gods
December 20th, 2017
Last one before Xmas. Have good ones!
Pope moans:
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/8237/sunday-has-lost-its-meaning-as-a-day-of-rest-and-renewal-in-christ-pope-says
Discussion (53)¬
Comment¬
Latest book…
Random oldie…
June 20, 2008-
- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
Haha! Happy Holidays, Author! You’ve kept me smiling all year!
Nice one Author, this one really hammers home the point. Hohohoho, seasonal gruntings.
– “A flagon of mead, barmaid, for I am mighty Thor!”
– “Oh, me too. I’m tho thore I can hardly pith.”
Apparently he’s big … for someone so short.
Happy arbitrary demarcation of time. 😉
Sunday has always been special
The twelve to two session down the boozer with the roast potatoes has no comparison.
And happy solstice peeps.
Wow, a new character — that’s unusual for this comic, to say the least!
I wonder if we’ll get to see more of him.
Bravo Author. I really like this one. Poor Thursday……LOL
Holly happy days to all.
Small Gods. Geez I miss Pratchett. Nice nod, Author.
Have a great break and come back refreshed and sassier than ever!
Does that make him a “Thor loser”?
Have a Happy Yuletide, and a Merry Saturnalia, everyone, and especially Author.
Happy Odin’s Day, everyone!
Arghh!
It is totally reasonable to poke fun at those so-called Abrahamic “gods” but surely you can’t be taking the one true god’s name in vain – Thor – he of the mighty hammer, winged head gear and awesome abs.
Why hide Odin?
Yes, imagine all the books Sir Pterry still had in his mind when he passed . . .
Doesn’t the bar have a high chair or something for Thor?
Hey, lets have an appearance of Fria. She of the “Thank Goodness it’s Friday.”
Impressed the barmaid had an Asgardian mead horn to hand. A woman of infinite resource.
(Who’s stolen my avatar? As Krishna used to say.)
Sorry, it’s come back, my mistake. (It’s a galapagos sealion ad maiorem gloriam Caroli Darwini.)
For Steve Ruis:
“Ba-DUM-dum—Tshhhhhhh!”
Of Sunday, no one gives a damm?
What about Friday if you are a muslim?
If all are the same?
Then what’s in a name?
It’s a seven day a week scam.
Ahhhh…
the day is coming to celebrate Mithra “the Great”.
It still hurts that His Great Day has been plagiarized by that silly jew, who had his birthday transplanted to His Great Day, (just when it becomes noticeable that solstice has passed) only to be fashionable to the Romans 🙂
@Jim Campbell – thanks for the Pratchett reminder.
@jb – YES! let’s keep him around.
As said by many, happy Winter’s Solstice and, as not said by anyone because they didn’t know, happy birthday to me.
Let’s keep the Thor in Thursday.
HackneyMartian, love your avatar. I wonder how many bits of flora and fauna my hero managed to get his name on. It guess getting there first probably helped.
We’re heavy into the war on Christmas here again. Such a silly artificial source of outrage for the poor downtrodden majority religion. Somehow they manage to get insulted if we don’t all share their particular brand of delusions. If the pope was an American, I’m sure he’d be whinging about that, instead of lamenting the fact that we can get along just fine without his imaginary father.
“Without Christ, we are condemned to be dominated by the fatigue of daily life with all its worries and the fear of tomorrow. The Sunday encounter with the Lord gives us the strength to live today with confidence and courage and to move forward with hope,” he said.
Well gosh. I think having a few more hours of free time on Sunday morning is a much better deal. I’ve been avoiding churches and religion for quite a few years now, and have not noticed any extra burden. Quite the opposite. It’s nice to avoid being told I’m a worthless sinner once a week. Who really needs that, eh.
HackneyMartian, love your avatar. I wonder how many bits of flora and fauna my hero managed to get his name on. I guess getting there first probably helped.
We’re heavy into the war on Christmas here again. Such a silly artificial source of outrage for the poor downtrodden dominant majority religion. Somehow they manage to get insulted if we don’t all share their particular brand of delusions. If the pope was an American, I’m sure he’d be whinging about that, instead of lamenting the fact that we can get along just fine without his imaginary father.
“Without Christ, we are condemned to be dominated by the fatigue of daily life with all its worries and the fear of tomorrow. The Sunday encounter with the Lord gives us the strength to live today with confidence and courage and to move forward with hope,” he said.
Well gosh. I think having a few more hours of free time on Sunday morning is a much better deal. I’ve been avoiding churches and religion for quite a few years now, and have not noticed any extra burden. Quite the opposite. It’s nice to avoid being told I’m a worthless sinner once a week. Who really needs that, eh.
Sorry about the double post. It resulted from trying to fix a tiny typo, which remains unfixed in the first of the duplicates. I’m having trouble with the select function with this mouse. It often insists on selecting the entire word, or sentence, when all I want to do is place the cursor. Often makes ME the curser, eh.
Don’t know why the Popes moaning, he just needs the right motivation…..from goddog……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkBIIZcLmQQ
PrimalVirtue, thanks for that link. I followed the collected commercials and the last one, the one that was banned, is of course the best. In it a father tells how he explained to his four year old exactly how babies happen. Everybody looks shocked. I thought it was the most refreshing explanation to a child I’ve ever heard. Simply stating the truth: “Well, when a daddy really loves a mommy he puts his erect penis into her vagina and ejaculates sperm that swims up to her ovaries (okay, slightly inaccurate here) and fertilizes an egg that becomes a baby nine months later.”
What a terrible thing to tell a child, just the truth. So sad that the commercial was banned. So sad that people think the truth is shocking. Damn but I can hate my culture sometimes.
I’ve heard of the God of small things, but this God is a small thing!
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Get used to Islam taking over, silencing everyone to get their own way, bullies!
Merry Turkey and a Happy Champagne* to everyone. I hope the new year is happy and healthy for you and your respective families.
Keep up the excellent work Author – it makes my day / week when a new sharp insight comes around.
All the best 🙂
* Please substitute your favourite festive food and drink as appropriate.
He’s not really small. It’s just that a certain green troll sometimes called B. Banner smashed him from above. He just has to stick his thumb in his mouth and blow really hard to get back to normal.
(If gods depend on worship, you’d think Thor would be mighty again considering he’s been in five movies.)
Darwin, regarding the ‘war on christmas’, there was an interesting episode of “the Current” on CBC radio on December 20 (you can listen on their web site). The upshot is that the celebration of Christmas as we know it is a very recent invention and it was banned by the church for many years (it was banned for 250 years in Scotland – only ending in the 1950’s)
Graham ASH-PORTER Get used to Islam taking over, silencing everyone to get their own way, bullies!
Hmm I am currently in a predominantly Muslim country, the restaurant last night was playing Xmas carols and the local Mall as well as sporting a Xmas tree is similarly afflicted with seasonal piped music. There’s a Methodist, Catholic and Anglican church within a mile a couple of Buddhist temples and a boat load of mosques.
Being a non believer makes you stand-out I’ll grant you that.
The English week in origin: Moon’s day, Tuor’s day, Woden’s day, Tuor’s day, Freia’s day, Saturn’s day, Sun’s day…
The French week: Moon’s day, Mars’ day, Mercury’s day, Jove’s day, Venus’ day, Samedi’s day, Dawn day
Anyone up for adding more languages to this list?
Paddy:
Dutch:
Sun’s day, Moon’s day, (O)din’s day, Wodan’s day, Thunder’s (or Thor’s) day, Freia’s day, Saturn’s day.
…and I KNOW in English grammar the ” ‘ ” should not be used in these cases, but I just HAD to edit them in, because (at least to MY eyes) it makes for much clearer reading.
German:
Sun’s day, Moon’s day, (O)din’s day, middle-of-the-week, Thunder’s day, Freia’s day, Saturn’s day (alternatively: sun’s eve)
I like to inagine Thor walking into the pub and saying to J&M: “Who the hell are you guys?”
Addendum:
Dinsdag also has another possible etymology: the day of the “Ding”, the gathering of all free men, in what we would now call a referendum.
(Both in German and in Dutch)
In finnish according to Wikipedia we have the usual Moon’s day, Tuor’s day, middle-of-the-week like in german, Thor’s day, Freia’s day, bath day, and Sun’s day. However, I’d like to point out that the word for monday (“maanatai”) sounds quite similar to the word for earth (“maa”), which makes me wonder if there’s some overlap. Also, the word for friday (“perjantai”) doesn’t sound at all like Freia, while we had an old god known as “Perkele” (nowadays associated with satan), so I think we need more research about it.
Anyway, have a great Joulu everyone, and hope that you won’t be visited by our old version of the Santa; it was an insane goatman that beat bad kids to death.
At least Freia’s day is still celebrated with gusto, especially after work in bars.
Someone said Christmas trees are not especially religious symbols. They are, it’s just that the religion is not Christian or even Abrahamic.
Merry Christmas, my fellow sceptics! 🙂
The seven-day week was originally Babylonian, and its days were named by Babylonian astrologers after the seven “planets”, of which all but the Sun and Moon were named after Babylonian gods. On the bases of such scant similarities as they could make out, the Romans identified those gods with their Mars, Mercury, Jove, Venus, and Saturn. The names of the days in the Romance languages derived from there, with some being replaced by cognates of “sabbath” or “Lord’s Day”. The Romans further identified Mars, Mercury, Jove, and Venus with the Germanic gods now best known by the Icelandic named Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Freya. In Old English Tyr and Odin were Tiw and Woden: hence Sunday, Moonday, Tiwsday, Wodensday, Thorsday, Freyasday. Roman imaginations could not find a Germanic equivalent for Saturn, so it remained Saturnsday or became Bathday or the Sabbath.
Tuor is best known in English as the grandfather of Elrond Half-elven.
All best wishes of the season to you and yours Author.
Happy days friends, have the next round on me.
Merry Christmas, Author and all regulars at the old Cock & Bull Pub.
The Greek and Roman calendars did not have weeks or any equivalent. In a few big cities Jews imposed their Sabbath by social action equivalent to demonstrations. Ovid in the Art of Love said a great day to pick up girls was at sporting events on Saturday because “the Jews won’t let you do anything else.” By exempting sporting events from their harrassment the Jews, while intending to impose the Sabbath, accidentally created the weekend.
The Romans, however, used Babylonian/Egyptian gods to name the days.
I used to read a magazine called Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Liberty. It was by the 7th Day Adventists. They said that all other Protestants were bowing to Church of Rome and acknowledging there submission by having the Sabbath on Sunday and quoted some Catholics who had said that.
Darwin Harmless
Species darwinii … Top of my head …. Darwin’s Rhea was an early one. I think he noticed it was a new species while consuming it aboard the Beagle off Argentina. It led him to wonder why there were two rhea species in identical neighbouring environments only separated by topography. Before that someone may have named a beetle after him since when young he was a notable bughunter. He must have identified a good many barnacles while writing his monograph but of course the discoverer can’t name the species after themselves.
Agemegos
Thanks for that. Tyr was also used by Kipling in the story The Knife and the Naked Chalk. The story is about the first use of iron in Sussex, so a Norse name is anachronistic and a celtic precursor such as Duw would have been more accurate. But as the tale involves Puck invoking an ancient Briton for Edwardian children my pedantry is a little misplaced.
Darwin Harmless
You’ve just consumed a good hour of my time fossicking when I could’ve been in church, dammit.
Three obsessive Serbs traced 301 currently living things named after Charles Darwin up to 2011
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249341964_HOW_MANY_DARWINS_-_LIST_OF_ANIMAL_TAXA_NAMED_AFTER_CHARLES_DARWIN
There must be many fossils. My amateur ramblings found a primate and a plankton.
The plant genus Darwinia, the Australian mountain bells, was named after his grandad Erasmus before Charles was born. No doubt on account of his poem The Loves of the Plants which young ladies were not supposed to read.
Further history on the seven day week can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/20394641
There’s also a hypothesis which they don’t discuss in that article that the Sabbath was an inversion of the original significance of the seventh day; in the original Babylonian, the seventh day was an “evil day”, when any work done would turn to tears. The evidence is a tad hazy on this topic, however.
Welsh days of the week:
Dydd Llun (Moon)
Dydd Mawrth (Mars)
Dydd Mercher (Mercury)
Dydd Iau (Jupiter)
Dydd Gwener (Venus)
Dydd Sadwrn (Saturn)
Dydd Sul (Sun)
Roman in origin
Wow, and once again I am gob smacked by the quality of the postings and posters on these threads. Thank you all for being such an erudite group.
All this talk of where the names of the week came from, I thought I would throw in the Chinese system. They go for simplicity. So the word xing1qi1 means weekday (“star” “period” to be more precise with each character. The numbers after the words indicate the tones. So xing1 means xing with a level but slightly higher tone. I have no other way of indicating tones on this keyboard, but it’s also done with accent lines.). Once you know that, and can count, you know almost all the days of the week. xingqi yi (week day one = Monday) xingqi er (week day 2 = Tuesday) all the way up to xingqi liu (week day six/Saturday). Sunday gets special treatment for some reason, xingqi ri (week day sun) or xingqi tian (weekday heaven, probably an early Christian influence there.)
They take a similarly simple approach to the months, simply numbering each one followed by the word for “moon”. So December is simply 12 moon. (shi2er4yue4)
Once you can count to twelve, you know the months of the year.
Happy new years, I’m happy to see that there is still some names here that I recognize after all this time…
Isaac Asimov, “The Weak Excuse”, an F&SF article.
He did a couple of others tangentially related.