Dubious, but hilarious. The town name ‘Baldock’ is apparently a corruption of ‘Baghdad’, and the result of exotically-minded Knights Templar settling there in the 12th century. Then ‘catamite’, a word which seems to be cropping up everywhere in my set texts, is derived from Ganymede. Ganymede? Catamite? There’s an intermediate latin stage of Catamus, but that doesn’t really explain it.
Ryan writes about the lost art of academic jibes. He’s a little pessimistic - take this recent gem of a footnote from Richard Drayton’s recent book Nature’s Government
‘”I owe a particdular debt to Mr. Desmond for rescuing me from writing the more parochial history of Kew which would have followed from the publication of my doctoral dissertation. He read and commented on it in 1994, but failed to cite it since, he later advised me, he had ‘put it aside’ before writing. I take encouragement from the fact that Desmond was able so often to agree with the patterns and periods I had described for Kew’s history”‘
Today’s earth-shattering revelation is the similarity between journalists and comparative linguists. The both bug an assortment of subject experts, then string together garbled misinterpretations of the responses, and publish to acclaim from the ignorant.
In a less huffy mood, I might have some good things to say about interdisciplinarity and spreading information.
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