#6 - I'm on the 'ledge (STTA)

Hey ally. (typo - that was supposed to be 'all', not 'ally', but you're probably not an enemy of mine... so I'll leave it)

Shira and I sincerely apologize, as the last couple posts haven't been the most uplifting. (Although, I have to admit, 'catacomb' is endlessly fun to say.) I'll try to right this ship.

And yeah, I've been quite busy. But it has all been in the pursuit of KNOWLEDGE! And that is what I want to talk about for a bit, if you'll indulge me to do so, here's a Something To Think About:

Wow, knowledge. Quite a lofty thing to talk about, don't ya think? In fact, no ledge is loftier than knowledge. It's a pretty craggy ledge - not smooth at all - lots of small and sharp rocks with millions of pebbles and grains of thought sprinkled all over it. Of course, the ledge gets windier and rougher as you approach the edge of the ledge. As you go out farther and farther, you have more of an impulse to turn back. This impulse gets intense at a faster and faster rate as you continue. Each step is more arduous than the previous one, and there's always another step to take.

The one weird thing about this ledge is that no one has ever seen the end of the ledge. Some people argue that there isn't an end to it. Others rebut, "Well, it isn't a ledge, then, is it?"

Some people seem to think that there is only one way to make your way out to the edge of the ledge. Of course, this is not true. Very few paths have been mapped out extensively; and only a handful have been identified as possible routes at all. Even these are nothing but prospective routes. Who is to say that a certain route won't lead to a dead end. After all, no one has seen the end or even knows if one exists.

Many more people seem to think that they must follow paths that have already been marked and mapped out. This is, of course, completely false. There's no guarantee that you will end up where you want to go by following a path, whether it is marked or unmarked. In fact, think of the first person to traverse the path you're on. Did that person follow any marked path? No, they certainly did not. They followed their own path; they stepped in to uncharted waters. You need to find the way down to the edge of the ledge that's yours and yours alone. After all, we have only explored a small subset of the possible paths.

On that introductory note (heh), I want to talk about how we come to know and the words (yes, words! hooray for a blog post that talks about words!) that describe them.

Philosophers tend to agree that we gain knowledge through three fundamental operations of the mind: intuition, deduction, and induction.

Intuition is when we see directly that something is the case or that an immediate thought is absolutely necessarily true. Intuition does not require reasoning.

Deduction is when we move through a series of intuitions to obtain a conclusion that is necessitated (albeit indirectly) by our base intuition. Deduction is reasoning.

Induction is when we take a specific example of something and infer a general conclusion from it. This is also reasoning.

It is interesting to think about when you are deducing knowledge and when you are inducing knowledge...

You know, I was going to continue and give some examples, but I have quite a bit more to say; and I think this is enough to chew on for a bit. Think about it for a while and look for part 2 soon.

Yours by mathematical induction - today, the next day, and the day after that, on to ∞,

Quentin

#5- A Grave Misunderstanding (CW)

We might get back to the bare bones on this one.

Hey, Shira here. Quentin and I are both SUPER BUSY. It is not even funny. The only way we could be busier is if we were faithful to the etymologist's code, which dictates that we battle octopus aliens with laser whips while searching Atlantean catacombs for new and exciting words and word history. (We are not quite busy up to standards because instead of laser whips, we use bats and sticks. Lasers are more expensive than you'd expect.) So here I present to you a cop-out, which I guess is pretty lame. My apologies.

So! Cool words. Nice. Okay. So I decided to choose a series of cool-sounding words that all center around a final resting place. "Shira," you say, "that is eXtremely morbid and not just a little creepy! What is up with you? Did your dog die?" To which I reply: "Reader, my dog did not die. I just think that for something so ubiquitous, there are a lot of cool words that mean 'tomb'. So this time we will deal."

Crypt- No, it's not Unix. A crypt is defined as a stone vault beneath the ground of a church. A crypt can be a reliquary, where relics such as bones of saints can be stored. From the Greek kryptos, meaning hidden. Hey, it's like Kryptonite is the hidden material... I totally just understood that! Hooray!

Mausoleum- the plural of mausoleum is mausolea! (I get very happy when words end with -um and pluralize to -a.) Mausolea are above-ground buildings that store the tomb of the deceased within. They are, as a rule, pretty fancy looking. They are usually crafted from marble or some other stone, but can have all sorts of decorations, like... tapestries. The word mausoleum comes from the first recorded mausoleum-haver, who was a Persian governor named Mausolus.

Catacomb- an underground maze with niches for graves. But hey, you knew what a catabomb is, right? There are catacombs free to view in Rome and Paris. The one in Paris has skulls everywhere you look. It is a unique experience to walk through subterranean halls lines with skulls, other bones, and inscriptions in Latin that have been mostly worn away by the elements.

Cinerarium- this word refers to a place where ash remains are kept. So an urn is a cinerarium, from cinis in Latin meaning ashes.

Ossuary- you can probably break it down. An ossuary is a place where bones (and bones alone!) are kept. This is a really good Scrabble word, because people always challenge it and it is pretty easy to form. On the flip side, its components are not very high-pointing, so balance.

Sepulcher is my absolute favorite of these words. It comes from ancient Jewish traditions, where they would be carved into rock faces. ABSWANTSAM, just so you know- the English spell this word as sepulchre, which I find is quite a lot more classy. On a side note, Sepulchre is a common French last name. (Why do I keep talking about France? Quentin is rubbing off.) It kind of worries me. I met a Pierrick Sepulchre, and he had no clue as to the macabre origins of his surname. WhooOOOoo! Ghostly noises!

Okay, so I think I am just about done for now. Shira out!