March 2010
31 Mar, 2010
The word fool comes from the Latin word follis, meaning a bag or sack, a large inflated ball, a pair of bellows. So a fool referred to a person that resembled the bellows or the inflated ball – a windbag.
Fool first meant a mentally deficient person, an idiot. Then it was used to describe a member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment by joke telling or peculiar antics. It was not always clear whether the fool was a professional entertainer (otherwise known as a jester) or an amusing idiot.
So what is the modern fool? The negative definitions are someone who:
- is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding
- acts unwisely on an occasion
- has been tricked, duped or made to appear ridiculous
But to be called a fool is not always a bad thing. Nowadays a fool can be a person:
- with a talent or enthusiasm for a certain activity (eg a dancing fool)
- who subverts convention or varies from social conformity in order to reveal a spiritual or moral truth
In Tarot, The Fool card can stand for a new start. When it turns up you could be ready to make a move – it can be renewal and a brand new beginning.
So today? While everyone is being an April Fool telling people that their flies are undone or that their shoelaces are untied I encourage you to be a networking fool. Don’t waste your time on pranks. Make a brand new beginning to your networking efforts. How?
Treat the day as a day for enthusiastic networking activity. Get excited! Use the day to change the way you talk to people. If you are shy or just getting a bit jaded I want you to challenge yourself. Your homework today is to do at least three of the following:
- Ring a friend that you haven’t spoken to for a year
- Ring an old customer that you haven’t spoken to for a year
- Talk to a complete stranger on the bus, train or in a café (but not in a park in the middle of the night)
- Engage in a conversation with someone that you only ever say hello to – ask the waiter or waitress at the café if they are having a good day
- Sign up to join a new club, Rotary, Lions, or a sporting club to meet people in the community – join the Chamber of Commerce
- Is there a business referral that needs to be chased up? Do it today
What is the worst thing that can happen? You might look like a networking fool!
28 Mar, 2010
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
So says Matthew’s Gospel 5:5 (and also Psalm 37). This is the third of the eight beatitudes, preached by Jesus Christ in his Sermon on the Mount, which were presented as virtues that would be rewarded by God with salvation.
Meek was originally used to translate mansuetus (related to mansuetudo meaning tameness) from the Latin text of the Bible.
Meek comes from Middle English meke (around the 12th century) which meant gentle, courteous and kind. It originated in Old Norse from mjūkr, meaning soft. However in the 14th century it also took on a meaning of submissiveness. To find out the modern definition I did a little bit of a survey from online and my collection of out-of-date, international dictionaries.
My Shorter Oxford (Third Edition 1973) from the UK defines meek as:
- gentle, courteous, kind, merciful, indulgent
- free from self-will; piously humble and submissive; patient and unresentful
- submissive, humble; easily put upon
My Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary (1976 Edition) from the US defines it:
- Having a patient, gentle disposition
- Lacking spirit or backbone, submissive
My Concise Macquarie (First Edition 1982) from Australia defines meek as:
- humbly patient or submissive
On line the Dictionary.com (based on the Random House Dictionary 2010) :
- humbly patient or docile, as under provocation from others
- overly submissive or compliant; spiritless; tame
- Obsolete. gentle; kind
But if we aspire to inherit the earth, how do we recognise the characteristics of meekness that we need. The difference between the gentle, courteous, pious and kind type of meek (the virtuous meek) and the submissive, compliant, spiritless type of meek (the non-virtuous meek) is quite large. The meaning, however, is seldom clear from the context. The difference between the good meek and the bad meek is not a matter of context but intent.
You can be meek because you choose to be gentle and courteous due to your pious and kind nature. This is a virtue resulting from choice and strength of character
Alternatively you can be meek because you are compliant and submissive due to your weak and spiritless nature. This is not a virtue as it comes without choice and from a weakness of character.
Meek is still used in the modern translation of the third beatitude to represent a virtuous state deserving of the future of the world. The Bible is an active and current publication and its use of meek, particularly in the Third Beatitude, demonstrates its sense as a virtue rather than its sense as a weakness.
In defining the quality of meekness last century, Arthur Walkington Pink (1886 – 1952), an influential biblical scholar, wrote:
Some regard it’s meaning as patience, a spirit of resignation; some as unselfishness, a spirit of self-abnegation; others as gentleness, a spirit of non-retaliation, bearing afflictions quietly.
So, dear dictionary writers, if the good meaning of meek is obsolete we must either get the biblical translators to replace it with something like:
Blessed are the patient, unselfish and gentle for they will inherit the earth.
Or be afraid for the future because your dictionaries have given the world away to the wrong people:
Blessed are the compliant, submissive and spiritless for they will inherit the world.
25 Mar, 2010
Sometimes it appears that paying a professional copywriter to write your business communications (your brochures, newsletters, media releases, website, etcetera) is an unnecessary expense. So why pay for a professional copywriter?
- General knowledge – a good business and general knowledge is an absolute necessity for a copy-writer to avoid plagiarism, clichés and to ensure topicality. Making your material unique.
- Qualifications – specific knowledge is often not as important as academic training which provides researching and analyzing skills and the ability to formulate a convincing argument. Creating a response.
- Specialised communications knowledge – goes beyond spelling and grammar to the effectiveness of written communications in different media and in different channels. Helping your readers to engage.
- Delivery skills – nowadays a copywriter needs to understand and utilise a range of software products that save time and money in creating and presenting information, particularly on the web. Providing efficient service to the client.
- Commitment – professional copywriters are motivated towards delivering high quality work that is fit for the purpose and is delivered on time to agreed deadlines. Providing value for money.
- Ethics – a professional copy-writer always meets a standard of behaviour towards a client that includes confidentiality and reliability. Guaranteeing a good business relationship.
- Indemnity – if the result of work by professional copywriters results in legal proceedings or business problems the losses are covered by their professional indemnity insurance. Minimising customer risk.
- Efficiency – professional experience means that material is created quickly without the wasted time that inexperienced writers create as they learn on the job. No wasted time, effort or money.
- Management skills – copywriting projects involve other contributors so people-skills and industry knowledge are needed to manage contributors as well as designers, proof-readers, web-architects, printers and photographers. Smooth delivery.
- Creativity – copywriting is an art as well as a science and professional writers have to make their material interesting to engage their readers. Magic!
20 Mar, 2010
Since I started to watch American TV programs as a boy I have always been fascinated by the different vocabulary that Americans use to describe their domestic waste. Perhaps this interest started for me with Oscar the Grouch, from Sesame Street, who lived in a garbage can and not a rubbish bin. In the US suburban sitcoms of the sixties it seemed that the father/husband characters, were, without argument, responsible for taking out the trash every week. More recently watching the urban forensic dramas I see that the garbage ends up in a dumpster (along with the dead body, several pieces of evidence and quite often a homeless person).
Now the vocabulary is quite different in Australia. When we take the bin out (not the can) it contains our rubbish (as it does in the UK). Garbage is more often used to describe something lacking in value. If we have a lot of rubbish to throw out we use a skip (like a dumpster but mostly without a lid).
In the US the trash collector, and in Australia the garbageman (garbo), picks up the rubbish and takes it to a dump in his garbage truck. However in the UK a dustman will pick up the rubbish in his dustcart (perhaps a refuse lorry) and take it to a tip; these are historic carryovers from when the major waste from houses in England was the dust from their domestic fireplaces (or as Dickens describes it in Our Mutual Friend, “…coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust, crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust, all manner of Dust”.)
But when we drop our lolly (Australian for US candy and UK sweet) wrappers on the ground we are all littering and the result is litter. However, when we pick it up in Australia it goes in a rubbish bin not a trash can (as it would in the US) or into a dustbin (as it would in the UK).
But why should Americans choose to use garbage or trash cans rather than rubbish bins? Is this a deliberate divergence or just happenstance?
Rubbish, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, dates from about 1400 and is derived from rubouses (1392), which relates to rubble and is of unknown origin. (By the way, the verb to rubbish meaning to disparage and criticize harshly was first used in Australian and New Zealand slang).
Garbage, first seen in 1422, originally meant giblets of a fowl and waste parts of an animal, and was likely later confused with garble in its sense of siftings and refuse. It may be related to the Old French, jarbage, which meant a bundle of sheaves, entrails.
Trash, meaning anything of little use or value, was first used in 1518, perhaps from a Scandinavian source as the Old Norse word, tros, means rubbish, fallen leaves and twigs; the Norwegian trask for lumber, trash, baggage; and the Swedish trasa for rags, tatters. Trash was first applied to domestic refuse or garbage in 1906 in the US. (It was first applied to ill-bred persons by Shakespeare).
Litter, has evolved from the Latin, lectus, for a bed, to the straw used for bedding (the 1400s) and eventually to scattered and disorderly debris similar to what you see with strewn straw. To litter as to strew with objects is from 1713, litterbug is from the 1940s, and littering as in the dropping of litter is from 1960.
Trying to find a modern difference in meaning between garbage, rubbish and trash is almost impossible. However, the Americans, using garbage in preference to rubbish for domestic waste are probably closer to the original meaning of garbage as animal offal, which, in the days before junk mail and packaging, would have been the only household waste apart from, of course, dust.
7 Mar, 2010
I was working at my computer when my son asks me: “Dad, what’s a luchador?”
Since he had spent the last week continuously playing Smack Down versus Raw 2010, a pro-wrestling game on his Playstation (and beating up his little brother), I hazarded a guess it was a type of wrestler. I had to make sure so did a bit of googling.
Wonderful Wikipedia tells me that a luchador (a fighter, from Spanish) is a professional Mexican wrestler, and that lucha libre (free fighting, from Spanish) is the form of wrestling performed. Lucha libre is distinctive from other forms of professional wrestling because of its wide array of wrestling holds and high-flying acrobatics moves. The luchador most often wears a mask.
In Argentina lucha libre is also known as catch, or as catch as catch can. In Peru they call it cachascán and wrestlers are known as cachascanistas.
As in professional wrestling, the luchadores divide into two main categories: rudos, the rude ones (who are the bad guys, and equivalent to professional wrestling’s heels), and técnicos, the technicians (the good guys, and equivalent to pro-wrestling’s faces). Técnicos play by the rules and have formal, spectacular combat styles whereas the rudos tend to be brawlers.
The luchador’s mask plays an important part. It is grounds for disqualification for a luchador to remove an opponent’s mask. The masks reflect the wrestlers’ characters and are designed to resemble heroes, animals, or gods. The characters tend to be abstractions such as: the Fear, the Horror, or the Nazi. There is also a Médico Asesino (Dr. Death).
Half-comatose on a long-haul flight a few years ago, I found myself watching Jack Black in Nacho Libre. I did not realise at the time that the film was loosely based on the life of Father Sergio Gutierrez, known to Mexicans as Fray Tormenta (Brother Tempest), a priest who financed his orphanage by working as a luchador. There is a very good Sports Illustrated story online about Fray Tormento and the lucha libre which I recommend and from which I also sourced much.
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