words

Word: Wallah

Wallah or Walla

From the Hindi/Urdu suffix -wālā, which has the sense of ‘pertaining to or connected with’ that preceding, which may be compared with the English suffix -er (as in, for example, baker, walker). Thanks to the Raj, in English it has progressed beyond its Indian roots and has come to mean:

  1. One employed in a particular occupation or activity (eg. kitchen wallah; rickshaw wallah).
  2. An important person in a particular field or organization.
  3. One carrying out a routine administrative job; a civil servant, a bureaucrat.

Thus it is also a component of Indian names, eg. Unwalla (originally a wool worker or merchant).

Other examples of Anglo-Indian usage include:

  • banghy-wallah, a porter who carries loads with a banghy or shoulder-yoke
  • dhobi-wallah, a laundry worker (photo right)
  • punkah-wallah, a servant who works a fan
  • Dillī-wālā, inhabitant of Delhi.
quotes

Quotes

Another toffee-bag of recently encountered quotes. This selection seems to be mostly from the cynical and philosophical jars.

Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
[Oliver Wendell Holmes]

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared.
[PJ Plauger]

Reality is something you rise above.
[Liza Minnelli]

War is organised murder, and nothing else.
[Harry Patch; last surviving soldier of WWI]

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
[Voltaire]

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
[George Santayana]

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
[Herbert Spencer]

Finally a gob-stopper from the jar of amusements …

Judge: There’s a certain light connotation attached to the word panties. Can we find another name for them?
Prosecution: I never heard my wife call them anything else.
Judge: Mr. Biegler?
Biegler: I’m a bachelor, your Honor.
Judge: That’s a great help. Mr. Dancer?
Dancer: I was overseas during the war, your Honor. I learned a French word. I’m afraid it might be slightly suggestive.
Judge: Most French words are.
[Wendell Holmes, Anatomy of a Murder; with thanks to Barnaby Page]

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 53

Week 53 and we get to the hardest part of the experiment: not just keeping focus and motivation for the last few weeks but also surviving winter. The greyness has really caught up with me in the last 2-3 weeks. Anyway here is this week’s pick of five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful this week.

  1. Golden Leaves. Yes we still have lots of rich golden leaves on the trees — although fewer today after a very cold night — and they’ve looked just glorious in the winter …
    Golden Leaves
  2. Sunshine. Yes, sorry I have to repeat myself, especially at this time of year, as I really do appreciate every drop of sunshine we get. Not only do I suffer from SAD but I hate dull, grey, damp days. I’d much rather have bright, cold alpine weather.
  3. Nice Scrabble Words. Scrabble, even played against oneself during sleepless nights, is pretty good at keeping the mind active. And being competitive I always want to beat my own best score. I enjoy being able to play unusual, fun or interesting words too. Like GNEISS or DJINN. Neither scored outrageously high but when I played DJINN a few days ago it resulted in a series of four very high scoring moves.
  4. Wine Deliveries. The wine rack is overflowing. Because we thsi week we had three wine deliveris. What do you mean “Why?”? Because (a) the wine rack was almost empty, (b) it’s approaching Christmas and (c) because it’s time for …
  5. Beaujolais Nouveau. No I’m not someone who is sniffy about Beaujoias Nouveau. Partly because we’ve found Nick Dobson Wines who ship wine from a couple of very small producers who create good wines, even in challenging years like this one.

    Vincent Lacondemine, Beaujolais Villages Nouveau. Light, bright, cool, refreshing berry fruits; ruby red, obviously young but oh so drinkable. If anything it’s even smoother than last year’s despite the awful summer. How did I manage to stop at just one bottle? If that’s what the nouveau is like the vintage should be excellent!

    Phillipe Deschamps, Beaujolais Nouveau. Initially much smoother on the palate than the Lacondemine, but not as characterful, thinner with more low molecular weight esters (amyl acetate comes through). Very drinkable, but so far I prefer the Vincent Lacondemine.

    I drink this stuff because I actually like it. We don’t all like to drink heavy, robust red wine all the time. And isn’t all part of enjoying the year’s rich cycle — along with the SAD.

links, science

More Things You May Have Missed …

Another round in our series bringing you links to items you may have missed and which may amuse. In no special order …

So common sense seems to be filtering into government circles with the announcement that there may (notice only may) be a way to vaccinate badgers against bovine TB rather than slaughtering them.

Just so you’re no longer confused, here’s an interesting article on the non-difference between “skeptic” and “sceptic”.

Seems that a lot of those wonderful medieval stained-glass windows in Canterbury Cathedral are early 20th century fakes. My father — brought up in Canterbury — must be having apoplexy in his grave.

I’ve mentioned the Wellington Arch, at Hyde Park Corner, before (here and here). They currently have an exhibition about Egyptian architecture.

Apparently Australian Fairy-Wren chicks have to sing the right password to get fed by their parents. Even more amazingly the female bird teaches them their specific password before they hatch. Mums, what did you teach your child before birth?

Randall Munroe’s brilliant web comic XKCD which often takes a wacky look at science and logic. This week he has produced a blueprint style explanation of the workings of a space rocket in very simple language even readers of The Sun can understand.

Victoria Moore in the Telegraph asks how discerning drinkers can (still) be drinking Beaujolais Nouveau. Well I’ll tell her: we’re not all wine snobs and some of us actually drink it because we enjoy it; we don’t all like thick heavy red wines all the time.

Some while back we reported that archaeologists had found the remains of some old bras under the floor in a medieval Austrian schloss. The bras have now been dated to the late 15th century. Here’s the low down (or should that be the “prominent points”?) on the investigations so far.

Finally, following on from last week’s report of the investigations into the wildlife of the navel, Rob Dunn’s team are making their whole dataset available online so that others can look to see what they can discover from it. So if you fancy some scientific data mining, and maybe getting your name on a discovery, hare’s your chance. All are welcome.

More anon …

words

Word: Djinn

Djinn or jinn.

In Islamic mythology (including the Quran) an order of spirits lower than the angels which is said to have the power of appearing in human and animal forms and which can to exercise supernatural influence over men. Together, the djinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of God.

In Islamic theology djinn are said to be creatures with free will, made from smokeless fire by Allah just as humans were made of clay etc. This free will allows them to do as they choose thus, like humans, the djinn can be good, evil or neutrally benevolent. They are usually invisible to humans, and humans do not appear clearly to them. They have the power to travel large distances at extreme speeds.

Commonly used as the singular to denote an individual spirit.

Like many words it seems to have it’s origins in English in the latter part of the 17th century, I suppose reflecting the increasing importance of international trade and travel. Due to The Thousand and One Nights, and hence Aladdin and pantomime, they are now best known as genies residing in lamps and bottles.

history

Are the Nazis Winning?

Well no clearly they’re not in the strictest sense; they were almost obliterated in WWII. For which we should all be hugely grateful.

However over at Hardcore Zen, Brad Warner (Sōtō Zen priest, author, blogger, Godzilla enthusiast and punk rock bass guitarist) has an interesting take on Nazi Germany which I’d not previously thought about.

Nazi-ism is the antithesis of Buddhism in a lot of ways. One of the least obvious, though probably the most important is that Nazi-ism was completely goal oriented … They wanted a better world, a world unified and at peace.

The Nazis set their sights on a goal. And they were willing to do all sorts of nasty things to make that goal happen. The goal was important. What needed to be done to achieve it was secondary. But goals are problematic. They never really turn out the way you imagine them.

Ironically many of the goals the Nazis were trying to accomplish have come to pass, though not in the ways they would have envisioned or liked. Europe is unified. There is a single currency throughout most of the continent. There is even a common language spoken by people all over Europe. That the language is English and not German, the currency is the Euro and not the Deutsche Mark and the union is presided over from Brussels rather than Berlin might have made them cringe. But many of their major goals have been achieved. That the Nazis themselves had to be destroyed in order that their goals could be achieved probably didn’t fit Hitler’s master plan. But that’s how goal-oriented practice works.

And he’s right, give or take a few local difficulties and a varying value of “better”. No real wonder then that large numbers in this country are very anti the European Union.

None of which, of course, justifies Hitler’s ways and means. Ever!

personal, photography

Gallery: The Eighties

3 Comments

Bravery. That’s what’s called for, at least for many, to do Tara’s Gallery this week. Because the theme is The Eighties. So there’s megatons of opportunity for embarrassment.

Not from here though, as I don’t have much by way of photos from the 80s — at least not scanned or readily to hand — and besides we’ve never been ones for taking loads of snapshots of each other. However I have found these …

kcm76 and Parents, 1984
This first (from 1984) is me (centre left) with my parents at the private view of Jolly Hockey Sticks, an exhibition centred around girls school stories curated by Noreen at what is now the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

Note my already spreading waistline and the Young’s brewery tie. I’m only surprised I don’t obviously have a glass of wine: I would have needed it because this was time when we were paying 17½% interest on our mortgage (3% above base rate). But we survived and even paid the mortgage off several years early. Oh for the “good old days”, formerly known as “these trying times”!


This is the little terraced house I was brought up in during the ’50s and ’60s. It’s seen here in the estate agent’s mugshot from when my parents sold it and moved to Norwich in 1988. Built around 1937 these were the late-30s equivalent of the Victorian “2-up, 2-down”.

Note the state of the garden wall! Those walls were forever falling down as they had poor foundations and were apparently built on an old field ditch!

Floss Cat
And finally this is the first cat Noreen and I had. Well Floss (not our choice of name, he was a rescue) and Pickle came at the same time almost as soon as we had our own house in 1981. This is a serendipitous capture from sometime in the early/mid-80s. The cats didn’t wear collars for very long: they rubbed the fur off their necks and the bells were useless at stopping them chasing birds as they just learnt to run with their chins down to muffle the sound!

words

Word of the Year: Omnishambles

Yep that’s right.

Omnishambles has been declared word of the year. And not by me, but by the Oxford English Dictionary.

I’m sure that we can all guess it means “a situation which is shambolic from every possible angle”. Oh, yes, just like the BBC!

As a word I don’t like it. It is too long, too contrived, too, well … shambolic. But I have to admit it is pretty well descriptive of our times. Think just this last few weeks of Jimmy Savile, the latest BBC “McAlpine” fiasco, Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza, Italian earthquake scientists. And they’re only the ones I can think of immediately.

What I find even more amusing is that good old(ish) word (first recorded 1865 according to the OED) pleb was also shortlisted for word of the year. Now that would have been a even better choice, if only to cock-a-snook at a few people!

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 52

Through the haze of whatever lurgy is trying its best to sink me at the moment here’s my contributions for week 52 of my experiment in documenting five things each week which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful.

  1. Autumn Colours. Although the leaves are beginning to fall quite quickly now we’ve had a frost or two, there’s still some glorious autumn colour around (and a surprising amount of green too) — which looks wonderful on a nice sunny day like today. These photos were taken earlier today in our garden.

    2. Acer Leaf

  2. Baked Ham & Red Cabbage. Earlier in the week we had a baked gammon joint. And delightfully flavoursome, tender and succulent it was too! |To accompany it there was red cabbage: sliced and braised with some onion and cooking apple and then simmered slowly with a glass or two of red wine. Add pepper, caraway seeds, garlic to taste. A most excellent winter warmer veg.
  3. Wasps. Yep we’ve still got our wasps around. Not so many now it is colder, but still the odd few in the house, with more in the attic. They’re mostly a mix of queens and workers, although I’ve seen at least one drone this week.
  4. Rump Steak. Also earlier in the week we had a couple of really juicy and tender pieces of rump steak, courtesy of Waitrose. They have to have been some of the best pieces of steak I’ve ever had, they were just so tender.

    5. Rose Hip

  5. Squirrels. And finally our resident squirrel, we discovered this afternoon, actually is resident — it has build it’s nest in the ivy at the top of our hawthorn tree. While in the garden we saw it running through the trees and Noreen spotted it sitting in its drey, a pair of ears and a beady eye poking over the edge! I like squirrels, despite that they are only tree rats, and I feel honoured to have one nesting in the garden.