Welcome; potatoes; coincidences; history jokes

[John Cowan]

Hwaet! Welcome at last to the Hattics mailing list. I see Aidan Kehoe,
AJP Crown, Ben Zimmer, Catanea, D-AW, Empty, Garrigus Carraig, Jamessal,
Levana Taylor, -273, MMcM, Norman Gray, Paul Ogden, and Trond Engen
here, in addition to several list members whose _noms de chapeau_, if
any, I do not know. (_Noms du chapeau_? Alas, no m-l yet, unless she
is well-disguised.) I haven't wanted to send this out until there were
enough people to read it, but I can't wait any longer.

On potatoes (per "Pasternak's Voice"): It's always been my view that
the only European populations to _readily_ accept potatoes were the Irish
and some of the Germans (not all), and only because they were trying to
live off millet and other low-quality grains. Is that right, anyone?

The conversation between Piotr and T.R. in "One shlyag per ralo" seems
to hinge on what counts as remarkableness in a remarkable coincidence.
Piotr's example is certainly closer than T.R.'s, but it does not tantalize
us with possibility (I mean, Dutch/Basque? Not even John E would promote
that one -- Hally, I can't be sure) as the Anatolian/Semitic link does.
The unprovable has more appeal, at least to me, than the obviously
Just Wrong.

A cow orker sent me this link:
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexnaidus/amazingly-nerdy-history-jokes>.
The title is stupid, but the jokes are pretty good. Does anyone know
the actor shown in #4? I presume that in #10, the person is playing
some actual character, not just a generic 18th Century type, but whom?
And again, who is the actor? Finally, who's portrayed in #16 and #21?
Thanks for any help with this.

--
John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan co...@ccil.org
There are books that are at once excellent and boring. Those that at
once leap to the mind are Thoreau's Walden, Emerson's Essays, George
Eliot's Adam Bede, and Landor's Dialogues. --Somerset Maugham

[MMcM]

#4: Some guy who works for the costume company
#6: Should be Proudhon, not Marx.
#10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UAATTYMJSmo#t=103.
#16: Neil deGrasse Tyson.
#21: Darwin.

[MMcM]

European is an important qualification. For example, potatoes were readily accepted by the Coast Salish, whose subsistence diet already included some (much more difficult) tubers. One of the reasons usually given for European hesitance is that it was known to be a Solanaceae and so suspected of being poisonous.

[John Cowan]

MMcM scripsit:

(Who else?)

> #6: Should be Proudhon, not Marx.

Indeed; definitely an anarchist rather than a communist slogan.

> #21: Darwin.

My wife and I guessed it was Shaw (qua member of the Fabian Society), but
the beard isn't quite right. Darwin clearly makes more sense.

Thanks.

--
I could dance with you till the cows John Cowan
come home. On second thought, I'd http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
rather dance with the cows when you co...@ccil.org
come home. --Rufus T. Firefly

[Paul Ogden]

From the notes appended to Larry Zuckerman’s “The Potato: How the humble spud rescued the western world”:

 

BOARD OF AGRICULTURE SERIES

In the mid-1790s, Britain’s Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement commissioned county-by-county agricultural surveys. […] All had virtually the same title: General View of the Agriculture of the County of _____________; with Observations on the Means of Its Improvement. All were published in London […]

 

Several rank highly in a quick Google search. This link leads to copies in several formats of the Devon survey. There’s a table of contents on Page VIII. No mention of parsnips (save, in an appendix, as available as seed), though “kohl rabi” rates an entry. Gardens and orchards are lumped together in a brief section. The only vegetable mentioned by name in the garden section is the leek and the only fruit in the orchards seems to be the apple. I see no mention at all of berries.

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[Trond Engen]

John Cowan <co...@mercury.ccil.org>:

> MMcM scripsit:
>
> (Who else?)
>
>> #6: Should be Proudhon, not Marx.
>
> Indeed; definitely an anarchist rather than a communist slogan.
>
>> #21: Darwin.
>
> My wife and I guessed it was Shaw (qua member of the Fabian Society), but
> the beard isn't quite right. Darwin clearly makes more sense.

Nothing to add to the subject. I'm just making a note to those unacquainted with mailing-lists or Usenet of how John built up his reply:

Attribution:

> Quoted text.

Comment.

We answer below the quotation, preferably immediately below the relevant part. This makes it much easier to follow a conversation. Just as we quote snippets at Hat's.

[Snipping.]

> More quoted [and maybe truncated] text.

Comment. We take out the parts we don't directly reply to. Just as we do at Hat's.

> More quoted text.

Comment.

> Thanks.

And thank _you_!

And finally a signature something like this:

--
Trond Engen
Fra nettbrettet

[Norman Gray]

Greetings.

On 2013 Aug 24, at 01:01, John Cowan wrote:

> A cow orker sent me this link:
> <http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexnaidus/amazingly-nerdy-history-jokes>.
> The title is stupid, but the jokes are pretty good. Does anyone know
> the actor shown in #4? I presume that in #10, the person is playing
> some actual character, not just a generic 18th Century type, but whom?

The character in number 10 looks to me like George Washington (given the jawline supposedly clamped on the spring-loaded false teeth), and doing a google image search for this image corroborates that, in the sense that this appears to be a still from a ... weird car advert. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqpJvey-7-s>

Damn, but google's image search is spookily good!

All the best,

Norman

[marie-lucie]

On Friday, August 23, 2013 11:06:47 PM UTC-3, MMcM wrote:

European is an important qualification. For example, potatoes were readily accepted by the Coast Salish, whose subsistence diet already included some (much more difficult) tubers. One of the reasons usually given for European hesitance is that it was known to be a Solanaceae and so suspected of being poisonous.

The Coast Salish:  potatoes were introduced on the Canadian West Coast with the building of a Hudson's Bay fort in what was to become Victoria.  The HB people planted potato fields for their own use and also for trading the surplus. 

There is a linguistic aspect to this:  further up the coast several languages use the word "skuusiit" which they interpret as follows:  "the while people used to give out potatoes, saying "good seed!".  I think it is a little more complicated:  why would white traders say "good seed" while a) they were not selling potatoes for seed but for eating, and b) in the early days, few native people spoke much English.  What I think happened is that the Salish word was something like "sqewsiit", a word for some sort of local edible tuber which was transferred to the potato.  It is relevant that Salishan languages used the prefix s- to make nouns, so that the word might occur with or without the initial s.  White traders no doubt adopted the word as "(s)gooseet" (using g instead of the foreign q) on their trading trips as this appeared to be the Indian word for "potato".  But non-Salishan natives would have thought that this was the English word!  later, when English became more widespread, so that the natives learned "potato", they must have wondered what "(s)gooseed" could have meant in English, and derived it from "good seed".  

 

[The Hat]

That's great -- I love that kind of tangled lexical tale!