Complex Numbers

Running for Precedent

Please note: I will be traveling for a week, starting Friday (for fun this time). Consequently, blog entries might appear at different times than usual. That's if World War 3 doesn't start in the meantime, of course.

Meanwhile, let's wrap up this month's "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+] with a quote, selected at random, that is nevertheless relevant to the world situation right now:

"It is clear now that we live in precedented times."

Another fun thing about English (see entry from two days ago) is that there are words that sound like they should have similar antonyms, but don't. Such as "nonplussed." It means to be perplexed, bemused, floored, flabbergasted, etc. (Yet another fun thing is how some ideas have so many synonyms). But the only time you hear about someone being "plussed" is when someone is commenting on how weird it is that the word "plussed" isn't actually a thing.

Apparently, that one comes from the Latin "non plus," which translates to "no more," so I guess the sense is that you have no more fucks to give to react to whatever some idiot is doing or saying. The opposite of plus in English is minus, but no one's ever nonminused, minused, or plussed. One can give one's undivided attention, but can't be nondivided, and I won't even get into multiplication or exponentiation.

Similarly, we're never gruntled or chalant.

This is distinct from some words that seem to form antonyms but don't, such as flammable and inflammable which, to the consternation of kids and ESL students everywhere, actually mean the same damn thing. (This actually makes sense because "inflammable" is kind of similar to "inflammatory.")

Which leads me to "unprecedented."

No one actually uses it like the author of the above quote, but it's clear that they were trying to riff off of "unprecedented." And it's weird that it's not used, but no weirder than the exclusion of "chalant" from the dictionary.

You want to make a point and have it be remembered? Use a thing that should be a word, but isn't, and that can be instantly understood by the reader.

This is a lot harder than it sounds.

I think it was Mark Twain who said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I mean, that sounds like something Twain would have said. All due respect to the great man (if indeed it was he who said it, which is unclear), but I say it doesn't repeat itself or rhyme, but it echoes.

Some people take the philosophical viewpoint that time is a circle; that, to quote Battlestar:Galactica, "all of this has happened before; all of this will happen again." Well, it's pretty clear to anyone who is actually paying attention that time is linear, no matter how many cycles we try to impose upon it, but there are certain things that reverberate through the ages: wars, uprisings, invasions, economic recessions, philosophy itself, and so on.

All very different from each other, but all with echoes of the ones that came before.

As they say in the Fallout games: War. War never changes.

The Book of Ecclesiastes asserts that "there is nothing new under the sun." Arrant nonsense, of course; you're not going to convince me that smartphones, for instance, aren't "new" (as compared to the technology of, say, 50 years ago). But when you break down what we use smartphones for, well, at base it's about communication. And communication has been going on for at least as long as there have been humans; only the means have changed.

But to think that nothing changes at all? No. The details are always different. And yet we find commonalities, because that's what we do.

There's precedent for that, too.