Extremists Use Modern Technology

Just as the 9/11 hijackers used cells phones and the Internet for their purposes, our own extremists from both sides of the spectrum have found a degree of fertile ground by using the same technology. The way out factions send emails out claiming all kinds of nonsense, like Bush was behind 9/11, or Obama was born in another country, knowing full well that there are those whose curiosity, or dislike of a particular person, will cause them to open that email, and then pass it along to others. Thus rumors of all kinds of nonsense circulate unlike ever before in our history. Then when it grows to such a point, cable news takes note and mentions it, and the nonsense gains added life. Then when they beat the story to death, it goes to what I guess we still call the mainstream network news, ABC, CBS, and NBC (and PBS). The person who is, or the people who are, the subject of the rumor are more or less forced to respond, which also adds to the whole circus atmosphere.

Now, do people have a right to send out such emails? I suppose so, it's a free country, although there are laws about libel and slander, and I'm not a legal scholar to say what is, or what is not, legal in all of this. Of course, performers have been subject to all kinds of "scandal" stories for decades in the tabloids strategically placed by the check outs in supermarkets and drug stores. I seem to recall Lucille Ball ("Lucy") took one of these...ah..."publications" to court over some story, and she won! I've got to believe there have been other cases, too. I'm not advocating this process, as it gives these nuts more publicity than they're worth. Like Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels, the ring leaders of this nonsense know that the bigger the whopper, the more attention it will get! I just hope that any of you out there will NOT become party to such stuff. Be careful opening emails from people unknown to you (for one thing, they can contain viruses), and please, please, don't jump to the worst possible conclusions if you do read an outrageous claim in an email or hear the same on radio or television, just because it is about someone you dislike politically. Don't like them, don't vote for them! Don't like them, write a letter or letters to the editor, or engage in some public debate over the issues, but please stay away from this Nazi....I mean nasty...nonsense!
(A word history next time)

Are We Going To Make Things?

There are signs the economy may be stabilizing. Notice I said “stabilizing,” not recovering. Besides the big questions of when a recovery will start, and, more importantly, when unemployment will begin to drop, there is also a question in my mind about American manufacturing. You remember American manufacturing, don’t you? You know, where Americans made things with their hands or operated machinery that made things, and where men and women could get decent paying jobs with benefits, and they didn’t have to know the square root of some number, what the hell Excel was, or know the symbol for copper; which is, ah….ah…well I know, but I just don’t want to make any of you feel dumb.

In reading over some things recently, I found that the U.S. now ranks BEHIND every other “industrialized” nation in percentage of national economic activity that is from manufacturing, except France. (At least the French have an excuse. Hey, you can’t make wine and washing machines too! Or is that, you can’t drink wine and make washing machines too?) According to the World Bank, less than 14% of our economic activity now comes from manufacturing. It makes me wonder how long it will be before we’re no longer called an industrialized nation. And we’ve dropped 4 big percentage points in the last decade!

Will the current administration put together some kind of manufacturing policy for the country? They don’t have to do a hell of a lot to be better than the Bush Administration on this. As millions of manufacturing jobs disappeared, the Bush people gave the standard answer they gave for everything economic: “We can’t do anything about it, this is a free market economy.” Thus Bush and his people answered until the country was on the verge of economic collapse, then they decided it wasn’t THAT MUCH of a free market economy,* and they asked taxpayers for 700 billion bucks to help banks and insurance companies.**

In just six months, the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress are already well ahead of Bush and Co. according to an article by Louis Uchitelle that was published in the NY Times. He says that the “stimulus bill” includes a “Buy America” clause for the purchase of American made goods for infrastructure work. Further, he says, “And trade agreements negotiated by the Bush Administration-agreements that would make the United States more open to imported manufactured goods-have (now) been allowed to languish in Congress.” He also cites government loan guarantees as a way the new administration is trying to jump-start new manufacturing plants, frequently in wind and solar energy equipment. He notes a plant in Toledo where the owner is beginning to make solar panels, and he now has 100 workers. The author further notes that the number of loan guarantees under Bush was zero, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. They didn’t believe in government action, except to cut taxes for very rich folks, and in that, they were great.

That’s not to say that he feels things are perfect now. He also chides the Obama people for following in the steps of the last couple administrations in permitting China to keep their currency at an artificially low rate of exchange, thus hurting American manufacturing. This is a sensitive issue with the Chinese, and I don’t know where it will go. It’s easy to say, “Just put the heat on them,” but for one thing, we need them as some sort of counterbalance to that wacko in North Korea, Kim Jung (mentally) Ill, I mean Il.

Whatever the new administration has already done, we will need much more to revive a sector so devastated by neglect. It is not only a matter of economics, but of national security! (A word history is below)


*Remember many well fed, well supplied Communist leaders in Russia and elsewhere essentially made the point, "We want all people to be equal. We just want to be more equal than the rest of you."

**Something I think was VERY distasteful, but necessary. The point is though, the time to avoid economic collapse was well before the summer of 2008, and they needed to quit hiding behind these “free market” statements.

Word History:
Shimmer-This goes back to an Indo European root "skai," which had the meaning "gleam or shine." The Old Germanic derivative of this was "skim." Old English had "scimerian," which meant "to glitter." (The "sc" was pretty much pronounced like modern "sh.") Close English relative German has "schimmern," and another relative, Swedish, which is North Germanic, has "skimmra." Notice, in North Germanic the "k" sound was retained from the original Germanic, but in West Germanic (English and German), it became the softer sounding "sch/sh."

Consolidating Some Word Histories

These are some word histories from previous blogs that I've done, but that I've now deleted. The reason I decided to delete these actual blogs is that they contained links to news articles I posted, but those news articles are no longer available to anyone clicking on the link; that is, they have expired; thus the reason for the blog is gone, too, but I didn't want to get rid of the "word histories," as they have proven very popular with some people, and even some of the older blogs with the word histories continue to be read for the "words" alone. So, on occasion, you may see a reference to another blog in some of these "words," and now you'll know why. This will probably take some time for me to actually go through everything, so this is just the FIRST consolidation of a few "words" from deleted blogs.

SHEEP-From West Germanic "skaepan." Old Saxon (the Saxon that stayed on the Continent)had "scap," pronounced, I believe, as if in modern spelling "shap," with a short "a," as in "father." Old Frisian, another West Germanic dialect VERY close to English, had "skep." In Old English it was "sceap," with a long "e" and a barely detectable "a." It was also spelled "scep," with a long "e," and pronounced pretty much like we pronounce it today, so obviously that is the pronunciation that caught on and remained. In modern times in the close relatives of English, German has "Schaf" and Dutch has "schaap." There is speculation that the word could be related to the modern German verb "schaffen," which means "to create." The original idea being that a sheep was simply "a creature," but that is unproven at this time. It is not found in North Germanic or East Germanic (there are no East Germanic languages still "living;" that is, still in use.)


HOUND-This came from Old Germanic "khundas," and was derived from Indo European "kuntos." The inital "k" sound died out in Germanic, leaving Old English with "hund," and this was the general word for dog for many centuries until it took on the more specific meaning of a hunting dog. German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish have "hund," and Dutch has "hond." In these Germanic relatives of English, the word still means "dog" in the general sense. So where did we get dog? Hey, don't "hound" me about it!

DOG-So where do we get the word "dog?" No one knows!!! And such a common word! It began to replace "hund/hound" as the general word for this animal, but this wasn't complete until the 1500s. Other languages seem to have borrowed it into their own vocabularies: for example, French has "dogue," meaning "mastiff," Swedish has "dogg," meaning "bulldog," and German has "Dogge," meaning large dog/mastiff." Was this word perhaps an Old English invention or even a transfer of meaning from a similar word, like Old English "docca," or "dock," which meant the cropped tail of an animal? (We still to this day say, "If you're late for work one more time, I'll "dock" your pay!") There's no written evidence of "dog" until like the 11th Century when "docga" appears in English, but it is always possible that the common people used the word, or some form of it, but because few could read or write, it wasn't written down until later.

GRAPE-Since I gave the history of "berry," and it originally meant "grape," I thought I'd better give the history of "grape." Old Germanic had "krappon," which meant "hook." It is also the source of our modern English word, "grapple," as in "grappling hook." Frankish, one of the old Germanic dialects, had a form of this word, and as the Franks were absorbed into the population of what is now France (named after the Franks), the word remained in French (named after the Frankish dialect), and was used to mean "pick or gather fruit from a vine," in the verb sense, or "the hook used to gather fruit from a vine," in the noun sense. Eventually, the word in Old French came to mean a "bunch of grapes," not just one grape, a notion that came later. English picked up the word in the 1200s, and it gradually replaced the native English words for grape, "berie," and "winberige," leaving "berry" to become the word for other types of fruit in English. Old High German had "krapfo," (hook) and German has the archaic "Krapf," which means hooks. I DON'T know this to be a fact, but I'll GUESS that the modern German "Krapfen," which means "doughnut," was a derivative, and because doughnuts have holes, they get "hooked" from the cooking vat, and the process gave the name to the final product.