Fun with Oranges and Arabs

The funniest story I read in the past week was the one about a massive dust storm in Arizona. The weathermen dared call it a haboob, which is an Arabic term. Some Arizona residents were outraged. One even wrote, “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?” No returning soldier has complained thus far, but perhaps they are temporarily preoccupied with other issues, such as PTSD, learning to walk with a prosthetic leg, or even finding a job in this economy.

They are bound to notice sooner or later, however. In the interests of making our troops—and civilian Islamophobes—comfortable, we probably should purge the language of Arabic influence. After all, we called sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” during World War I, and when we were miffed at France for not supporting the second Gulf War, we poured French wine down the sink and ate “freedom fries.”

Since we’re starting with food, we need to scrap marzipan and call it almond paste with sugar—uh-oh, sugar comes from Arabic, so let’s say evaporated cane juice instead. That way it even sounds healthier. Oranges are out—yes, it’s also from Arabic. I have no idea how to replace that word, or what to call the color in your child’s crayon box. And speaking of children, you’d better change the sign on your kid’s lemonade stand before you corrupt their little minds with foreign terms. Lemons, limes, and tangerines were named by Arabs.

We’ve got to rewrite our cookbooks, and get rid of artichokes, apricots, caraway seeds, saffron, sherbet, spinach, and tarragon. Hey, we didn’t like spinach anyway. It will be harder to do without coffee and alcohol.

Out of the kitchen and into the living room:  junk the divan, and stop calling that other thing a sofa. Use the word couch, even if it’s from (ugh) French. Check your closets, too. Clean out the sequins, sashes, your damask tablecloth, the gauze in the medicine cabinet, and anything made of cotton or muslin. That last word is a real no-no—it even sounds like “Muslim.”

I’m sure you know that algebra was invented by Arabs. It means “the ciphering,” but we can’t use the term cipher either. The Arabs even invented the numbering system we use, including zero. We should scrap it and return to a good old Western system. Try a problem in long division:  DLXXXIV ÷ XXXII. Oops, the result isn’t a whole number. Anybody know where to put a decimal point in Roman numerals?

The brightest stars in the sky were named by Arabs, but just because astronomers all over the world use those terms doesn’t mean Americans have to. We can auction off the naming rights to the highest bidder:  heavenly bodies such as Altair, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut, and Rigel (the list goes on) might come to be called Exxon, Walmart, Ford, Disney, or even—Goldman-Sachs!

On the other hand, maybe I’ll stick to haboobs.

There’s a Job for You

Are you a school teacher? Real estate agent in a dead market? A sales clerk whose store went out of business? Laid-off warehouse worker?

Despite all the talk about cutting government spending, Uncle Sam is hiring. You’ll get good pay, and good benefits if you’re salaried, and I’m not talking about jobs where your primary duty is to dodge bullets. And this is all on the taxpayer’s dime!

I did a little research and found thousands of openings in places where you won’t be put in harm’s way—not just in the U.S., but in cushy locations around the world, like England and Germany. There were also openings in a couple of dicey places (Egypt, Bahrain), but you don’t have to go there unless you want to.

Your job will be (putting it a tad impolitely) to service the military.

An army travels on its stomach, and if it runs beyond it supply lines, it starves. It brings cooks and supply wagons, and lives off the surrounding countryside (translation:  despoils the peasants). The military also travels on its gonads. Prostitutes have always been required to service soldiers, from the time of Rahab the harlot to the Korean “comfort women.” And not just prostitutes—military wives often accompanied their men. Roman officers stationed in England were allowed to marry and reside with their families on base. Ordinary soldiers didn’t have this privilege. Now they do.

Of course, many of the openings I found require very special skills, like doctor, nurse, physical therapist, civil engineer, etc. But others don’t.

Can you write Happy Birthday on top of a cake? Are you handy with the whipped cream? The Defense Commissary Agency is looking for 35 Cake Decorators. There are openings in Germany, England, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Turkey. Pay is $14.31-$16.70/hour.

Military families need to shop. And the Defense Commissary Agency says its mission, among other things, is to “encourage an exciting shopping experience” and “deliver exceptional savings.” To that end they are hiring everyone from sales clerks ($21,840-$28,392) to warehouse workers ($15.75-$18.38/hour). Jobs are in all the above countries, plus Japan and Egypt. If you’re having trouble stretching your unemployment check to feed the kids, consider these opportunities.

Did you know that the military operates hotels for both active and retired personnel, as well as Dept of Defense employees? They enjoy very nice lodgings at bargain rates, again paid for by your tax dollar. There are 12 current openings for Hotel Desk Clerk, most in the U.S. but four of them in Germany and one in Korea, at $7.25-$14.14/hour.

The Child and Youth Services dept of the military says it “supports readiness by reducing lost duty time due to conflict between parental responsibilities and unit mission requirements.” So while Daddy is dodging bullets in Afghanistan, he can be sure Junior is still getting a decent education. If you’re a teacher and tired of being blamed for the failure of your underfunded school, consider applying for the curriculum development and teacher training position in Germany, at $34,498-$43,827, with full benefits. If you don’t have those credentials, there are teacher aide positions in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, and Belgium, at $9.50-$16.84/hr.

Finally, the military always needs to acquire more land. Real estate agents who can’t make sales in these times can find salaried employment ($40,093-$165,391) in Japan, Germany, Italy, and Bahrain.

For all of the above, check out the listings at www.usajobs.gov. The only catch is that the government won’t pay travel expenses, unless you are a highly-skilled professional. This isn’t a big problem if you’re looking for work on a military base back home. If your unemployment has run out, and your relatives are tired of supporting you, ask them to stake you to a ticket overseas. Good luck, and remember where your tax dollars are going while Grandma’s Social Security and Medicare are being cut. It’s all in a good cause, isn’t it?

A leg to stand on

I was conducting a survey of prosthetic limb makers for a client. One of the prosthetists I called told me the following:  some health insurance companies state up front that they will only cover $2,000-$5,000 for an artificial limb. However, a really functioning limb can cost $10,000-$40,000. If you call other health insurers, the agent will tell you what your coverage is--but only after she plays a recorded announcement to the effect that they “can’t be held to any statements that are made over the phone, and that the actual amount of benefits will be determined at the time the claim is submitted.”

So you order the best device that you can get within the amount that the agent says they will cover. Then when the bill comes in, the insurance company says they will only pay half, or even less. According to my source, this happens over and over again. You can't stiff your prosthetist, because the device doesn't last forever and you're going to need adjustments, new parts, and even a complete replacement in two to five years. What can you do? Mortgage your house (if you're lucky enough to have enough equity) so you have a leg to stand on? 


The prosthetist had a French name, so when I got good and angry, I mentioned the situation in France in 1789, and the fact that Thursday is Bastille Day. After I calmed down somewhat, I thought further back into history.... The first known prostheses were big toes, one carved from wood and the other made of linen, glue, and plaster, and found on Egyptian mummies. They date back to somewhere between the 7th and 13th centuries BCE. Both showed signs of wear, although the wooden one appears to have been more functional and the other more cosmetic. My sources didn't say what they cost back then.

Orwell springs eternal, but so does the spirit of liberty

Rulers of nations and upper crust people in general have always been good at creating propaganda to justify their positions. On Friday night Sylvia and I went to a showing of "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," a movie about how Liberian women banded together to end the war in their country, get rid of a bloodthirsty dictator, and institute democracy. That was in 2003. I recommend the movie to everyone--inspiring, uplifting. At one point the dictator, Charles Taylor, made a speech about how he was holding the country together and it would descend into chaos without him. We've recently heard the same speech from the dictators of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

In the U.S. we keep hearing propaganda about cutting taxes on the rich--that this will create jobs for the poor and lift up the economy. Herbert Hoover cut the tax rate to the lowest in modern history, and the Crash of 1929 followed. Tax rates for the rich have been going down almost to pre-Depression levels, and we've got the highest unemployment rate since the Depression. It doesn't seem to matter that the facts contradict the propaganda--it just gets repeated and repeated over the airwaves.

Of course the art of propaganda is a lot older than broadcast media. If you want to get real historical, check out the song for the carriers of a palanquin, which appears on the walls of the tomb of Ipi, a nobleman of the Egypt's Old Kingdom (2613-2181 BCE): "O palanquin of Ipi, be as heavy as I wish/It is pleasanter full than when it is empty!" I don't know who wrote that song, but I bet it wasn't the guys who had to carry the palanquin.

Another lie that's as old as history is sometimes called the "divine right of kings." The earliest mention of it that I can find is from the Sumerian king list, which says, "After kingship descended from Heaven, the kingship was in Eridu." (Eridu was one of the oldest cities in the world, founded around 5400 BCE.) The divine right lie lasted until the American and French Revolutions, but it never really went away. As late as 1909, a judge condemned New York factory workers who wanted their hours reduced from 65 or 75 per week to 52 per week, saying, "You are on strike against God." In other words, the existing social order was ordained by Heaven.

The abovementioned Charles Taylor insisted that he was in his position because God put him there. I'm sure that some form of the divine right lie serves to buttress the absolute monarchies of Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf States.

To which I can only counter by quoting the 14th Century English priest John Ball:  "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?...cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty."

In my next incarnation, if there is such a thing

I want to be a biologist. The infinite variety of life on this planet is wondrous to me, and who knows what we will find on other planets if we ever get there. Just watching the chickens in the yard is deeply satisfying, and a source of wonder. The design of chicken feet. The fact that they excrete everything out of the same cloaca (including eggs), instead of having three different orifices. Maybe I wouldn't be so astonished if I had been brought up on a farm instead of a city block in Brooklyn.

Insects are also astonishing. I learned recently that the household pest they call the silverfish can live for 11 years. That's as long as a chicken, assuming you don't butcher it once it stops laying eggs. The desert scorpion (an arthropod, not an insect) has another solution to the problem of waste. In order to survive in an arid environment, it extracts every tiniest drop of water from its food, and excretes only powder. Unlike the chicken (or other birds), it has a separate orifice for reproduction.

I've had cats for decades, but never really looked inside their mouths. Only when a veterinarian told me to apply an enzyme paste to their gums did I discover that they have no space between their lower lips and gums. So I have to apply it in the under the upper lips alone. I felt like a fool. On the other hand, Aristotle never looked inside human mouths either, and pontificated that men had more teeth than women.

Right now I'm starting a chapter in the sequel to my novel, in which a scorpion features prominently.

I found the Answer!

Yesterday I was reading West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary, an Afghan-American. On page 122, he recollects a conversation with his kid brother Riaz. Riaz has become a devout Muslim, and explains his conversion by saying, "I realized that Islam would work.... If everyone followed these practices, none of today's problems would exist. Families would be rock-solid. There would be no warfare, no injustice, no division between the rich and the poor."

This sounded very familiar to me. In my novel (page 307) the teenage Elijah has also been seeking an answer to the injustices of the world. He falls in with the Rekhabites, a back-to-nomadism cult. The leader explains that all the wickedness of 9th Century BCE Israel is due to dividing the land and taking up farming instead of herding flocks. "If we all owned the land together, the strongest couldn't steal it. You can run your sheep on it, but you can't buy it or sell it or borrow against it. Right there you eliminate greed and envy.... Women are a problem. But we still don't have to behave like animals. A father should marry his children off young, before lust drives them to sin.... A man without a mate is a torch in a haystack. Though when men fight over a woman, she usually provoked it. You've got to teach a girl to cover up...."

It seems that every generation has its cult groups, political or religious, that offer simple rules to cope with the complexities of life. And there is never a shortage of young people (and some not-so-young) who are ready to follow the demagogue of the day.

More avian tales

We spent yesterday in the hot sun, working on our chicken coop. It is about 90% finished. Sylvia researched what chickens need and got together with our neighbor Don, who is an architect. Don designed the coop, and his design was corrected by his father-in-law Dave, who is a contractor. As you can imagine, this is a rather fancy residence for the creatures. (We have 12 of them, shared between 3 households, and expect one or two to become roosters. We'll have to get rid of the roosters, since we're not allowed to keep them in the city.) We're trying to decide what color to paint it, and also what to call it. I've suggested Avian Arms or Henrietta Hilton, but Sylvia says those are hotel names, not permanent residence names. I know there used to be all-female residences in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but I can't remember any of their names. Any suggestions?

As I understand, chickens originated in east and southeast Asia. Per Wikipedia, they were used in Egypt for cock fighting as early as 1400 BCE, and were known as "the bird that lays every day," but not widely bred until around 300 BCE. I recently went to an exhibit on ancient Egypt at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and in that exhibit it said that the ancients didn't raise chickens. The Egyptians painted all kinds of scenes of daily life in their tombs--baking bread, hunting wild birds, brewing beer, even circumcising a guy--and we haven't found any any tomb paintings of chickens. Still, it seems odd that the ancient Egyptians, clever as they were, would just use "a bird that lays every day" for cockfighting for 1700 years.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I have the characters in my novel eating duck, goose, pigeon, roasted song birds, wild turtle eggs, and wild bird eggs, but not chicken or chicken eggs.