pigs to swine

It's natural to think that "pig" and "pork" are related words. Certainly, the conjunction of related meanings and alliteration makes it easy to suspect a strong etymological relationship. So far no direct evidence of such exists; if one does, it's not half unlikely that it was an indirect consequence of the Norman invasion.

The etymology of "pork" is well known, derived from Latin porcus via proto-IndoEuropean porko:

porko: young pig. pork; porcine. porpoise: pigfish. It porcellana; relating to a sow; hence the cowrie: Venus shell, from its resemblance to a sow's vulva; from the hard shell, applied by Marco Polo to Chinese ware, via Fr, came porcelain. Du, aardvark: earth pig, a burrowing animal; muzzled hogs have long been used in Spain to root up truffles. Gc, farrow.

Joseph T. Shipley (1984) The Origins of English Words

Was porcus brought via porcine by the French swine? Was Old English

picgbréad [] n (-es/-) glans, mast, pig’s food
a corruption of these? And if so, was picq even the true forebearer of "pig"?

A symbolic form in a language describes (not perhaps very satisfactorily) that class of word that stands somewhere between onomatopoeic words like cuckoo and sizzle on the one hand and ordinary non-echoic words like beauty and bedstead on the other. As one authority puts it, such forms 'have a connotation of somehow illustrating the meaning more immediately than do ordinary speech-forms'. . . .

One symbolic group that has not attracted so much attention is typified by the word pig. 'Rightly is they called pigs,' said some fictional character, presumably a townsman, after a look at life in the sty. So it could be a term of contempt or even loathing, whether applied by an old-fashioned farmer to a domesticated animal or by a slightly less old-fashioned demonstrator to a policeman. That demonstrator might care to know, by the way, that that use of pig was first recorded in the year 1812, only a dozen years after the first policeman or such figure appeared in London. Meaning the animal, pig began to drive out the older word swine in the early nineteenth century, meaning a person probably about 1860.

Pig, it will readily be agreed, is a monosyllable (therefore emphatic) beginning with the sound pi-. There are only a limited number of these possible in English, but three of them do, or can, carry contempt: pimp, the archaic exclamation pish, and good old piss, a term of strong execration when uttered on its own. . . .

Kingsley Amis (posthumous) The King's English

Of course, "swine" also has derogatory connotations, we can see their application in the Latin precursor sus in the Vulgata:

circulus aureus in naribus suis mulier pulchra et fatua
which Shipley renders as "Like a gold ring in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion."

If Amis is right, "pig" appears to have been applied to the police relatively quickly after their appearance, and before solidification of its application to swine. If derived from picgbréad [where is the attestation of picq alone?], then why does its use as a modifier predate its use as a noun? Could contempt for the French oppressors have motivated the derogatory connotations and near immediate application to law enforcement? Or perhaps the nature of the policeman's job is such that comparison with swine is inevitable . . .

the pig stand (houston), r.i.p.

logic for waiters

You are in a restaurant with your parents, and you have ordered three dishes: Fish, Meat, and Vegetarian. Now a new waiter comes back from the kitchen with three dishes. What will happen?

. . . Indeed, two questions plus one inference are all that is needed

J. F. A. K. van Benthem, "Logic and Reasoning: Do the Facts Matter," 2008.

Of course, the answer is indeed "two questions plus one inference," but the example is misleading. Stating the problem with only three diners underspecifies the type of reasoning employed. The waiter could use a simple elimination of alternatives, for example. But two questions plus one inference is also the solution to the n-person case.

The reason, of course, is that waiters can rely on regularities in the structure of the situation. In particular, the vast majority of eating arrangements are topologically equivalent to a circle. If the waiter who takes the orders writes them in sequence, the waiter delivering the food can arrange the plates in order on his tray. Then, one question to orient himself on the circle, and a second to establish the direction in which the order was taken, is enough for the waiter to complete distribution of dishes. I have seen this practice employed frequently for tables of four to five people, but in principle it could be applied to any size table (so long as the waiter can fit the dishes (or drinks!) in sequence on his tray).

Strictly speaking, a further convention could establish an even more efficient distribution system. If the two waiters agree previously on a directionality (say, clockwise), a single question will be sufficient to establish the order. Most likely this further convention is not employed due to the restriction it places on the order-taking waiter. He must be free to submit to customers' whim, and removing a degree of freedom from his order-taking practice would greatly reduce that ability.

In fact, this method for delivering dishes is noticed more often in the breach, when the delivering waiter attempts to deliver a dish without asking and discovers it is wrong. Frequently, the cause is a violation of convention in the order on the ticket caused initially by the unwillingness of the customers themselves to follow the order of order-taking preferred by the initial waiter.

ironwolf

Howard Chaykin circa 1974: "Ironwolf" serialized in Weird Worlds.

Lord Ironwolf is a noble turned terrorist who'd rather destroy his homeworld's rarest treasure than allow it to be used by the empress's hegemony (and does).

In this early work, Chakyin's trademark use of onomatopoeic visuals and cinematic breadth is already on display. Of particular note are the slow motion sequences: close analyses of violent action.

three: the holy trinity: face cards: triangles: separation of powers: pyramids: UFOs: more than two less than four: french hens: persistence of vision

life imitates art

for the win

Forgery of Matisse by Elmyr; going price: $3,500

more pro-smoking science

The most recent issue of Science reports on a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research concerning the relative public health risks of smoking and obesity:

In the past 15 years, smoking has decreased by 20%, but the number of fat Americans has increased by 48%. By 2020, the team calculates that obesity will rob an 18-year-old of 0.7 years of life on average and 0.9 years of "quality of life."

The average gain for an individual from not smoking—0.3 years—is more than offset by the loss of more than a year from weight gain, the authors reported last week in The New England Journal of Medicine. Even if obesity increases level off to as little as 0.15% per year, they'll swamp overall gains from nonsmoking by 2020.

Given the well known and documented power of nicotine as an appetite suppressant, this looks like yet another argument in favor of the public and personal health benefits of smoking. I can see the public service announcement now:

Add an average of .4 years to your life: smoke!

wisdom and superstition

. . . All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifters the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson recounts the travels and wisdom of Ulysses. The Norton Anthology of Poetry footnotes "Hyades" with this gloss:

A group of stars in the constellation Taurus, believed to foretell the coming of rain when they rose with the sun.

Now, what is the implication of "believed to foretell"? Suspicious connotations of superstition and mythological mumbo jumbo!

Yet the passage of the constellations through the skies bears a direct causal relation to the seasons—both are correlated with our yearly passage around the sun. Determinations of season and, correspondingly weather, can be made from our position in the cycle through the zodiac. As it happens, the rising and setting of the Hyades corresponds to the rainy seasons in spring and fall, in particular, the notorious rainy season in April.

So, the association between the Hyades and rain is not a mere mythological superstition but a demonstration of reliable calendrical knowledge.