Unlearn something false every day

Many and many a year ago--much more than half my life hence--I learned that "testimony" comes from the same word as "testicle", and was related to the classical Roman practice of swearing with one's hand on one's genitals.

A few days ago, someone quite learned on my friendslist made a similar comment except attributing the practice to the ancient Hebrews. With an audible clang, all of my pseudoxia detectors kicked in. Two minutes googling found this in a comment to a post on LanguageHat, discussing how the words "capon" and "head" are related.

The etymological association between testis, witness, and testicle is cute, but very controversial. Here's Mr. OED on the anatomical testis:

[L.: etymology uncertain.
An assumed identity with testis witness (quasi 'the witness or evidence of virility') is rejected by Walde, who suggests connexion with testa, pot, shell, etc. In 16th c. Fr., however, tesmoing 'witness' appears in this sense: see Godef.s.v.]

I could readily a believe a popular association between witnessing and the ballocks, but the sense development of testis (pot) to testis (head) makes sense of the transition from pot to gonad. The AHD, on the other hand, offers:

Another theory says that the sense of testicle in Latin testis is due to a calque, or loan translation, from Greek. The Greek noun parastates means "defender (in law), supporter" (para– "by, alongside," as in paramilitary, and –states from histanai, "to stand"). In the dual number, used in many languages for naturally occurring, contrasting, or complementary pairs such as hands, eyes, and ears, parastats had the technical medical sense "testicles," that is, "two glands side by side." The Romans simply took this sense of parastates and added it to testis, the Latin word for legal supporter, witness.

Which I like, actually--compare "epididymes," i.e., twins.

(Formatting cleaned up.)

Ah, well. My mind is better for this bit of unlearning. As folk etymologies go, it was one of my favorites.

Brilliant exploration of the Santa phenomenon

This has been floating around for a few days so you've probably seen it, but if not, well, it explains so much.

I was thinking about all the other Santas you see around, doing jobs at malls or bell-ringing. Then I thought about the elves, whose enslavement has never quite made sense to me.

So you have Mr. and Mrs. Claus owning a shop. Occupying this shop are a bunch of juvenile-looking gender-ambiguous slaves.

You see a lot of Santas around, but there are generally much fewer Mrs. Clauses.

And why is it that they feel the need to travel all over the world once a year?

I think it's . . .

Warning: potential SAN loss from the revelation of the long-suspected but undared truth. Ia! Ia!

Seeing the Future in the Shattered Glass of the Past

Science fiction is not a predictive form. But it has its moments.

A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline.

The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to [the party], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

--Emmanuel Goldstein, The Theory and Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism, circa 1949