...from the "This Just In" Department...

So apparently the E. coli outbreak in spinach has been traced to the "Natural Selection Foods" packaging company.

That's right, people are being killed off by Natural Selection.

Archaeology Time!

I have developed a new Theory on the original purpose of the Egyptian Great Pyramid.

The ancient Egyptian farmers were a rather foolish people--so foolish that they frequently needed to be reminded which way was up. The priesthood was originally assigned the task of giving them reminders when they forgot. This is why the priests carried staffs: to point out Up to the ignorant farmers.

Eventually the priests got tired of pointing all the time, so they embarked on a project of titanic proportions (with the farmers as building labour, of course) to create a permanent Up-pointing reminder big enough to be seen for miles! Yes, the true function of the Great Pyramid was to remind nearby farmers which way was up, in case they forgot.

It may also be significant that the construction of the Great Pyramid began shortly after the discovery of beer. Perhaps the farmers were not genuinely stupid, but simply drunk all the time. Imagine yourself as an ancient Egyptian farmer who has recently been introduced to beer--completely drunk, you fall to the ground; you struggle to stand up but are inhibited by not knowing which way is up. No fear--just glance in the direction of the enormous stone Pyramid, and follow its point!

A similar idea may explain the Eiffel Tower--perhaps the Parisian authorities anticipated vast amounts of wine-drinking at the World's Fair, and decided graciously to give the drunken public an easily visible reminder of Up.

More Interesting Linguistic Tidbits Dept.

Most English-speakers, if they bothered to think about it at all, would probably assume that "isle" is an abbreviation of "island." In fact the two words' origins are completely unrelated.

"Island" has its roots in Old Norse, from "ig" (water, related to Latin "aqua") + "land" (land). It entered English early on (because who better to teach you nautical vocabulary than the greatest pirates in history?), and gradually became "iland," then "island," probably due to influence from...

"Isle," which English actually gets directly from French (see "1066, Invasion of, Norman"), which got it from Latin "insule" (see "entire pre-medieval era, Europe, Roman complete domination over"). Interesting note: in modern French, my wife assures me, it is not "isle" but "île." (If the special characters don't work, that's "ile" with a circumflex/caret over the i.) Apparently French uses the circumflex over a vowel to denote that in older dialects the vowel was followed by an S which later was dropped--"hospital" became "hôpital," for example, and "château" used to look more similar to its English counterpart "castle."


See you next time on... More Interesting Linguistic Tidbits!