I'm asking about words, not observances or concepts.

When a Jewish boy comes of age, he becomes obligated in the commandments, bar mitzvah. Usually the occasion is marked in the synagogue, which is also called a bar mitzvah. When a Jewish girl comes of age, she becomes obligated in the commandments, bat mitzvah, and she might have a bat mitzvah in the synagogue.

These terms are from the talmud. The word bar literally means "son of" (in Aramaic). The word bat literally means "daughter of". One might also see the term b'nei mitzvah, which is plural, when more than one person is marking the occasion in the same service. The word b'nei is unambiguously plural in Hebrew, unlike the sometimes-numerically-ambiguous "they" in English.

Hebrew is a gendered language; there is no neuter term like "child" in English.

What term are people using for nonbinary or genderfluid people? This is going to come up in my synagogue, and it must have already come up in others, but I don't know what they did. I have some readers who might know: what are people using instead of bar or bat?

While the talmud recognizes four genders, I don't think its conclusions about the other two are going to satisfy most modern people.

siderea posted The Music Theory Song: Intervals (YouTube). For anyone who's trying to work on ear training to hear intervals, and for those of you who already grok that, this video's for you. Really.

12 letters that didn't make the (English) alphabet. I forget where this link came from.

thnidu over on Dreamwidth posted a link to "Earth as Art", which looks to be a nifty photo collection. The link isn't currently working for me, so I'm linking his entry instead of there for now.

More beautiful photography, from a locked post. Warning: gravity alert -- it wouldn't be hard to get sucked in.

Some time back I noticed that one of the regulars in the Mi Yodeya weekly parsha chat drew a lot on Abarbanel and that it sounded interesting. I asked him if he knew of an English translation and at the time he didn't, but more recently someone else who remembered my question pointed me at this adaptation (not translation). This sounds like something I should check out. (And it's kind of cool that, months later, somebody remembered my asking and followed up.)

When atheism is good: a chassidic story, linked by thnidu on DW again.

From XKCD: an exploration of wise men, stars, and paths. What would the trip look like, depending on what star you were following when? I can't confirm the math, but I found it an interesting read. (I don't know why he has the journey starting in Jerusalem, though.)

A map of every grocery store ever. Interestingly, my regular "big shopping trip" store (as opposed to the "grab a few things on the way home from work" store) recently remodelled and deviated from the norms. Now I can't find anything without effort.

And a funny cartoon from gnomi:( Read more... )

Language: Latin or Italian. I don't recognize most of these words and I don't see any of the markers that would tell me it's Italian. (That doesn't mean it's not; I only know either language to sing, really.) Skim skim skim... aha, there's an "aleiluia" [1] at the end; suspicion is Latin and sacred. Nope, still don't see any obvious problems like references to Jesus or the trinity or Mary. Still don't know Latin. Ok, off to Google.

Oh! Yes, sacred, but it would never have occurred to me that John Dunstable would set this popular passage from Song of Songs. Ok, I can work with that. :-) (But wherever did they get that translation? Here, try this one. Are we seeing the effects of two other languages between the Hebrew and English? Does the Latin really say what CPDL says it does?)

The performances I've heard of this song are somewhat ponderous and somber, not at all matching the text (either version :-) ). I'm not sure how much of that is driven by the music itself and how much by performance decisions. (I haven't started to learn it yet, but I did download the Encore source so I can play with it.) I wonder what we'll do with it. It should be fun.

[1] In Latin texts we sometimes see "Alleluia" and sometimes "Hallelujah". I can see how a listener could get the former from the latter, since a leading 'h' is pretty weak, but this is not an oral tradition. Is there some semantic difference between the two?

I keep a log for Erik, recording anything unusual and all medication starts/stops. I started doing this because I thought there might be correlations between meds and appetite changes; none have emerged so far, but it's turned out to be useful in other ways. ("Any vomiting?" "June 2, in the morning". "You know that stuff?") So anyway... Erik's appetite had been low last week, so at my vet's direction I gave him fluids for a few days (also logged). Things got better so I stopped, but Monday he was back to not eating so I hit him again, this time with a bit more because I could (150ml). Tuesday's log entry: "oink". :-) Good to see that work sometimes... (The healthy appetite has continued today.)

I have a minor workplace mystery. Yesterday someone left me a post-it note containing a charge code and nothing else, and used my Sharpie to do so without recapping it (so it was dried out and useless). I asked the usual suspects, but no one recognized the code. Shrug. Today I came in to find my entire post-it pad and several pens missing. WTF? I have the back desk in a two-person enclosed space; it's unlikely that a passerby needed a pen or some paper and my desk was the most convenient source. I wonder what surprise will greet me tomorrow.

Language peeves: "council" is a body; "counsel" is what advisors give. "Populous" means there are lots of people; "populace" is the people. The "populous" should not be giving "council" to anyone, ok? (Both of these errors are common on SCA mailing lists.)

Language Log reproduces some careless spam from Barnes and Noble. I like the poster's method of thanking them.

Funny cat video via thnidu.

Something in our house is chirping intermittently. It sounds like a smoke detector, but we've changed all the relevant batteries and it hasn't stopped. It does not happen predictably (and when it does it chirps only once), so it's very hard to localize. Whee.

The phone rang around 8:30 this morning. That was early enough to be plausibly important, so I answered. The caller butchered my name (my last name doesn't even have several of those morphemes); my suspicion that it was a junk call was soon confirmed.

She was calling from "Concerned Women for America". She got about three more words out before I said "don't call me again" and hung up. That was based on the rudeness of a solicitation at that hour, but I also had a negative reaction to the name of this group I'd never heard of before, and I found myself wanting to look them up while on the phone, with no computer immediately to hand. Every word in that name except "for" set off a warning bell (and "for" is on probation due to proximity). Taking them in the order the alarms sounded:

• "America": in a political context, high correlation with rabid right-wingerss
• "Women": you're going to try to categorize my beliefs, interests, and priorities, and you will be wrong
• "Concerned": you have a crusade

Maybe I don't want a neural link to the internet. It's much easier to scrub the pollution from a browser cache when it's on disk.

For the two or three people reading this who haven't already seen the interview game, here's how this works:

1. If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment saying so.
2. (I will probably fail to get back to you for some time, because this is a busy time of year.)
3. I will respond, asking you five questions.
4. You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
5. You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.