Register register register!

Another little rant about my students - 'cause why have a blog if you can't rant occasionally? Anyway, we used an article recently, published in Izvestiya and titled Смертельные игры в политику (Politics' Deadly Games) (in Russian here) It's part of a discussion on a TV show (Danger! History) between an historian and a high-ranking cop on political assassinations. It begins by identifying the springboard topic with this:

28 мая - День памяти благоверного царевича Дмитрия Углицкого, погибшего в 1591 году
May 28 - Day of Remembrance for the Blagovernyy tsarevich Dmitry of Uglich, who died in 1591

It's that word "blagovernyy" that caused all the trouble.

Not one got it right. Not one. All but one put "the lord and master tsarevich (or "prince" for some) Dmitry Uglitsky". The one that didn't ignored the adjective altogether.

I'm not overly concerned that they put "Uglitsky" when "of Uglich" is the usual English. Getting them to turn Russian place-name adjectives into simple English place names (Perm Oblast, not Permskaya, for instance) isn't that hard. No, it's translating "blagovernyy" as "lord and master" that gets me.

Yes, indeed: most of the Russian-English dictionaries give that definition. However they all also label it "jocular". The one that doesn't is the Oxford, which says "(now only used facetiously, as noun) masculine form - husband; feminine form - wife".

C'mon, people. Think. Is this a jocular reference? Is Dmitry someone's husband? (He was 9 when he died, so ...) Don't you think you'd need to look elsewhere for a better - non-jocular - translation? Even, maybe, just at the roots (bless & faith)?

Now, normally, I tell them to use Ozhegov or the new BTS (Bolshoy Tolkovyy Slovar, or Big Defining Dictionary). Ozhegov isn't much help, saying разг. шутл. муж. супруг - but that's basically the same information: colloquial, jocular, masculine. spouse. But that's because Sergey Ivanovich and his later editors were good Soviets at heart. And even they are calling it jocular. But looking in the BTS or any other Russian-Russian dictionary - or Multitran, or the Russian-language version of Wikipedia - will tell you what's up:

Благоверные (греч. εὐσεβής, лат. pius) — лик православных святых из монархов, прославляемых церковью за праведную жизнь и не относящихся к мученикам и страстотерпцам.

Blagovernye (Greek εὐσεβής (eusebēs), Latin pius) - the Community of Orthodox Saints from the monarchy, glorified by the church for the righteousness of their lives, but not belonging to the company of martyrs or passion-bearers

Yeah. Not "lord and master" but (usually) "the Holy Prince Dmitry of Uglich" or (acceptably) "the Blessed Prince Dmitry of Uglich".

Register is part of context, and context tells you which translation you should use. It's a Church holiday. Use the religious meaning, not the jokey one.

Happy Birthday, Moveable Type

Yes - today is the anniversary of the first volume of the most influential Bible ever published: the one printed with Johan Gutenberg's moveable type - in 1542.

It was the beginning of a new age - an age of widespread information and literacy, and an end to the Church's monopoly on knowledge. The new printing process fueled the Renaissance and was a major catalyst for the scientific revolution. It may even have midwifed the Reformation. In short, it facilitated, if not outright produced, the end of the Middle Ages.

It is estimated that more books were produced in the 50 years after Gutenberg's invention than scribes had been able to produce in the 1,000 years before that.

Just great!

The champ didn't know the final question on Jeopardy! tonight but her answer was funny.

Since all their neighbors are this, Lichtenstein and Uzbekistan are considered double this

The answer, of course, is "land-locked". But she said "great".

(And she was far enough ahead and wagered little enough that she still won.)

Expert says he's no expert

As noted several places, Frank Gaffney testified as an expert witness yesterday in the lawsuit locals have filed to try to stop the mosque in Murfreesboro, TN, from constructing a new building. Gaffney testified about the threat the local Muslims pose to the community and the larger threat of Sharia law being imposed on America -- even though Gaffney admitted:

"I don't hold myself out as an expert on Sharia Law. But I have talked a lot about that as a threat."

But really. In America these days talking a lot about something is pretty much all you need to do to be accounted an expert on it. Just look at all the experts on the economy or the Iraq war.

The Poetry of Science

Spent part of the afternoon today on leave to attend the Howard University Secular Students presentation of Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about The Poetry of Science. They moved from the expanding universe ("you can't see the universe before it was there") to the age of the earth and the possibility of life elsewhere ("even if life is incredibly unlikely, the universe is so stupendously huge, and old, that unlikely things happen every day"). Tyson pointed out that biologists have a sample of one ("no other science could exist with such a small sample - one planet out of eight - yes, eight, get over it!") and wondered about DNA and intelligence and math. Tyson totally rocks - I'd never seen him talking for any extended period of time.


When they took questions, some of them were odd - the guy who wanted to know what they thought of philosophy didn't get the answer he wanted, since Tyson was pretty dismissive of the value of philosophy to science, though they both said philosophers have plenty of other realms to think about. And the woman who was afraid when she saw people holding cell phones up to babies' heads certainly wasn't ready to have Tyson explain how "when you're trying to measure something that isn't there" you get all sorts of random results, some spikes that look like positives but as many in the opposite directions showing less cancer, and that it's all pretty much white noise - "if it was truly causal, it would be a huge result, it would unmistakable, and it would be replicable." And the guy who insisted that they take his question, a rambling question about Boethius that basically boiled down "aren't you so hypocritical that if you were dying you'd find your refuge in God?" - well, what he got was Tyson saying "If I were going to die, I'd ask to be buried, not cremated, so that the energy in my body could return to the earth, and nourish flora and fauna as I have been nourished by them."

All in all, it was entertaining and educational.


More photos here

"an honest life"?

The promo for Lone Star said, dramatically:

"A conman trying anything he can to live an honest life"

But the episode was all about him recruiting his father to rip off his father-in-law, set up his poor despised brother-in-law as the fall guy, and - oh, yeah - marrying another woman.

If you want to tell us the story of a conman, then do it. But that's not living "an honest life", and people who want to see that story aren't going to like the one you're giving us.

Not that I particularly care. You haven't made me really like him, to hope he succeeds, or really hate him, to hope he's caught and tossed behind bars. And the new character - the messed up sister? Could have done without that soapy complication.

I think I'm done. From what I hear, Fox's itchy cancellation-button finger means you are, too. Perhaps next time you'll have a better idea of what kind of story you're trying to tell us, and about what kind of character.

Happy Birthday, William

Today in 1906 Sir William Empson was born. He was a critic - one of the greatest English critics ever - and he also wrote poetry - complex and obscure but compelling.

The Teasers

Not but they die, the teasers and the dreams,
Not but they die,
and tell the careful flood
To give them what they clamour for and why.

You could not fancy where they rip to blood
You could not fancy
nor that mud
I have heard speak that will not cake or dry.

Our claims to act appear so small to these
Our claims to act
colder lunacies
That cheat the love, the moment, the small fact.

Make no escape because they flash and die,
Make no escape
build up your love,
Leave what you die for and be safe to die.

more poems here)

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: A couple more Wycliffe episodes. He can be a condescending jerk, but at least they call him on it! The Robert Downey, Jr, Sherlock Holmes, which I kept meaning to see in theaters but never got around to. It was much better than I'd hoped, even with the good things I'd heard.

TV? Well, the fall season's here. I watched a few openers - House with a little trepidation; House starts off by doing mean things - Cuddy should never forgive him for not letting her know about the neurosurgeon problem. Lone Star didn't succeed in making me like the lead character, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be hoping he gets away with continuing to rip off his fiancee's family by robbing his wife's, with being a bigamist, or destroying that brother-in-law he's building up. I'm not even sure what his father meant by "she's not your real wife" - he's already a bigamist, or just she's a mark? The Middle, which add some humorous lines and moments, and Modern Family which made me laugh all the way through - especially Mitchell in the palace with the bird! That thing they put in between them (Better with You) was amusing in places, and I'll give it another chance, but it's no Ted! (waaa) Raising Hope (the first name they had, Keeping Hope Alive, would have been funnier) was also amusing in places and a bit sweet, but could very easily get broad and ridiculous; we'll see. The Mentalist's opener ("The new director? I told you about him last week, Jane. Your memory's going." "My memory is a mighty fortress from which no fact escapes once committed. When you tell me boring things, I sent them free at once. It saves overcrowding.") was good. I also watched Critic's Choice, an atypical but enjoyable (except for the Parker-is-drunk-at-the-theater scene) Bob Hope-Lucille Ball movie from 1963.

Read: The first three books in Shamini Flint's interesting Inspector Singh series. He's a Singapore cop, but the first two books are set elsewhere (Kuala Lampur and Bali) - the second is my favorite so far, when Singh investigates the murder of a man whose bullet-holed skull was found in the bombed-out remains of the Suri Club, blown up by terrorists. Singh's no good at the murder-writ-large of terrorism, but one very personal murder is where he shines. Also The Marriage Bureau for the Rich, a sweet and funny book set in India.

Happy Birthday, TS

Today in St Louis in 1888 TS Eliot was born. He wrote many poems, most famous perhaps "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" - and of course "The Hollow Men", which begins "We are the hollow men" and ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

He also wrote the source poems for "Cats". And many others, including this:

Aunt Helen

MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet—
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
The dogs were handsomely provided for,
But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees—
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived

More of his poems here

Butterflies of late September

Unlike yesterday's bumbles, the butterflies behave more or less normally as summer winds to a close. Which ones you see may change, but they aren't frantic as the bees are. Mostly now it's skippers around here, with crescents and the occasional sulphur and white. Here are a few from the past week (you can see more on Facebook.)

First up, pearl crescents:







A Red Admiral


One last lingering common Buckeye



Skippers - Sachems, to be precise






A Clouded Sulphur


A Cabbage White

Summer's ending

The bumblebees are almost frantic in the search for nectar as the summer draws to a close. In the high, hot months, they crawl over flowers in an almost leisurely manner, but now - partly I suppose to keep their internal temperature up and partly because their reproductive standoff with the their queen is at an end and young queens and their own sons are maturing - and maybe because the flowers have less to offer? - now, at any rate, they move rapidly along the flowers, a single-minded seething along the white weedy flowers (I don't know their name) that makes some people swing to the other side of the path but never actually takes notice of passers-by. In the early morning, there are always several sleeping, legs clenched around a flower, out too late and grown too chilled to fly home. I used to think they were dead, but if you have the time to watch, or the nerve to stroke on gently, you'll see her waken and set out about her business. Soon, though, the summer will end and so will the lives of all the workers and guards in the colonies. Only the young queens, mating with a late-summer male, will find a wintering-over place, to waken from her hibernation with the spring and begin a new colony.















Here's a sleeping bumble...

Happy Birthday, William

Today in 1897, William Faulkner was born. After around 15 years of being published and remaining fairly unknown, he was awarded the Noble Prize in Literature. This brought him to the attention of the public and the wider world, and he's now regarded as one of the most important writers in American literature.

Sky Watch: Layered Dawn

it is - yes - another dawn. There are some perks to walking due east in the morning!






more Sky Watchers here

Just one little thing

In a story today (their emphasis) in the WaPo is this:

"Look, marriage is important to me," says Barron, 36, chairman of GOProud, an advocacy group for gay conservatives. "I support marriage equality. But it's a state issue, and states ought to be able to work through this process. And we're winning. The left seems hellbent on pulling defeat from the jaws of victory by focusing on this courts-only strategy. It's a complete and total turnoff to a huge segment of the voting population."

Look, I don't care if gays want to be Republicans. I don't understand it (hell, why not just be a blue dog?) but there are a lot of things about politics I don't understand.

But Mr Barron needs to remember that even if a state passes gay marriage, DOMA makes it second-class. No federal tax application. No immigration recognition - the foreign partner's visa can run out and there's no refuge from deportation. Hell, you can't even have your legal name on your passport, meaning your state ID and passport won't match.

"Let the states do it" isn't enough.

(And yes I know who signed DOMA. Just one of his many disappointing moments.)

Name dropping

Spotted this at TPM:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made headlines for suggesting in a TV interview she'd run for president in 2012 "if nobody else were to step up," but little noticed in that segment was the one-time vice presidential nominee dropping President Obama's middle name.

Imagine my surprise when the quote was

Funny, Greta, we are learning more about Christine O'Donnell and her college years and her teenage years and her financial dealings than anybody ever even bothered to ask about Barack Hussein Obama as a candidate and now as our president.

Wait. That's not dropping his middle name, that's using it.

Maybe it's just me, but "dropping the president's name" isn't the same as "dropping the president's middle name". One's using it to imply friendship and the other is not using it. I've "dropped his middle name" if I say "Oliver Holmes". Or maybe if I call Billy Ray Cyrus just plain "Ray".

But calling Kennedy "John Fitzgerald Kennedy" wasn't "dropping his middle name", and neither is this, telling as it is.

Stick to the French, Alex

Once again, Alex's attempt at a Russian accent lets him down. In the category Rebel Yell was this: "Da! As separatists fighting a rebel war in this Russian region, we've often fought in its capital" Grozhny ... as he pronounced it. But Grozny (Грозный) has a З (Z), not a Ж (Zh).


A tidbit of history: Grozny is the Russian name (it means "terrible" or "threatening") given to the Chechen city the first time the Russians went to war there. Originally, it was called Solzha-gale (Solzha-ghala or Solzhakala (Соьлжа-Гiала, Sölƶa-Ġala). In 1996, during the short-lived independent republic days, it was renamed Dzokhar-Ghala (Джовхар-Гiала, Dƶovxar-Ġala) after Dzhokhar Dudaev, the first president of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. An attempt was made to rename it again in 2005, this time to Akhmadkala after Akhmad Kadyrov, but his son, the current Kremlin-installed president Ramzan, vetoed that as non-democratic.

Happy Birthday, Euripides

This is the day we celebrate the birth of one of ancient Greece's greatest dramatists, Euripides. He reshaped Attic drama by featuring petty and uncaring gods, flawed but human heroes, strong women, and smart slaves.

Of his more than 90 plays, only 19 survive (or is "only" the right word? That's more than from Aeschylus and Sophocles together), among them Alcestis, The Bacchae, Elektra, Iphigenia At Aulis, Iphegenia in Tauris, Medea, and The Trojan Women.

Happy Birthday, Music Men!

Today was a good day for music! John Coltrane (1926), Ray Charles (1930), and Bruce Springsteen (1946), all!

A massed rank of ?

What is the plural of Mercedes-Benz (which I have just this moment learned that Mercedes-Benz itself (the company) wants you to put a hyhen in)? This occurred to me as I read Shamini Flint's first mystery novel, Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder (recommended, btw). Singh is from Singapore, sent to Kuala Lampur to keep an eye on the interests of his countrywoman, former super model Chelsea Lieuw, accused of the murder of her Malaysian husband, Alan Lee, who had just executed a master stroke during their custody battle: converting to Islam and declaring his sons Muslim (Moslem, she consistently spells it). This meant that the Syariah Court would decided who ended up with the kids...

At any rate, back to the topic at hand. Here's Singh, arriving in Malaysia and finding a taxi to take him to his destination:

Singh strolled over to the massed ranks of Mercedes Benz and climbed into the back of the first one.

I am not really sure how I'd pronounce that - both ways seem wrong now - but I would definitely write "Mercedes Benzes". (I think that's how I'd say it, too.) But English orthography is conflicted about final -S or -Z names. Some, such as the CMOS, say at -es for all of them, some for all -Z but not -S that sounds like Z (so, Davises and Rodriguezes, but Jones and Chambers (for Mr Chambers & family, as well as Mr Chamber et al) ... OTOH, we certainly "keep up with the Joneses" and the stupid spell-checker doesn't want a plural morpheme on any of them.

His what-in-law?

Students. Sometimes they amaze you.

For some reason, lots of people working with Russian absolutely quake before the ordeal of using a dictionary like Ozhegov, Dal', or the Bol'shoy Tol'kovyy - in other words, a Russian dictionary, one defining Russian words in Russian. Instead, they stick to the Russian-English dictionaries. And this leads to them into deep and often very strange waters.

For instance, in an article by Vladimir Pribylovsky about Medvedev's first two years in office is this paragraph concerning the split of the Southern Federal District, headed up by Vladimir Ustinov, creating a new district needing a new envoy:

Возможно, именно Медведев выступил с инициативой назначить главой нового Северо-Кавказского округа Александра Хлопонина. Подозреваю, Игорь Сечин не советовал Путину отнимать у своего свояка (дочь Сечина Инга - замужем за сыном Устинова Дмитрием) половину округа. А уж если отнимать, наверное, советовал назначить не Хлопонина, а кого-то другого. Но Путин, выслушав разные мнения, склонился к назначению Хлопонина.

It's probable that it was Medvedev's idea to appoint Aleksandr Khloponin to head the newly created North Caucasus Federal District. I doubt that Igor Sechin advised Putin to take away half of a district from his svoyak (Sechin's daughter Inga is married to Ustinov's son Dmitry). And if it had to be taken away, then most likely Sechin would have advised the appointment of someone other than Khloponin. But Putin, after listening to all his advisers, agreed to appoint Khloponin.

The word in question here is svoyak (свояк), which, so say all the Russian-English dictionaries (or at least the vast majority of them, and all the older, hard-copy ones), means "brother-in-law". Some of them get more specific and say "wife's sister's husband" - yes, Russian has a special word for that. It's got, in fact, four words where English has one; along with svoyak there's zyat' (зять), sister's husband; shurin (шурин), wife's brother; and dever' (деверь), husband's brother); with sister-in-law words to match.

But check that again: Sechin's daughter is married to Ustinov's son. Even if you don't realize that the head of the SFD is Vladimir Ustinov, not Dmitry, that wouldn't make him Sechin's brother in law. Sechin's daughter's husband isn't going to be any kind of brother-in-law to Sechin. (I'm pretty sure the Old Testament and the Orthodox Church have some prohibitions against that sort of thing.)

But that's what it says! they cry.

Yes - that is what is says. So maybe your Russian-English dictionary is missing something.

And in fact, if you check out Ozhegov, or Efremov, or others, you find this:

свояк 1. Муж свояченицы. 2. разг. то же, что свойственник
svoyak 1. husband of a svoyachenitsa (wife's sister) 2. coll. the same as svoystvennik

And any dictionary will tell you that svoystvennik is "a relative by marriage".

And that just makes so much more sense.

So the moral of the story is: don't be afraid of that Russian-Russian dictionary. You know Russian. Learn to read definitions in it.

(Original story in Russian here,, and a searchable collection of Russ-Russ dictionaries here)

Turnin' 'em loose

The current Mark Trail storyline features a gubernatorial candidate who lives near Lost Forest, who is planning to host a big-game hunt for his cronies. The theory is that this will ensure his election. The problem is that the game animals have been imported to his farm and are, as people keep saying, "half tame". Also, he has an adorable step-daughter (who took a fawn home on absolutely no evidence that it has been abandoned (it hadn't, its poor mother watched sadly as her baby was abducted), is keeping it in the kitchen, and has named it "Lucky" - which cannot end well), and today she asks: "Will stepfather get mad if we turn them loose?"

The joker in the pack, such as it is, is this: here are the animals we've seen in the fenced enclosure:


I make that an elk, a pronghorn antelope, a bear (possibly a grizzly), and what look like Dall sheep (possibly bighorns).

What are the odds Mark Trail is going to explore the tragedy of releasing animals into the wrong ecosystem? Yeah, I thought so, but wouldn't it be cool?

Feeling comfortable

This has been in my drafts for a while, can't remember why I never posted it. It's from 2009, in fact, but it's still true.

A story in the my father's local paper reads, in part:

A proposed city ordinance ostensibly aimed at improving access to businesses in the downtown and Downtown North corridor could soon force Knoxville's homeless off public sidewalks for most of the day....

"They want people to feel comfortable walking to their businesses," said Bill Lyons, the city's senior director of policy and communications.

A lot of scanning the archives shows absolutely no stories about danger. Prostitution, yes, but nothing else.

"Feel comfortable" is the key here. You can't feel comfortable looking at homeless people.

But is the answer to keep them out of sight, instead of helping them out?

Here's the source story

Happy Birthday, Stevie

Today in Hull, in Yorkshire, England, in 1902 Stevie Smith was born.


Nor we of her to him

He said no word of her to us
Nor we of her to him,
But oh it saddened us to see
How wan he grew and thin.
We said: she eats him day and night
And draws the blood from him,
We did not know but said we thought
This was why he grew thin.

One day we called and rang the bell,
No answer came within,
We said: She must have took him off
To the forest old and grim,
It has fell out, we said, that she
Eats him in forest grim,
And how can we help him being eaten
Up in forests grim?

It is a restless time we spend,
We have no help from him,
We walk about and go to bed,
It is no help to him.
Sometimes we shake our heads and say
It might have better been
If he had spoke of us to her
Or we of her to him.
Which makes us feel helpful, until
The silence comes again.


more Stevie Smith poems here

The Week in Entertainment

DVD: Some more Dalziel & Pascoe and some of another series, Wycliffe. The latter is very low-key, with a beautiful theme and nice, understated performances in a beautiful place, Cornwall.

TV: Nothing. But new stuff starts soon!

Read: Finished up A Corpse in the Koryo, which was very good, and then Promises to Keep, as lovely as all of de Lint's work.

Chemo hair loss

You know, I'm quite sure actors don't want to do this, but - as someone who had chemo - I'd just like to mention that a bald head accompanied by five-o-clock shadow, on scalp and cheeks, and heavy eyebrows is not a giveaway for chemo. It all falls out. All.

So I'm cutting Andy Dalziel slack, here, for not guessing the old lag has cancer. He looks like he just shaved his head for, yes, "a fashion statement."

Family

On Thursday morning a family of cardinals was flitting around in the trees and bushes as I walked to work. Very briefly, dad and one of the others were on the ground, but then they took to the brush and trees. Their 'here I am' chirps echoed around me, making it sound as though there were dozens of them. I spotted dad in some flowers, then he flew across the path to a tree. Mom was moving around inside the same tall tree, while two - maybe three - juveniles flitted from tree to tree on both sides of the path. As always, though I could spot the others moving about, dad was the only one who really stood out for the camera - though the low light means all the shots are grainy.

Brushfoots in late summer

A few butterflies from this week, all brushfoots. First up, this gorgeous guy is what my book calls a "distinctive brushfoot" and "not likely to be confused with any other". So true! He's a Red Admiral, and brilliant.




Here's a male Monarch, "the most famous butterfly in North America, perhaps the world."





And this one, another brushfoot, is a Common buckeye.



The thing that gets me about buckeyes is that they're not all the same size. I thought butterflies were fully grown when they came out of their chrysalis, which means that buckeyes must comes in lots of sizes.

Happy Birthday, David

Born today in 1933 - David McCallum (my first tv crush, as Illya Kuryakin of course!) It's good to see he's still working.

Sky Watch: Golden Dawn

more Sky Watchers here

On a young willow

A green heron perches on a young willow tree overlooking the pond. It's the same willow the great blue likes to stand under...

Mystery Yellow Bird

This is a yellow something, all right. But I don't know what, exactly. The closest I can find is a Yellow-breasted chat, but that should have a white stripe on its face, which this doesn't. But I'm going to guess that's what I have here - in the early dawn by the edge of the pond, flicking from bush to tree and then gone.

After getting several guesses, I think Grant has it: young male Common Yellowthroat.