You hear that, Mr Andersen?

RPS, Etymology, Art

Sometimes, you see something, and it sparks an idea; and then, before you know it, it's all Rock/Paper/Saddam.

Speaking of the whimsical, one of the reasons I like Dinosaur comics is puns in Greek -- it's enter-ucational! ;)

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One of the books that I recently finished was nominally a study of the Roman alphabet, but also included plently of excursions into etemology and the politics of the Ancient Mediterranian. It was quite a fun read, and it was kinda cool, while watching The Man Who Knew Too Much and the question of the meaning of "chapel" came up, to be able to go, "Yeah, it's from the same kind of root word as chapeau, and originally meant 'hooded cape', and then came to refer to the shrine within which the chapel of a saint stood; wait, I've got a reference in my bag..."

(I'm also moderately useful for crossword puzzles, pub quizes and Trivial Pursuits, though not for any sports questions, and not always if you wanted a succinct answer. :)

One thing that I learned that I thought was kinda awesome was that the question-mark (which was a relatively late development) is actually a stylised "q" over an "o", because it's meant to be a contraction of quaestio (query, question). Similarly, the exclamation mark is an "I" over an "o" is either for interiectio (interjection) or io (Hey!). Since they were introduced specifically to help the reader work out the tone in which things should be read, you could see them as the "lol"s of their day -- and no doubt those that object to ^_^ and the like being sprinkled about would have, in an earlier age, objected to the gratuitous and unnecessary "?" and "!". After all, if it's not clear from the sentence how it should be read, you haven't written lucidly enough!

The book also played right into my weakness for puns by mentioning in passing that "Latin lovers often have Roman hands." :)

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I don't understand art. Or more specifically, I don't understand how the art market works. For exmple, why is the picture to the right worth $95k+? It just seems alien to me that someone would value a piece of canvas like that more than a third of a house... and they're unlikely to have any connection with its creation. However, I guess you're not just paying for the object; you're also paying for the history of the object, and the associations that the object has.

However, when artworks become like a more sophisticated form of personalized license plate, bought in the hopes that it will increase in value because everyone else wants to buy it off you (and they want to buy it because other people want it)... it seems like something is broken, somehow. This isn't meant to be a commentary on the artistic worth of Mr Hotere's work, which I'm obviously unqualified to speak about; instead, it's about the fact that I can't imagine spending five or six figures on anything that didnt' let me do something.

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Speaking of art, and in honour of the inestimiable Morgue, I present morgueFile, a resource of free image reference material. I suspect that this is a site that's launched a thousand Worth1000 contest entries. And who could ask to do more than that? :)

Posted by svend at September 15, 2005 2:44 PM