Idioms and Their Origins

By way of moving away from political ridicule I thought I'd share my puzzlement for the evening. Where does the phrase, "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a fill in the blank" come from? It was on an episode of MASH this evening and I was suddenly struck with it. Why would anyone swing a dead cat? or a live one? and what would a person be liable to hit with a dead cat? So many questions.

I can only think of one literary reference to dead cat swinging, and that's from Tom Sawyer when they bring a dead cat to the graveyard to swing around as some sort of wart removal superstition. Does this phrase come from this particular superstition? Or did Mark Twain pull it from previously existing idioms? Anybody else come up with any references or possible origins?

Torture ban update

President George W. Bush did a good thing today, and should be commended for it. He agreed to the torture ban. Full stop. No immunity for people who break the rules, no CIA exception. Read the story here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10480690/

The bill with the torture ban amendment still has to make it all the way through Congress before the President signs it, but today's agreement makes me optimistic.

And so many Iraqis voted that they had to keep the polls open an extra hour.

So I will talk about Iran on a different day. Today was a good day.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

That's right, folks, it's beginning to look a lot like The Holidays. We have Holiday greeting cards sent out by the President, Holiday sales, Holiday--er--Winter break. And people are upset. There's an amazing article online all about it, but there were so many horrible and ridiculous things said in it I had to reprint some of them here (the link to the full article is at the end of the post).

In a stunning competition for Dumbest Protest Ever by People Who are Christians, we have the folks who hate the President's greeting cards, those who are mad about Holiday sales, and the ones who can't stand Winter break. Let's dispense with the Winter break folks first. Hello, anti-Winter break folks. I have been in school for the past 17 1/2 years of my life. I don't just get Christmas Day off. I also get New Year's Day off, plus two to four weeks of Other Days that are in fact not Christmas Day. I would want/need this time off between semesters even if Christmas were in June. Christmas is not the reason school gets let out. So don't get your shorts in a knot.

Now for the kids in the "I hate Bush's greeting cards" corner. Here's a fun quote: "Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it." " Well Joe, I would throw it out, too, but that's because I really don't care about impersonal cards from people I don't know. I used to get birthday cards from my parents' life insurance agent. I threw those out, too.

Check this out: "At the Catholic League, Donohue had just announced a boycott of the Lands' End catalogue when he received his White House holiday card. True, he said, the Bushes included a verse from Psalm 28, but Psalms are in the Old Testament and do not mention Jesus' birth." Right. Because we never use Old Testament passages to refer to the birth of Christ. I mean, I can't think of any, ISAIAH can you?

Fortunately, we have the voice of a well-reasoned Democrat: "I think it's more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards," said the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman. Um, because Jesus is really big on war planning? Is this guy thinking Crusades, or what? I'm not even a pacifist and this comment has me completely disturbed.

And of course the big man from Liberty weighs in on the card debate: "To some religious conservatives, [including an Old Testament verse in the card] makes all the difference. "There's a verse from Scripture in it. I don't mind that at all, as long as we don't try to pretend we're not a nation under God," said the Rev. Jerry Falwell."

Although it's hard to resist commenting on that last, I will for the sake of space, because I still have to mention some tidbits about Holiday sales. "Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss....has called for a consumer boycott of Target stores because the chain issued a holiday advertising circular that did not mention Christmas." I am not making this up. People are upset about the names of sales. Not only that, Christians are angry because this makes it appear as though CHRISTMAS IS BECOMING LESS COMMERCIALIZED!!! Horrors. We can't actually celebrate the Incarnation, when God the transcendant Creator broke into the world in an entirely new and different and unique way by becoming human. We can't rejoice that Jesus began with his birth down a path that would ultimately lead to his sacrificial death, triumphant resurrection, and the availability of salvation to the whole human race. No! That's not good enough! We must have sales!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10355980/

Score One for the Liberal Arts

Despite my previous disgust with the quality of the editorial writers at the Purdue paper, I'm forced to admit that they have at least one person on staff who seems to have his head on straight.

That's right, in the midst of this bubble filling, degree churning, assembly line of an engineering school, Mr. Evan Kelsay is advocating for the liberal arts. Since coming to Purdue I've sworn up and down that no child of mine will be attending a large state school for undergraduate work; too little professor contact and too much emphasis on grades over learning. So hurrah for Mr. Kelsay for renewing my hope in the large university. Apparently it is possible to get (or at least try to get) a liberal arts education here. Watch out HU, you may not be quite so unique after all.

Read Mr. Kelsay's excellent editorial here.

Graduate Student Strike

As most of you probably know the graduate students at NYU have been on strike for a while now. I'm not really interesting in discussing the merits of such activities right now, because I really don't know enough details (although, if striking could get me out of this blasted staff fee and into less expensive, reasonably located parking, I might consider it). But apparently these striking grad students have affiliated themselves with the UAW. Does that strike anyone other than me as being just a touch strange? What could the average UAW member possibly have in common with phD candidates aside from standing to benefit monetarily from collective barginning? I don't know about the UAW, but it seems like the students might actually have something to lose by allying themselves this way. As much as we hate to admit it, alot of the academic world is about prestige and living in that ivory tower above the unwashed masses. Doesn't a grad student lose a bit of that by saying, "I'm part of the UAW"? (no offense toward the UAW or its members is intended, 'cause let's be honest, I'm from Michigan) It's all very strange to me.


Read an article about the strike in the Opinion Journal here.

Alito Confirmation Questionaire

I've started listening to NPR in the morning for lack of any decent music stations in the Lafayette area and am actually finding some interesting stuff. This morning, they were carping on about Alito, Roe v Wade etc blah, blah, blah. In the midst of this endless and rather repetitious discussion, it was mentioned that the questionaire Alito filled out for congress was posted online. Having a natural curiosity, and time in which to indulge it during 115 lecture, I naturally found it and skimmed over it. Most of it was really of no interest to me except out of pure nosiness. You'll be happy to know that you too can know the breakdown of the net worth of the possible next member of the Supreme Court. Also, apparently Alito belongs to his neighborhood tennis association. Doesn't that sound dangerous.

However, at the tail end, on pages 60-62, a section is given over to the subject of judicial activism. I was all prepared for something interesting, but his response seems to be just a lecture about separation of powers amoung the branches of the government. How disappointing! So what's the point of these questionaires anyway? Could a reasonably intelligent congressperson (let's not be sexist here) actually discern anything important from them? Or is this whole process just another chance to glorify one's own party (superheros with capes) while vilifying the other (drooling morons whose sole goal is life is to take food from the mouths' of children and feed it to their pet dogs)?

So, maybe I'm just really cynical about politics, but really, what's the point of this confirmation kerfuffle anyway? Republicans appoint conservatives, Demecrats appoint liberals, end of story. That's what happens, let's move on and talk about something important.

Read the questionaire here.

Read carping about Roe v Wade here.