The 'F' Word

This is a word, I think most people use at least once in a while, if not on a regular basis.  It's been around for a while as one learns from the piece below by Melissa Mohr, which I have reposted from The Huffington Post.  I wouldn't say I employ the 'F' word regularly,  but there are  times, good and bad, when it is the epithet that erupts instinctively.

My response to anybody who says they've never used the 'F' word is, 'I don't f*cking believe it.

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A F*cking Short History of the F-Word
by Melissa Mohr

Once upon a time, the English population was decimated by the plague. The King was so concerned about the shrinking number of his subjects that he ordered his people to reproduce. His proclamation, "Fornicate Under Command of the King"--"F.U.C.K" for short--was the source of our favorite swearword.

Unfortunately this story isn't true, nor is pretty much any etymology of a swearword that involves an acronym. Shit cannot be blamed on cargoes of manure exploding in the middle of the Atlantic (Ship High in Transit), while the British word naff cannot be attributed to "not available for fucking." (Why naff needed an acronym is puzzling. It originated as a word in the 1960s gay slang language Polari--isn't that interesting enough?) The two great exceptions are snafu (situation normal: all fucked up) and fubar (fucked up beyond all recognition), which grew out of the military's RFA (rage for acronyms) in World War II.

Fuck isn't an Anglo-Saxon word either. Some of today's swearwords did indeed originate in Old English, including shit, arse, turd, and the British bollocks. The f-word is of Germanic origin, related to Dutch, German, and Swedish words for "to strike" and "to move back and forth." It first appears, though, only in the 16th century, in a manuscript of the Latin orator Cicero. An anonymous monk was reading through the monastery copy of De Officiis (a guide to moral conduct) when he felt compelled to express his anger at his abbot. "O d fuckin Abbot," he scrawled in the margin of the text. We can be sure when this was because he helpfully recorded the date in another comment--1528. It is difficult to know whether the annotator intended "fucking" to mean "having sex," as in "that guy is doing too much fucking for someone who is supposed to be celibate," or whether he used it as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay; if the latter, it anticipates the first recorded use by more than three hundred years. Either is possible, really--John Burton, the abbot in question, was a man of questionable monastic morals. It is interesting as well that while the annotator has no problem spelling out "fucking" (except for the g), he refuses to write out a word that is most likely damned. To this monk, damnation is the real obscenity, the one that can be hinted at but not expressed in full.
There are at least two instances of fuck dated before that of our monk, but scholars sometimes deny them the glory of first use because one is Scottish and one appears in code, with a Latin verb conjugation. The Scots poet William Dunbar, himself a former Franciscan friar, penned these lines (translated here into modern English) sometime before his death, in 1513:

He embraced tight, he kissed and groped,  As if he were overcome with desire.
Yet it seemed from his behavior he would have fucked [fukkit].

The coded example is also from a poem, dated 1475-1500, this one attacking the Carmelite friars of the town of Ely. It is macaronic, that is, written partly in English and partly in Latin, with the dirty bits "concealed" in the most basic of ciphers:

Non sunt in cœli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. ...Fratres cum knyvys goth about and txxkxzv nfookt xxzxkt.

For each letter of code, you simply substitute the previous letter of the alphabet. From the first line, making allowances for late medieval spelling, the decoding gets you "fuccant wivys of heli." So the first line comes out in modern translation, "They [the monks] are not in heaven, because they fuck the wives of Ely." The second bit of code unciphers to "swivyt mennis wyvis," with the whole line reading "Brothers with knives go about and swive men's wives." Swive was a direct word for copulation in the Middle Ages, familiar to readers of Chaucer. To this author, it was apparently as bad a word as its synonym, also requiring at least the pretence of concealment. It is unclear whether the words are censored because swive and fuck are thought to be obscene, worse in themselves than the other words in the poem, or because the sexual sins of which the author accuses the monks are so horrible they cannot be stated outright. What is clear is that you didn't want to mess with any Carmelite friar looking for oppljf.

Fuck appears to have hit its stride by the late 16th century. In 1598, John Florio published an Italian-English dictionary intended to teach people these languages as they were really spoken. Florio's dictionary is thus full of fucks. He defines the Italian fottere as "to jape, to sard, to fuck, to swive, to occupy," for example, while fottitrice is "a woman fucker, swiver, ... etc." and fottitore the male equivalent.

But while the f-word was common in the period, it was not a swearword. It was simply a direct and increasingly impolite word for sexual intercourse. Only in the early to mid-nineteenth century did it begin to be used non-literally, as most swearwords are, to insult and offend others, to relieve pain, and to express extremes of emotion, negative and positive. In other words, it took roughly three hundred years to make the transition from "he fucked her" to "that's fucking awesome!"

Melissa Mohr is the author of Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

How to Change the World

Found this in a Facebook entry from the Richard Dawkins Foundation.

Chesher's Memory Bubbles

I have a friend that lives a life more than a few people dream about. He is a marine biologist. His name is Richard Chesher. He and his wife Frederique have been living on their sailing yacht, Moira for the last forty or so years. During that time, they have  anchored now and then in pretty much every island nation in the South Pacific. The last time I had a chance to spend time with Rick and Freddie, they were based in the harbor at Port Vila in Vanuatu.  For the last few years, they have spent most of their time in New Caledonia, a South Pacific island nation with ties to France. French is the official language in New Caledonia.

In recent years, Richard Chester has elevated himself from being just an excellent photographer to elite world class status.   His work showcases the remarkable beauty of the pacific islands and the mostly still pristine marine environment around them.  More recently, he's been using a rig he designed himself using GoPro cameras to produce images of the marine environment that are technically amazing and breathtaking. They showcase the beauty of his home environment in rotatable, 360 degree panoramic images. They allow the viewer to stand where Chesher stood, or, better stated, be where he was when he captured the image in question.  The latter is the proper way to describe what he does because so many of his images are shot in the marine environment, many underwater, and remarkably,  some straddling the surface interface of sky, land, and water. Chesher calls these images memory bubbles.

I am amazed at what Richard Chesher accomplishes from his home base, a 44 foot long motor sailing yacht named Moira. 

Take a moment to enjoy some of the great photography of marine biologist, Dr. Richard Chesher.

Each still image that follows includes a link to a 360 degree rotatable, 'virtual reality'  version. Prepare to be dazzled.

Sea Eagle Nest

Here is the link to Richard Chesher's amazing image of Sea Eagles on an uninhabited isle in New Caledonia...  http://www.360cities.net/image/ua-eagles#28.63,2.21,110.0

Click to the full screen version and rotate the next image.  You will see Chesher's vessel, Moira anchored in the background, and if you look closely, Rick's wife Freddie cane be seen in fins and snorkel.

 https://www.360cities.net/image/diving-spots-new-caledonia-ua-reef#23.43,1.87,80.0

 

 http://www.360cities.net/image/underwater-scenic-overlook-kouare-new-caledonia#356.90,6.30,70.0

If you take a moment to link to these images in all their virtual reality,  memory bubble glory,  click on the comments icon below the image and leave an expression of appreciation.

Thanks, Rick and Freddie. The world is better because of the wonderful contributions the two of you make to it.

WTF Americans

Telling it like it is....

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Bumptious

In 1910, the Edison Company was making some of the very first movies designed to entertain.  They were silent. I mean totally silent.  No audio track at all. When these first movies were shown in theaters, they were most often accompanied by a pianist.  In the top theaters in places like New York and Los Angeles, these silent films might also have backstage people operating sound machines.

backstage wind machine

The definition of bumptious is a person overly confident  or arrogant.

A series of short movies were made around 1910 that featured a character named, Mr. Bumptious.  The one attached is about an arrogant fool from the Inspector Clouseau School of Acting. It's a very engaging reflection of the culture and technical sophistication of that era.

 

 

 Amazing how far we've come in less than a hundred years.

Here is a You Tube link to the Edison silent, Mr. Bumptious Papered the Parlor.      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDOkdYtim4

A Pilot Named Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford, 'A' List movie actor, is a big league aviation buff. I just ran across this video that features him talking about his love of flying as he pilots his single engine, DE Havilland Beaver.

Over the years, Ford has lived a relatively normal life away from Hollywood. He's kept his personal life private despite his fame.  This video offers a glimpse of the real person behind the Hollywood hype. When Harrison Ford talks about flying, it is clearly one of the great joys of his life.

Harrison Ford

Here is the  link to Harrison flying his DE Havilland Beaver...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsgiEubacT0

Cascadia

Here is a beautiful seven minute video that showcases fearless young men in kayaks purposefully challenging giant tropical waterfalls.

When I see young people like this asserting themselves, risking their lives in harrowing adventure, I admire them, and at the same time I'm hoping they are also directing some of that energy and courage to the great  man-made challenges of our time. Climate change for instance. These are the kind of bold personalities that need to be on the front lines in the battle for social, economic, and environmental sanity. 

Here is the link to the very impressive Cascadia video... http://vimeo.com/57343365