Tag: Humour

You just can’t get the servants

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A curious story, via F.A. Paley, Greek wit, 2nd ed. 1888:

Lysander, after the final defeat of the Athenians, despatched a quantity of coin and treasure to Sparta by sea, under the care of Gylippus, who had been the Spartan commander at Syracuse.  He, not aware that each sealed box contained under the lid a written statement of the contents, loosened the bottom of each and took out a quantity of silver money bearing the device of an owl.  The stolen money he concealed under the roof of his house, but he took the boxes to the Ephors, and showed them the unbroken seals. Finding the accounts did not tally, they were much perplexed, till they received a useful hint from a servant of Gylippus:– “There is a whole lot of owls roosting under master’s tiles.” — Plutarch, Vit. Lysand. ch. 16.

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Say No

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An important article at Monday Evening for those who are generous, and perhaps tend to attract freeloaders:

Here’s how to deal with an annoying mooch who is otherwise a basically decent guy: Just say no. Don’t say why not; that invites negotiation. If asked why not, say no again, and ignore any uncomfortable silence. You do not want his request for a favor to turn into a dialogue.

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Ancient Greek civilisation a forgery; and 10 things to do with a female Mossad agent

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Onion has the story:

Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks

WASHINGTON—A group of leading historians held a press conference Monday at the National Geographic Society to announce they had “entirely fabricated” ancient Greece, a culture long thought to be the intellectual basis of Western civilization.

The group acknowledged that the idea of a sophisticated, flourishing society existing in Greece more than two millennia ago was a complete fiction created by a team of some two dozen historians, anthropologists, and classicists who worked nonstop between 1971 and 1974 to forge “Greek” documents and artifacts. …

According to Haddlebury, the idea of inventing a wholly fraudulent ancient culture came about when he and other scholars realized they had no idea what had actually happened in Europe during the 800-year period before the Christian era.

Frustrated by the gap in the record, and finding archaeologists to be “not much help at all,” they took the problem to colleagues who were then scrambling to find a way to explain where things such as astronomy, cartography, and democracy had come from.

Within hours the greatest and most influential civilization of all time was born.

“One night someone made a joke about just taking all these ideas, lumping them together, and saying the Greeks had done it all 2,000 years ago,” Haddlebury said. “One thing led to another, and before you know it, we’re coming up with everything from the golden ratio to the Iliad.”

“That was a bitch to write, by the way,” he continued, referring to the epic poem believed to have laid the foundation for the Western literary tradition. “But it seemed to catch on.” …

Much is explained.  I never believed that Alexander was real, did you?  I mean, a bunch of Greeks march right the way across the known world, defeat everyone they meet, and then just get bored and go home?

In other news (h/t PhDiva), apparently a rabbi in Israel has ruled that female Mossad agents who sleep with people to entrap them are not breaking the law of Moses.  At least, a journalist has said so, so of course I believe it.

An Israeli rabbi has given his blessing to female agents of Israel’s foreign secret service, Mossad, who may be required to have sex with the enemy in so-called “honey-pot” missions against terrorists. …

There is a catch, however, for married honey-pots. “If it is necessary to use a married woman, it would be best [for] her husband to divorce her. … After the [sex] act, he would be entitled to bring her back,” Schvat wrote. …

Schvat’s study was praised by Tzomet’s director, Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, who added that “women employees of the Mossad are probably not going to come consult with a rabbi” before their missions.

This is very bad news.  Barely a week goes by without some hussy with an Israeli accent turning up on my doorstep and demanding to have sex with me in order to discover everything I know about terrorism.  It’s one of the risks of blogging about Arabic.  Thus far I have always fobbed them off with questions about the Jewish law. 

But it seems that  Mossad have got wind of my ploy.  No doubt “Reverend” Schvat was paid off big time for this betrayal of all of us celibate blogging hunks.  What man is now safe?

Trouble is, all these female agents are desperately ugly and diseased.  But one does not like to say so, particularly as they are always heavily armed, always willing to kill, and often rather touchy. 

Furthermore they are all wired up for sound, which tends to cool everyone’s ardour.  Knowing that your colleagues will be listening to it all and laughing at your seduction routine and repeating selected portions in the canteen is somewhat off-putting.  Nor do I wish to be reported for sexism to the Equality commission by some aggrieved wench. 

Truly life is a vale of tears.  Perhaps I should just get a dog.

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The felicitous misquotation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been reading the essays of E. M. Blaiklock, a Christian scholar and professor of Classics at Auckland university for many years, published as “The best of ‘Grammaticus'”. 

He remarks on an occasion when a quotation from St. Paul suffered a ‘f’ where a ‘g’ should be:

…overcome evil with food.

Hermann Goering was doubtless excellent company over dinner.

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A note from the Chronicle of Zuqnin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m translating the next chunk of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, and was amused by the French of one passage:

At the same time Edessa was also flooded. There was in fact a great and violent flooding in the river, which crosses the city and called the Daishan.  The waters came in abundance into the city, so that the storm drains in the eastern wall of the city were blocked. The waters did not manage to knock down the wall and flooded back, rising in an extraordinary way, they spread through the streets of the city and destroyed all the shops.

Chabot’s French renders “shops” as “boutiques” — the flood destroyed all the boutiques in Edessa.  Very Carnaby Street, hmm?

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Lemma-out of here!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The word lemma is widely used in the humanities.  Indeed it leaves confusion wherever it is employed.

Because no-one knows what it means.  When was the last time you went down to get your car serviced, and told the mechanic to look at the lemma?  When did you hear a TV announcement talk about the lemmas in the latest failed government IT project?  It doesn’t mean anything, chaps.

What brought this on, I hear you ask?  The answer is a deeply confusing exchange discussing the fragments of Origen’s comments on Ezekiel with the translator.  The said gentleman used the word, in an email discussion of how we are going to present the catena fragments, and communication promptly took a nose-dive.

You may think you know what it means.  You are wrong.  All you know is one use of the word.  There are many.

I first came across the term in connection with the MorphGNT file, containing a Greek New Testament, one word per line, with grammatical information for each word.  The help file — I use the term ‘help’ loosely — used the word to describe one item on the line.  As a normal person, or at least, not one of the in-crowd, I had no idea what it meant.  So I emailed James Tauber, who maintained the file and asked.  Answer came there none!  In the end I figured out that in MorphGNT lemma here meant “base form of a word, uninflected, in the form found in a dictionary”.  It is a little difficult to think of an English alternative, although “dictionary form” or “base form” would do.  Doubtless this difficulty led to the use of lemma.

What other uses are there?  Well, we just saw Devreesse use it in his description of catenas.  In this case he meant “name or abbreviation stuck in the margin of the book to indicate that this extract was by this author.”  Again, a short term is not immediately apparent; but lemma does not help.

The translator was using it in yet another sense.  Often in a catena, the discussion is preceded by a short quotation of the scripture under discussion.  You guessed it — he called that a lemma as well!  Nor was he to blame, when others have led the way.

In short, it is an omnipresent jargon word.  And I think it should be banned.  It is an example of language as a means of intimidation, rather than a means of communication.

Some might say that we could achieve this end by holding a convention, adopting better terminology, setting new standards.  But I think the answer is simply to find those using the word and chop their goolies off.  If we refer to it as mandatory de-lemmatisation, they won’t know until our posse rolls up and I shout the secret code phrase, “Grab him, boys!”

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My life as a television series

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Consternation in the office this morning.  The coat-rack has vanished. 

I have offered the suggestion to my colleagues, based on intensive study of BBC’s Dr. Who, that in reality the coat-rack has not vanished.  Rather, we have all been transported to a parallel universe which is identical to our own, except for this small detail. 

Unfortunately they seem a little resistant, which is curious.  I am fairly sure that Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect would agree with my reasoning.   In Stargate SG-1 whole episodes were hung on less solid evidence.

For the moment, I will stick with the hypothesis that I am on another planet this morning.  My colleagues seem to agree with me there, which is odd given their earlier thoughts.  Most curious.

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