My weekly attempt to blast the relentless meteor of ignorance, using the Bruce Willis of retained learning. Or something.
This week, a smidgeon of Ancient Greek, having finished listening to Stephen Fry’s Mythos. Filling the audiobook void is Man’s Search for Meaning, by psychiatrist and holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl. A humbling and thought-provoking listen. Also — inspired by reading the Sisters Brothers — I have found myself pondering the California Gold Rush.
Here goes:
- Babylon existed. The city was not — as I had always assumed — entirely mythical. In that sense, it is more Atlanta than Atlantis. Its ruins can still be found south of Baghdad. The internet calls these ruins ‘famous’; I feel a fool.
- Titan-bros Prometheus (the liver guy) and Epimetheus (the Pandora guy) represented, respectively, “Forethought” and “Afterthought”. The clue is in the name: pro = before; epi = after. Or so it seemed. You see, that got me wondering about the word episode …
- episode comes from epi- (which actually means “on, upon, above” and “in addition to”) and eisodos (entry). An episode, therefore, is an ‘additional entry’. An accidental digression. So those episodic TV shows are just obstructing the real story to tell. I knew it!
- The population of England in Henry VIII’s time was only 2.5 million. That feels laughable.
- The California Gold Rush has a definite starting date: January 24th 1848, when the first pieces of gold were found. The madness was all over by 1855. It peaked in 1849, hence the ’49ers’, hence the NFL team name. (It’s a curious thing about growing up outside of the U.S. — we get the Wild West myths without any of the facts. Perhaps that’s true inside the U.S. as well.)
- Logos means, literally, ‘meaning’. Logotherapy — created by the aforementioned Viktor Frankl — says that life has meaning in even the worst of situations. Considering the man survived Auschwitz, who am I to argue?