally a shelter made of leaves. Thus, “lobby originally meant “leafy shelter” or “leafy arbor”.

Common origins or roots also link names like Yuri and George, Étienne and Stephen/Steven, William and Guillermo, Zeus and Jupiter, Zhenya and Yana, Joel and Elijah, Hansel and John, as well as Agnes, Nancy, and Inez, Diego and Jacob, Dorothy and Theodore, and Isabel, Elizabeth, and Lisa, Iskander and Alexander, Patroclus and Cleopatra. Many of these essentially denote the same thing, just modified differently across cultures.

Read more of such good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring Linguistic Connections with #RaufLikesEtymology | April 08 2025, 16:22

I continue with etymological curiosities. This is my third consecutive post, #RaufLikesEtymology. It all started when I stumbled upon an etymological dictionary and began processing it programmatically, extracting all sorts of things.

It turns out that the words “жёлтый” (“yellow”), “зелёный” (“green”), and “золото” (“gold”) share a common Indo-European root related to brightness and luster — *gьltъ, which in English, for instance, became the basis for both gold and yellow. In German, “gelb” (yellow) comes from there too. In Russia, “желтый” has been known since the 13th century as a nickname, and as an adjective in written sources only since the 14th century.

It turned out that “известь” (“lime”) and “асбест” (“asbestos”) come from the same word, the Greek ἄσβεστος.

It turns out that the words шифр (“cipher”), цифра (“digit”), and zero all come from the same word — the Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr, “nothing, zero”), which itself is a calque from Sanskrit शून्य (śūnya, “emptiness, nothing”).

Pushkin wrote in “Poltava”: “In the night’s darkness they, like thieves… // Craft the ciphers of universals…” “Universals” in the Ukrainian language of those days were called Hetman’s edicts, and “цифр” back then meant what we now call a cipher — “secret writing”.

Interestingly, the word “кантон” (Switzerland consists of 26 cantons) – originates from Chinese, from Guangdong.

It turned out that grotto and crypt — come from the same word, Latin grupta/crypta. Well, about Saturday and sabbath everyone knows (that they are one word by origin).

The Russian word “колесо (wheel) and the Indian “чакра (chakra) are linked by origin — both come from the same ancient root in Proto-Indo-European — *kʷékʷlos — “circle”, “wheel”, “rotating”. “Колесо came through the Slavic branch, while “чакра — through the Indian (Vedic-Sanskrit) branch.

The words cloak (“cloak”) and clock (“clock”) derive from medieval Latin clocca — “bell”, but entered English differently. Cloak arrived in the 13th century through French cloque, which meant both “cloak” and “bell” — due to the shape of the garment. Clock appeared later through Dutch clocke, denoting a church bell that marks the time; subsequently, it came to mean “clock”. The word bell (“bell”) already existed in English as a designation for a metallic ringing object, so there was no need to introduce another word for this.

The apricot has had a very interesting journey. Here, look at the attached picture. Borrowed in the early 18th century from Dutch, which itself had borrowed from Romance languages (for example, French abricot). It’s interesting to trace this word further: it turns out that in French, it came from Arabic, and in Arabic from Latin. Latin praecox meant “early-ripening”. Thus, praecox became abricot.

My little script churned out about 2 thousand examples from wiktionary. I pick the most interesting ones, but I think there’s enough material for about five more posts like this 🙂 Plus, I have more ideas on how to process to uncover even more interesting things.

Read more good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Unveiling Surprising Connections in English Etymology | April 07 2025, 21:09

In the previous post, I wrote about the little program I developed that searches for words far apart but sharing common etymology. It keeps bringing me new discoveries. Sharing them!

The words chaos and gas are essentially the same. The chemist Jan Baptista van Helmont introduced ‘gas’ as he deciphered ‘chaos’ in his Dutch interpretation, from the Greek χάος. The letter g in Dutch conveys a sound remotely echoing the modern Greek ch. “In the absence of a name,” he wrote, “I called this vapor ‘gas’, as it stems closely from the ancient concept of chaos.” Meanwhile, the word gasoline has no relation to gas. It derives from Cazeline (possibly influenced by Gazeline—a name from an Irish imitation), a trademark for petroleum-based lamp oil, originating from the surname of the man who first started selling it in 1862—John Cassell—and the suffix -eline. The name Cassell itself comes from the Anglo-Norman castel (related to the English castle), which, in turn, traces back to the Old French castel.

Cattle, capital, and chattel are etymological twins of each other, also linked to capital—all through the root caput (“head”), reflecting the ancient practice of counting wealth in terms of cattle heads. By the way, caput also gives rise to chief and captain.

The same goes for the twins bank and bench. “Bank” originally meant “bench,” where a money changer sat, or the “counter” of a money exchanger. Compare typologically with the Russian word “лавка”—both “bench” and “store” (in old times—these were the same), “counter”—the place where trading happens, i.e., “by the bench.” The breaking of a bench—banca rotta—has also given us the word bankrupt (“bankrupt”), literally “broken bench.”

Separately interesting are Chicago/skunk. Chicago comes from the French Chécagou, a transcription of the word from the Miami people’s language šikaakwa—”wild onion” (or ramps, Allium tricoccum) and also “striped skunk.” Skunk means, in the same language, roughly “urinates badly” and indeed designates the skunk itself.

Hospital and hotel/hostel are also etymological twins. They trace back to hospes (“host, guest”).

Discussing that dress and director share a common root would take a lot, a supporting image is attached for help

Read more such good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

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