Euromaidan: what does it mean?

As a word freak, I enjoyed AP's explanation of this term, now widely used in Ukraine. If you're not a fan of words and meaning, you'll probably find the article boring. But if you want to know what an otherwise opaque term means, check it out.

When I see a word, I want the meaning to jump out at me. So I greatly appreciated this primer. 

This Old Man

That old tune wormed its way into my head yesterday and I wondered "what the hell is paddywhack?" ("And a knicknack paddywhack, give the dog a bone...") Here's what Wikipedia says about it.

Paddywhack (also spelt Paddywack) or Nuchal ligament/Ligamentum nuchae, is a strong elastic ligament or tendon in the midline of the neck of sheep or cattle which relieves the animal of the weight of its head. It is pale yellow in colour. (The yellow colour is the elastin on the ligaments.) The name is derived from the corruption of paxwax (originally faxwax Old English hair + to grow).

It is eaten in several countries. It is high in protein (78%), fat (10%), crude fibre (0.7%), and crude ash (1%). The meat is taken from domestic cattle, the bison, African buffalo, the water buffalo, the yak, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes.

Dried paddywhack is commonly packaged and sold as a dog treat.

Ugh. I'm sorry I looked it up. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant.

The phrase "cry poor mouth"

I never heard this phrase before this morning. I encountered it on a CNN Money page. Here's how it was used:

Family courts are rife with tales where men with off-the-books jobs cry poor mouth to the judge, only to drive away in a Mercedes. 

I looked it up and found this page, where among the responses, someone from NYC said they heard this all the time, and yet another city resident said they'd never heard it. Well, I'm a phrase freak and I've lived my whole life in NY, mostly in NYC -- and I've never heard this phrase before.

To cry poor mouth is defined in various web dictionaries as meaning "to complain, especially habitually, about a lack of money". Some sites add the notion that one cries poor mouth while secretly having not only money, but quite a bit of it.

Are you familiar with this phrase?

A great cloud of gnats

For the past week, there has been a dense cloud of nearly a trillion gnats outside my house. You have to hold a hand over your nose and mouth and run like mad to get through them. You know, I can't help but wonder. Could dog have sent these gnats to me?

I've thought long and hard about what dog may be trying to tell me with this visitation of gnats. And I think I've figured it out! Dog is trying to teach me what a huge cloud of gnats looks like. And dang if he hasn't succeeded in his efforts. I know just what a huge cloud of gnats looks like now.

That dog! You have to give him credit. In his omniscient way, he takes time out of his busy schedule to teach us great things.

Does life have a purpose?

I don't think life has a purpose, at least not right out of the box. "But," you say, "aren't survival and procreation purposes?" 

You'd think so, but survival and procreation are life. That's pretty much life's definition. So is that a purpose? It does accomplish something but procreation is merely replication, life's trick that allows it to survive into the future. If that is purpose, then the machine replicators on Stargate SG-1 had purpose. More, more, more. It's the cry of life but is it purpose in the way we humans use the term? Of course, human purpose may just be an illusion that comes with these bodies we inherited. We have to consider that possibility, too.

Still, we humans can do a great trick -- we can accord our lives a purpose. We create purpose, we design it and set it loose in the world. We can do anything we want, unlike animals that must rely on an unchanging way of life to survive. We change, we grow. We adapt easily and it's all because we can think in a comprehensive manner. That's the game changer.

So does this mean human life has a purpose? No, not unless humanity itself decided in a unified way to have a lasting purpose, such as pursuing world peace, and then kept it up for eons. Beings in the future might look at us and say, "Boy, those humans really have a purpose: peace." I guess then you might say humans had a purpose.

But there's little chance of that sort of high-level purpose emerging from our race. Much to our chagrin, we have seen that people only want to eat, buy things and have sex (and note that the last two often coincide). If humanity has a purpose, human nature is at cross-purposes with it. We can't even change our behavior when all life on our planet hangs in the balance. (Climate change, anyone?)

To answer the original question we first have to answer a more basic one: "What are we?" In the year 2011 we still don't know the answer to this question. We don't even know how our brains create the illusion of a mind.

Richard Dawkins suggested in "The Selfish Gene" that it is our genes that are the prime component of existence, that it is they who "want" to proliferate into the future, to continue to exist for all time. In other words, it may be fair to say that they are the key "beings" in life. Thus the name: "The Selfish Gene". But that's just the replicator thing again. What of purpose?

All sorts of biological activities occur within our bodies without our knowledge. Our health is maintained by the production of new cells, by antibodies patrolling our body and taking on invaders, and a host of other, wildly sophisticated biological activities. But we're not even aware of this. For that matter, nine-tenths of "our bodies" aren't even made of human cells. The bacteria inside us far outweigh our human components. And all this activity happens outside our view. This is one level of "our" lives.

We, the personalities we call "us", ride atop this maelstrom of internal processes. And we are in an enviable position: we drive the car (our body) and can take it in a direction that accomplishes a purpose of our own design. We make purpose. That is our job description: it's what we do.

But life itself seems to have no purpose other than replication. In the vast sea of non-purpose that surrounds us, it seems we are the alien creatures. It's both strange and beautiful.

To me, it's almost like we're fairytale creatures that magically emerged from the long and bloody evolutionary process. To think that we came from that pool of pain and suffering and yet we can pick our own values, the things that we consider important and true -- that's so amazing. And as a result of this ability we live meaningful lives. To me, this is a true fairytale. Disney ain't got nuthin' on this story.

But as I said at the outset, I sometimes wonder if anything really matters. We seem to have purpose -- at least, to our eyes. But how fogged are our eyes, how primitive and unseeing? Do our purposes really rise to the level of "purpose"? I don't think we're in a position to judge. 

It's unthinkable that we are the pinnacle of creation. It seems highly likely that there are creatures in the universe that far outstrip our meager mental abilities. Perhaps they have true purpose. I treasure this idea and find it hopeful. If any creature makes it to a higher level of understanding, something well beyond our meager scope, then this is a very successful universe in terms of purpose. 

And I want that. I want at least one race to snag the golden ring and perhaps live forever in a Utopia beyond our ability to imagine. As long as one race gets there, I'll be happy. It doesn't have to be us. In fact, I don't think it could ever be us. We're too flawed.

And to think that all of this came out of elementary particles and their tendencies to group, spin, attract, repel, etc. This is the most amazing thing, and it too gives me hope. Reality is fascinating.