The Oriflamme or Or-y-flamme  (Latin aurea flamma, la flamme d’or, the golden flame) was the battle standard of the king of France in the Middle Ages.

It was originally the sacred banner of the Abbey of Saint Denis a monastery near Paris where many French monarchs are entombed.

In French, the term oriflamme has come to mean any banner with pointed ends, the form of the original.

The Oriflamme was mentioned in the eleventh century ballad la Chanson de Roland as a royal banner.

The oriflamme was first called Romaine and then Montjoie.

According to legend, Charlemagne carried the oriflamme to the Holy Land in response to a prophecy regarding a knight possessing a golden lance, from which flames would burn and drive out the Saracens.

The idea of the golden lance suggests that the lance was originally the important object, with the banner simply a decoration, but this changed over time. The flag attached to the spear became more important than the spear itself.

The Oriflamme was first used by Louis VI in 1124 and was last flown in battle at Agincourt in 1415, though a version of it remained in the Abbey of St. Denis until the 18th century.

Louis VI replaced the earlier banner of Saint Martin with the oriflamme of the Abbey of St. Denis, which floated about the tomb of St. Denis and was said to have been given to the abbey by Dagobert, the first Frankish king to be buried in the Saint Denis Basilica.

Until the 12th century the standard-bearer was the Comte de Vexin, who, as vowed to St. Denis, was the temporal defender of the abbey.

Louis VI, having acquired Vexin, became standard-bearer. As soon as war began, Louis VI received Communion at St. Denis and took the oriflamme from the tomb of Saint Denis to carry it to the combat.

The oriflamme was red or orange-red silk and flown from a gilded lance.  Here the oriflamme has fallen in battle and may be seen near the fleur de lys standard.

According to legend, the color of the oriflamme stems from it being dipped in the blood of the recently-beheaded St. Denis.

When the Oriflamme was displayed on the battlefield it indicated that no quarter was to be given, its red color being symbolic of cruelty and ferocity.

Although the azure ground (from the blue cape of St. Martin of Tours) strewn with gold fleur de lys remained the symbol of royalty until the 15th century, the Oriflamme became the royal battle standard of the King of France, and it was carried at the head of the king’s forces when they met another army in battle.

In the fifteenth century, the fleur-de-lys on the white flag of Jeanne d’Arc became the new royal standard replacing both the symbol of royalty and the Oriflamme on the battle field.

The bearer of the standard, the porte-oriflamme, became an office (like that of Maréchale or Connétable of France) and a great honor, as it was an important and very dangerous post to take charge of such a visible symbol in battle. If things went badly, the porte-oriflamme was expected to die rather than abandon his duty.

There Sir Geoffroi de Charny fought gallantly near the king and his fourteen year old son. The whole press and cry of battle were upon him because he was carrying the king’s sovereign banner, the Oriflamme. Sir Geoffroi also had before him his own banner, gules, three escutcheons argent. So many English and Gascons came around him from all sides that they cracked open the king’s battle formation and smashed it. There were so many English and Gascons that at least five of these men at arms attacked one French gentleman. Sir Geoffroi de Charny was killed with the banner of France in his hand, as other French banners fell to earth.        Froissart

Winkle:  a small herbivorous shore dwelling mollusc with a spiral shell   or   to extract or to obtain something with difficulty

I had always thought of winkle as British slang, light and trivial for ‘to get something out of a tight place, as a cubbyhole,’ as in, “Could you winkle those keys out from between the seats?”

But, then, the other day I saw a sentence:   King John was forever trying to winkle Richard Coeur de Lion out of prison in Germany.  This was a much more serious usage than I had expected.

I couldn’t winkle out why someone would use this term that seriously and in an academic context yet.

The verb is derived from the process of extracting a winkle (periwinkle) from its shell.

Little boys sometimes call their penis a winkle unless they’re in Japan where they call it a chin chin. Cin cin (sounds exactly the same) is an Italian drinking toast like Salute! So, in Japan, if you raise your cup and say Cin, cin, you will often get a big laugh.

Go vote.  It’s important.

I swore I wasn’t going to tell her, but she winkled it all out of me

In the late 16th century, periwinkle was shortened to winkle.

Antonia and Victoria managed to winkle the details out of him.

To worm out, to prize out, to pry out, dig out, extract with difficulty, force out (a shade or two different in meaning), dislodge, displace, remove, evict, uproot.

There were huge profits to be made if the scum of the earth landlords could winkle out the sitting tenants.

She winkled the garnet out from the bedrock.

He winkled that scoundrel out from his rathole.

Maybe we should try to winkle that key out of the door?

In Spanish, a winkle (periwinkle) is a bígaro, but to winkle a secret out of someone is sacar un secreto a álguien.

Surgeons use the word extirpate in a literal way, meaning, to cut out something roots and all.  She extirpated the patient’s tonsils. I’m not sure she could ever use the word winkle to describe that operation. The word seems too light and everyday for such a procedure.

From what harmonic hole did they manage to winkle this chord?

A periwinkle is a type of shellfish, shaped like a small snail, eaten as food. Germans call it die Strandschnecke. (Strand = beach).

In Greece, the periwinkle is called a θαλασσινό σαλιγκάρι. That word thalassinó θαλασσινό refers to the ocean, the sea.

In Italy, the people call the common periwinkle or winkle (littorina littorea) una litorina, that is, something that lives on the littoral edge of the water.

For the verb winkle, they say carpire un segreto a qualcuno.

Littorina littorea appears in prehistoric shellfish middens throughout Europe, and is believed to have been an important source of food since at least 7500 BCE in Scotland. 

Periwinkle meat is still collected in huge quantities in Scotland, mostly for export to the Continent, and is also consumed locally. 

Over 2,000 tons of winkles are exported annually.

This makes winkles the sixth most important shellfish harvested in Scotland in terms of tonnage, and seventh most important in terms of value. However, since actual harvests are probably twice reported levels, the species may actually be the fourth and sixth most important, respectively.

Winkles are usually picked off the rocks by hand or caught in a drag from a boat.

They are mostly eaten in the coastal areas of Scotland and Ireland, where they are commonly referred to as winkles or in some areas buckies, willicks, or wilks.

In Belgium, periwinkles are commonly called kreukels or caracoles.

Winkles are commonly sold in paper bags near beaches in Ireland and Scotland, boiled in their local seawater, with a pin attached to the bag to enable the extraction of the soft parts from the shell.

Periwinkles are considered a delicacy in African and Asian cuisines.

The meat is high in protein, omega-3 fatty acids and low in fat.

Raw snails in general are about 80% water, 15% protein, and 1.4% fat.  If you look very closely at this photograph, you will see me sitting on a pier in the West Village watching the tall ships sail up the Hudson for the Bicentennial 1976.  It was one of those historical moments, a beautiful day.

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Periwinkles are also used as bait for catching small fish. The shell is usually crushed and the soft parts extracted and put on a hook.

Color my day, let’s pick a hue.  Periwinkle blue?   Or, really, whatever hues you might choose.

Rip van Winkle Hotel in the Catskills:    The shanty on the left is the original house from 1826. The boarding house on the right was built in 1867. The place has a fascinating history.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked, a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I think of winkles, first of all, the oyster-killing marine snails, themselves edible. Then the verb for getting the little beggars out of their shells. The periwinkle is one kind of winkle. The periwinkle is also a ground-cover plant with blue flowers. Periwinkle is fun to say and fun to see. That hue of blue looks good on you.

Winkle can also mean scintillate or twinkle.

In spite of all the crap, there will always be reasons for being happy, and the word winkle is one of them.

Winkle pickers:   Phrase used to describe shoes that are very narrow and pointy.

Roger Winkle is a practicing Cardiovascular Disease doctor in Redwood City, California.

See that little girl?  She sang with us in Central Park in 2003.  She did a good job too.

Her name is Simone and I had a lot of laughs with her.

After a hard day winkling out molluscs from the rocks near the Cliffhouse, San Francisco, she enjoys a well deserved siesta.

A winkle can be a mysterious part of your body that tells you when you’re turned on. It turns pink when it’s the most excited.

Robert Matthew Van Winkle better known by his other name, Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper, actor and television host.

Rip ran to the old inn where he once gathered with friends. But instead of a shade tree there was a pole with a strange flag adorned in stars and stripes. And the name of the inn had changed from King George Inn to General Washington Inn.

Vanilla Ice is not the same person as Andrew Dice Clay.

You know, that story by Washington Irving is very deliciously told.  It might be worth your while to reread it one of these days.  You think you know the story, and yet you don’t.

I bet Saul Bellow read it once or twice, even if he was from Chicago and loved to ride the El.

The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children’s book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog washerwoman who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District.

From a review of The Third Man:   Holly himself has a lot of trouble with names, calling Calloway Callahan, not knowing James Joyce, calling Winkel “winkle.” “Winkel” means “angle” in German, with the suggestion of something crooked or twisted. “Winkle” as an English verb is the process of wriggling a periwinkle, also a “winkle,” out of its shell.

It was difficult for that chick to winkle out of her shell.

Arrancar means: to boot, to bootstrap, to break off, to extract, to pull up, to start, to switch on, to winkle, to wrench, and ‘wrench,’ can you feel it? is actually the same word as arrancar.  Arracher in French.  Un arracheur de dents was a tooth puller.

Difficult to winkle out the secrets of the universe when we can’t even see 95% of it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a Spanish professor at Harvard. He didn’t like teaching but he translated Rip Van Winkle and called it Andrés Gazul.  If he came anywhere near the flavor, atmosphere and richness of the original, his Spanish was very good indeed.

Tyler Winklevoss studied Latin and Greek at Harvard.

Audrey and her deer one winkling out a box of pasta.

I knew her sister Heather.  Believe it or not, Heather was an unusual name in those days.

A ‘wee sleekit’ mouse.

She winkled out various dirty bits out of the distributor cap and did a fine job in the motor pool.

Uh, oh.

See you next week?

Sam Andrew

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She was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska  [ˈmarja salɔˈmɛa skwɔˈdɔfska] on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire.

Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry).

 

She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon.  

Curie’s efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre’s death, the development of X-rays. 

Curie died in 1934 at the sanatorium of Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie) due to aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation, mainly, it seems, during her World War I service in mobile X-ray units created by her.

Her parents were both teachers, and Marie was the youngest of five children.

As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor.  She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school.

When she was 11, Marie Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis.

A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw.

She instead continued her education in Warsaw’s floating university, a set of underground, informal classes held in secret.

Both Marie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling.

Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies.

For roughly five years, Marie Curie worked as a tutor and a governess.

She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math.

In 1891, Marie Curie managed to travel to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne.

She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet, a diet that I followed in my own days at the Sorbonne.

Marie Curie completed her master’s degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year.

She received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they began a scientific duet which would last until Pierre’s death.

Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to one another, but at first, they worked on

separate projects.

Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen.

Marie Curie began to conduct her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the uranium rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium.

The rays, she thought, came from the element’s atomic structure.This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena.Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn’t slow down.

Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898.

They named the element polonium, after Marie’s native country of Poland.

They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium.

In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element.

Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics.

She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity.

With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research.

They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.

In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution’s first female professor.

 

Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture.

Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field.

Marie Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband’s former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin’s marriage. The press’ negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France.

Among the false rumors the right-wing press spread about Curie was that she was Jewish, not truly French, and thus undeserving of a seat in the French Academy. The “right” wing.  What a misnomer. In every country, in every period, they seem to be wrong about so many things.

Mathematician Emile Borel, scientific director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, sheltered Curie and her daughters even when the minister of public instruction threatened to fire him for sullying French academic honor.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Marie Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the war effort.

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She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname “Little

Curies.”

After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw.

All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie’s health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat.

In 3511, it will be finally safe to handle Marie Curie’s notebooks which are now wrapped in lead.

In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation.

Marie Curie is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors.

Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother’s footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.

Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements.Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris.

See you next week?

Sam Andrew

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When I was eighteen, I used to take the bus from the University of San Francisco downtown to 450 Sutter Street, the medical building.

I was interpreting for some of the doctors in the 450 Sutter  building.

The physicians would occasionally treat braceros and other Hispanic patients.

I assisted those patients in accounts of their injuries, mostly received while doing agricultural work, or becoming embarazada, pregnant.

The words the patients used to describe their medical problems were, of course, simple, direct and basic. They didn’t talk like doctors, and I interpreted their actual words rather than  using the Latin and Greek terms for the anatomy that the medical personnel used.

When I asked, “¿Dónde le duele?” (Where does it hurt?) the braceros didn’t say, “I fell out of the tree and hurt my rabadilla (coccyx),” or “My ano (anus) is sore.”  They used the word culo (ass) for both situations. A farola is a lamp stand or lamp post.

I knew the word culo ever since I had heard one Guatemalan say to another, “Dale una vuelta y metételo en el culo.”  (Turn it around and stick it up your ass.)

So, in learning medical Spanish, it might be best to learn the basic words for the anatomy and the learned terms. That way, you can talk to both patients and the doctors.

The good news is that scientific, learned terms are quite close to each other from language to language. Almost all of the scientific terms in any language are recognizable to an English speaker.

Common terms differ most from one language to another.  The word here that would change the most from one language to another is ‘leg.’

You can probably figure out what estómago means without even looking it up because it is close in form to stomach, but how about barriga or panza?  Barriga o panza mean belly or paunch, as in Sancho Panza. The learned words don’t change much from language to language, but the words that the braceros used when I was interpreting for them to doctors were sometimes not even in the dictionary.

I like how Hispanic speakers say ‘toes.’   Fingers of the feet, dedos de pies.  By the way, I think there’s a spelling mistake up there. ‘Left’ in Spanish is izquierdo.

Learning the common parts of the anatomy in Spanish can be a labor of love, since the street words for the anatomy of a human being are often more vivid and descriptive than the Latin/Greek terms.

‘Face’ in Spanish is la cara, but el rostro is also used. Rostro comes from Latin rostrum, which means ‘beak,’ so this word was originally street slang in Latin. Someone speaks publicly from a rostrum, which often looks like the beak of a bird.

El brazo is the arm. Un bracero, then, is someone who uses his arms for working. The word comes from brachium in Latin. When you embrace someone you are enfolding her in your arms.

La muñeca is the wrist, but it is also a doll.  It is so important for the hand to be completely flexible that there are many bones in the wrist.

I fell off of a motorcycle once and broke my arm. The doctor said I broke a navicular (ship shaped) bone, but there is no navicular in the wrist. There is a navicular in el pie, the foot. Sometimes I wonder about doctors. He meant one of the small bones in the wrist, but he couldn’t be bothered to use (learn?) the correct term.

Muñeca is from a pre-Roman language, possibly pre-Indo-European. Compare Basque muno (“colina”). The original meaning was ‘protuberance’, from which both senses of ‘wrist’ and ‘doll’ come. Compare Spanish moño (“a bow, ribbon”) and muñón (“stump”).

Everything you are rests on the astrágalo.  All of your life. From Greek ἀστράγαλος.

In some animals the astragalus are so nearly cube shaped that these cuboids were the very first dice, so when a gambler says, “Roll them bones,” he once was speaking quite literally.

El tobillo is the word for ‘ankle.’   From Latin tūbellum, a diminutive of tūber (hump, bump, swelling, protuberance).

Words to live by, for anyone:   No deje que nadie le diga que hay cosas que no debe aprender o saber.   Don’t let anyone tell you that there are things that you don’t need to learn or to know.

Venga acá.     Come here.

The calf, or gastrocnemius, is called la pantorrilla in Spanish.

Probably neither one of them got much sleep.

¿Está mejor?   Is it better?    ¿Está peor?   Is it worse?

Trabaje primero por la gente, no por el dinero.   Work first for people, not money.

La rodilla is the ‘knee.’

In Spanish, the knee, la rodilla, is seen as a wheeled, rolling thing. El rodillo is a platen. Remember the platen?  It was that thing you rolled a piece of paper onto when you used a typewriter, or maybe you never did?  The word rodillo can also mean a rolling pin.  There is a notion of rounding, rolling here. La rodilla.

Un rodeo was once the time when the cattle were rounded up for the winter and put into the barn. Riding horses and roping calves can be hard on las rodillas, the knees, both las rodillas of the cattle and las rodillas of the herders.

La vejiga  (órgano que recibe la orina de los riñones)     bladder  (organ that receives urine from the kidneys)

Piense bien antes de beber. Es más  difícil después.  Think hard before you drink.  It’s more difficult afterwards.

El muslo is the thigh.  This looks like a descendant of the Latin musculum. Did you know that musculum (muscle) means ‘little mouse?’  The Romans thought that the muscles looked like mice jumping under the skin.

El hígado        the liver         hígados is colloquial for ‘guts, courage.’

Notice how large the liver is, and that it has a right and left lobe.

The liver is larger than the stomach.

Some good foods for a fat liver: artichokes, garlic, papayas, beets, limes, cucumbers, celery, carrots, ginger.

Love this kind of liver logic:   My liver is sick and I’m going to punish it.

El corazón…………………………..the heart

Your heart beats seventy times a minute, day and night all your life. That’s some kind of miracle, isn’t it?

Don’t smoke. Keep away from obesity. Exercise. No to stress. Look at life optimistically. Alcohol in moderation. Laugh a lot. A healthy, balanced diet. Watch your diabetes. Control hypertension and cholesterol. Breathe deeply. Enjoy the little things in life.

¿Cuales son las cosas más importantes que afectan la salud y el bienestar de su gente hoy en día y en el futuro?  What are the most important things that affect the health and well being of your people, both today and in the future?

The Greeks thought that the navel of the world was at Delphi.  They made a stone to cover the navel which they called omphalos. I think maybe the Spanish word for navel, el ombligo, is related to this Greek word.

For the Romans, a boss in the center of a shield was called an umbo, and a little umbo was an umbilicus, the direct ancestor of el ombligo.

The Spanish version of ‘staring at your navel’ is rascarse el ombligo, scracthing your navel.

El pene    el miembro     penis   member     Happiness is a voluntary muscle.

¿Qué papel tienen los curanderos y parteras?  What rôle do healers and midwives have?

El útero    the uterus, womb    A more interesting word for ‘womb’ is la matriz, the matrix.

A ‘rib’ is called la costilla in Spanish. When you accost someone, you are literally coming up close to their ribs.

In Latin the word for rib is costa, side.

El pezón is the nipple.  Self examination of the breast. Visual inspection.  Look for changes in skin texture. Nipple secretion. Atypical fullness and/or wrinkling. Retraction or cracking in the nipple.

El pezón is derived from a Latin root *pecione, a derivative of peciolus, petiolus from *pediciolus, diminutive of pediculus, dimunitive form of pes (“foot”).

El seno o el pecho. Both of these words mean ‘breast,’ but I have the impression that el seno refers directly to the breast itself, where el pecho can also mean the chest generally. Seno is derived from sinus (curve, cavity, bosom; curve, bowl for serving wine, curved or bent surface, bending).  Pecho is from Latin pectus.

¿Cuántas madres amamantan a sus hijos?  ¿Son estos niños más sanos que los que no reciben leche de pecho?  ¿Porqué?  How many mothers breastfeed their babies? Are these children more healthy than those who are not breastfed? Why?

In pectore (Latin for “in the breast/heart”) is a term used in Catholicism to refer to appointments to the College of Cardinals by the Pope without revealing the names of the appointees (reserved by the Pope in his bosom, in pectore).

Other than its religious meaning and origin, nowadays in pectore is basically used to refer to either something kept hidden or unrevealed or an expected, but still not official, appointment to an office (especially in politics).  The Italian version of the phrase – in petto – is also commonly used.

El moretón    bruise, black and blue mark

El cuello is ‘the neck.’ You can see the relationship of the word to collar.

La nuca, the nape of the neck

Cuando usted prueba una nueva idea, siempre empiece con poco.  When you try a new idea, always begin with a little bit. Go slowly.

El hombro is ‘the shoulder.’  Hombro is probably derived from humerus.

El mareo   dizziness, nausea, seasickness  El mareo can mean ‘annoyance’ when used colloquially.

‘The back’ is la espalda.     From Latin spatula (“broad, flat piece”)

There is an idiom tener buenas espaldas which means ‘to have broad shoulders,’ so I’m thinking that espalda originally meant shoulder, especially since the French for ‘shoulder’ is épaule.

Dar la espalda means ‘to turn your back on,’  so the title of this pamphlet means Don’t turn your back on your back.

Embarazada     pregnant     El embarazo can mean embarrassment, obstruction, awkwardness as well as pregnancy, so not such a good concatenation of ideas there.

La cintura is ‘the waist,’ and el cinturón is ‘the belt,’ but the title of the film above means ‘chastity belt.’  The language is Italian, though, so ‘chastity belt’ in Spanish would probably be el cinturón de castidad.   From Latin cinctūra.

A related idiom is meter en cintura, which means ‘to bring someone to reason.’

La cadera is ‘the hip,’ from Latin cathedra, from Ancient Greek καθέδρα, from κατά (katá, “above”) + ἕδρα (hédra, “chair”).

La rabadilla is the base of the spine, the coccyx.  Rabo means ‘tail,’ and rabada means ‘hindquarters, rump.’

¿Qué ocurrió?        What happened?

‘Elbow’ in Spanish is el codo, which is derived from Latin cubitus  (elbow; elbow; forearm; ulna; state, action of reclining, lying down).

A biblical measure was the cubit, which was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.  From Latin cubo, cubare, cubui, cubitum ”to lie down.”

Las nalgas is one way of saying ‘buttocks.’    If life turns its back on you, grab it by the ass.

Por favor quítase la ropa.     Please take off your clothes.  Please undress.

Sam’s Vagina Monologue      Las vaginas: The word vagina began to be used in the late 17th century.

Vagina is derived from Latin where it means literally a sheath, scabbard.

I see the word vagina used literally this way when I read Caesar who of course talks about the weapons his soldiers use.

Vagina is also the source of the word vanilla. Think of the shape of a vanilla pod.

In all countries there are many slang words for vagina.  In Spain people often say coño (cunt).

Of course there are many other words:  toto, chocho, chichi, chumino, conejo, higo, chiral, papo.

The Spanish also use the word almeja (clam) for vagina.

In Cuba the main street word for vagina is papaya.

Governor Mitt Romney visited Miami as a quick stop on his presidential campaign. Part of the media tour included an interview for Radio Mabí with Carlos Santana. The nine-minute phone interview ended with giggles from Santana and the translator. Why? Romney used the word papaya which is Cuban slang for vagina.

In México some street words for vagina are concha, panocha, pucha, papaya, pepa, verija, cachucha, guayabo, chocho, la pepita, chango.

Guatemala: cuchara, cutusa or cotusa, pupusa.  Honduras: verga, pupusa, cuchara, cuca, pepa.  Nicaragua: bicho, mico.  Costa Rica: mico, panocha.   Panamá: micha, cuca, araña, tontón, chucha.

El Salvador: pupusa, cuca, mico, torta.

By the way, I always thought that the word tortilla (a little torta) was Mayan or Aztec as the thing itself is.

But the other day I was reading Ovid’s story of the flood, and I found this sentence:  Cava tortilis buccina sumitur illi, quae crescit in latum ab imo turbine: Buccina, quae, ut concepit aëra medio ponte, replet voce littora jacentia sub utroque Phoebo.

(The hollow spiral trumpet is taken by him, which increases in breadth from the lowest twist: Trumpet which when it was conceived in the middle of the sea filled with its sound all the shores lying under the Sun.)

So, tortilis was the Latin word for spiral and the Mexican word for the spiral corn tortilla.

No se preocupe.       Don’t worry.  You don’t have to worry.

Es imposible hechizar a una persona que no cree en la hechicería.

It is impossible to bewitch a person who doesn’t believe in sorcery.

Haga todo lo que no le produce el dolor.      You can do anything that does not cause pain.

Si tiene una enfermedad muy extraña, no le eche la culpa a una bruja, no vaya a un centro mágico, sino busque ayuda médica.

If you have a very strange affliction, don’t blame a ‘witch,’ and don’t go to a ‘magic’ center. Seek medical help.

Cuando una persona está ‘hechizada,’  ¿es cierto que se alivia si los familiares lastiman o matan a la bruja?

When someone is ‘bewitched,’ is it certain that this spell which has been cast will be alleviated if her family injures or kills the witch who did it?

¡MENTIRA!   Nunca hace provecho perjudicar a otra persona.

LIE!  Never take advantage of a situation to hurt another person.

¿Entiende las instrucciones?      Do you understand the instructions?

¿No cree que necesita una inyección?

You don’t believe that he needs an injection?

No, solamente tiene un resfriado. El solo va a sanar. Debe descansar, comer bien y tomar muchos líquidos. La medecina fuerte no le hará provecho pero sí le puede hacer daño.

No, he just has a cold. It’ll get better by itself. He should rest, eat well and take a lot of liquids. Any stronger medicine will not be an advantage for him and may harm him.

No debe quitarse el vendaje.     Don’t take off the bandage.  Don’t remove the bandage.

Sólo cuando la gente se hace responsable de su propria salud y la de su comunidad, se pueden realizar cambios importantes.

Only when people become responsible for their own health and for that of their community can important changes be made.

El bazo      spleen   Bazo can also mean yellowish brown.

Un dibujo vale más que mil palabras.

A drawing is worth more than a thousand words.

¿Tiene Usted (Ud.) o ha tenido Ud. alguna vez destellos de luz?  Do you have or have you ever had light flashes?

Las personas pueden captar aún mejor las historias que tienen mensajes importantes, si ellas mismas las representan en vivo, en forma de teatro.

People can better understand stories with important messages if they themselves act out the drama of these messages in a play.

El tórax se refiere al pecho y los órganos que se encuentran ahí.  The thorax refers to the chest and the organs found there.

Haga visitas cordiales a los hogares, sobre todo a los de las personas que tienen problemas que no les permiten visitar al puesto de salud o que no participan en las actividades de grupo.

Make cordial visits to homes, especially to those where people have problems that won’t allow them to visit the health center or to those who don’t participate in group activities.

En una escala de 0 a 10 donde 0 no indica dolor y 10 indica un dolor intenso, ¿ cómo diría Ud. que es el dolor?  On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you have ever felt, how would you rate the pain?

La convivencia, la cooperación y el cariño son las claves de la salud.

Living in harmony, cooperation and affection are the keys to health.

Inclínese Ud. hacía adelante.    Bend over forward.

Para muchas enfermedades los remedios tradicionales son tan buenos como las medicinas modernas – o hasta mejores. A menudo son más baratos. Y a veces son menos peligrosos.

For many infirmities home remedies are as good as modern medicines – or even better.  At least they are cheap and at times are less dangerous.

Recuéstese Ud.         Lean backward.

Ningún contraveneno casero (sea contra víbora, alacrán, ubar, araña u otro animal venenoso) tiene fuerza curativa más que la pura sugestion.

No home anti poison (whether it be against snake bite, scorpion bite, spider or any other poisonous animal bite) has any curative power other than pure suggestion.

Dé Ud. una vuelta.       Roll over.  (Give yourself a turn.)

Los remedios caseros ayudan a aliviar algunas enfermedades, pero otras deben curarse con la medicina moderna, como por ejemplo, todas las infecciones graves.

Home remedies help to alleviate some diseases, but other illnesses should be treated with modern medicine, such as, for example, all serious infections.

Enderécese Ud.      Sit up.

Do you remember that Ud. stands for Usted?  Usted is the formal ‘you’ in Spanish. Once upon a time Usted was a shortened form of Vuestra Merced, Your Mercy. Does Your Mercy wish for your crossbow now?  This is why Usted is in the third person.  This is similar to Does Your Majesty wish her soup tureen now? which is also a third person usage, although it is more difficult to see that in English, where verb conjugations have almost disappeared.

We address a duke as Your Grace. Same idea, and the verb is also in the third person. Has Your Grace been here before now?

Las enfermedades como pulmonía, tétano, fiebre, tifoidea, tuberculosis, apendicitis, enfermedades causadas por el contacto sexual y fiebre del parto deben tratarse con medicinas modernas lo más pronto posible.

Diseases like lung disease, tetanus, fever, typhoid, tuberculosis, apendicitis, fevers in childbirth and diseases caused by sexual contact should be treated with modern medicines as soon as possible.

Acuéstese Ud. boca abajo.   Lie on your stomach.  (That is, prone.) Notice a cultural difference here. Lie prone is lie with your mouth below.

Lie supine is lie with your mouth above.  That is, on your back.

No pierda tempo intendando curar estas enfermedades, pulmonía, tétano, fiebre, tifoidea, tuberculosis, apendicitis, enfermedades causadas por el contacto sexual y fiebre del parto, con remedios caseros.

Don’t waste time trying to cure these diseases with home remedies.

Siéntese Ud.       Sit down.

En caso de una enfermedad grave, generalmente es mejor usar la medicina moderna – con la ayuda de un trabajador de la salud, cuando sea posible.

In case of a serious illness, it is better generally to use modern medicine – with the help of a health care professional whenever possible.

El médico ha pedido que se le haga un examen de los senos.   Your doctor has ordered a breast examination.

Respete las tradiciones de su pueblo y desarrolle su labor en base a ellas.

Respect the traditions of your people, and develop your work on their behalf.

La apoplejía es el deterioro repentino de la circulación en uno o más vasos sanguíneos que suministran sangre al cerebro.

A stroke (they called it ‘apoplexy’ in the 18th century) is a sudden impairment of circulation in one or more of the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain.

Sobre todo, procure no hacer daño. Use un remedio casero sólo cuando sepa que no es peligroso y si conoce bien su uso correcto.

Above all, do no harm.

Use a home remedy only when you know it is not dangerous and if you know its correct use.

Este web log intenta ayudar a la gente a atender sus problemas más frecuentes de salud.

This web log is intended to help people with their most frequent health problems.

See you next week?

Sam Andrew                  Janis Joplin      Roy Markowitz

____________________________________________________________

We Are All Related.

Not only are we related to other people, we are also related to all other known life on the planet.

If you are ever at a party and some bright person says, “I am related to Janis Joplin,” hold up your hand and respond cheerfully, “I am too!”  You are, you know, and more closely related to her than you might think.

I read this the other day:    Every American president is in some way related to our nation’s preeminent Founding Father George Washington.

Of course this is true.  This is one of those statements that masks the fact that we are ALL related to every American president, to George Washington and to each other.

It’s just a matter of numbers.

I have written elsewhere, and it only seems to be common sense, to realize that we are all incredible winners just to be here.

Think about it.  You are the result of millions of couplings, all of them successful.

Your ancestors lived long enough to procreate, and I am talking about all of your ancestors going all the way back to something like 3.5 billion years ago.

You are the happy result of a long, long chain of lucky chances, felicitous opportunities, good weather, excellent timing, timing down to the second, timing down to the split second.

You have two parents.

And each parent has two parents, so you have four grandparents and eight great grandparents.

You can see that it doesn’t take a long climb up the family tree for you to be connected to a large number of people.

We’re only talking about parents here. Not uncles, aunts, cousins and other collateral relatives.

I have written about Samuel David Andrew, a man who fought in the Civil War, and who lost an arm at the battle of the Wilderness, one of the many Sam Andrews in our family going back for hundreds of years.

Just tracing my lineage back back to Samuel David Andrew means I have to keep track of 250 people, parents, grandparents, great grandparents straight back in a line to him, and he only lived a hundred years ago.

Two hundred and fifty mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers in only eight generations back to, say, 1840.

If you trace your own lineage back to 1600, which is relatively recent, it’s the modern era, just counting your mother and father and their mothers and fathers and so on, you will find that your family tree is a bit crowded. There are now 16,384 people who are directly responsible for you, that’s also a lot of people that had to get it on with no visual stimulation from anywhere but their partner, there wasn’t any mobile porn obviously. Learn more about smartphone porn at m-porn and look at what your ancestors missed out on.

Think of all that love, all that intrigue, all that monkey business, all of those human relations, all that human intercourse.

Let’s see, half of 16,384 is 8,192.  Eight thousand, one hundred and ninety two women met 8,192 men since 1600, and they carried on in such a manner as to result in you.

That’s a lot of kinfolk. And we’re only talking about four hundred years here.

In Elizabethan England, there were, in the entire country, only about three, four million people, the population of the San Francisco Bay Area now. You could be related to all of them. You ARE related to all of them.

Samuel David Andrew lived eight generations before you.

Twenty generations before you the number of people who were amorous, lecherous or whatever on your behalf reaches 1,048,576.

Each of those million plus couplings had to be successful to result in this little boy who turned out to be Jimi Hendrix.

Each of those million plus people had to be not murdered before the magic moment of procreation that resulted in you, not diseased or infertile, not smashed flat by an errant boulder, not killed in a war, each of these million plus people had to live to an age of fertility and procreate successfully.  That’s an amazing chain of good luck.

Think about the people we have seen disappear in our own lifetimes, Jimi Hendrix being one of them. Life is fragile. It’s not easy living long enough to make the next generation.

If you look at your family tree back to the time of, say, Julius Caesar, and just count your mother and father, and all of their mothers and fathers, the number of people who have resulted in you becomes one million trillion.

You are intimately related to one million trillion people.  That’s more people than have ever lived. By far.

How is that possible?

Lots of incest.  Most of it not illegal or immoral, although there was doubtlessly much of that too.

No, when you’re related to that many people, that means that each of those people are related to that many people too, so it won’t be long before you’re engaging meaningfully with a more or less closely related person.

To put it another way, you are most likely related to the person who is now your significant other. Indeed, it would be unusual if that were not the case.

To put it still another way, if you walk into, say, Yoshi’s nightclub on Fillmore and Eddy in San Francisco, take a good look around because you are related to everyone in there.

These considerations give the phrase ‘We are all one’ a whole new meaning.

There is a family in Georgia, a big family, and their name is Bembry. Some are African American and some are not.  I am related to all of them.

So are you. Probably not as closely as I am, but they’re your kin too.

If we are related to one million trillion people counting back to Caesar’s time, and after all, that is not really a long time in the general scheme of things, we are related to everyone, not only who lives now, but who has ever lived.

Saints, scoundrels, heroes, villains, holy women, hypocrites, Roundheads, Cavaliers, Guelphs, Ghibellines, Visigoths, Suebi, they’re all family.

There was an old song that had a line, ‘Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a hundred kings.’   Just so.

In the Middle Ages, people sang, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

Genetically we are 99.9 % the same.

You have probably read that we are 95% the same as chimpanzees, so, there you go, we are related to them too.

But humans?  It is thought that we all come from an original population of about 10,000 individuals.

We are extraordinarily alike.  There is more genetic variety in a large troop of baboons than there is in the entire human species.

Mitakuye Oyasin (All Are Related) is phrase in the Lakota language, which reflects the world view of interconnectedness held by the Lakota people.

The phrase translates as “all my relatives,” “we are all related,” or “all my relations.”

Every person on earth’s most recent common ancestor might have died less than 2,000 years ago.

There simply aren’t enough ancestors for each of us NOT to be related.

It’s quite common for people to have the same great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents.

Some geneticists believe we’re all at least 50th cousins to everyone else on this planet.

Is there a single common ancestor that every person on earth shares?

In a discussion such as this there are three different ‘common ancestors’ to consider.

There is the most recent common ancestor, a random individual who happens to be the latest person who connects to everyone.

Mitochondrial DNA is a distinct subset of genetic material found not in the cell nucleus but rather in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell.

Female egg cells completely destroy the mitochondria in the male sperm cell shortly after fertilization, leaving only the female mitochondria behind.

Thus, there is a ‘mitochondrial Eve’ who passed down her mitochondria relatively unchanged to every human alive today.

Every female alive today will continue to pass down her mitochondria indefinitely.

Mitochondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago.

We know this from tracking the mutations to the mitochondrial DNA and establishing which human groups are most closely related.

What about Adam?

Only men have a Y-chromosome. Fathers pass it on to their sons, which allows geneticists to trace patrilineal descent in much the same way that mitochondrial DNA allows us to trace matrilineal descent.

Genetic evidence suggests that Y-chromosomal Adam lived about 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, much more recently than mitochondrial Eve.

Whatever language we speak, whatever color of our skin, we share ancestors who were slaves in Egypt, farmers in the Yangtse delta, horsemen on the steppes, farm women in North and South America.

A substantial proportion of men in the world are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. They carry Y chromosomes which seem to have come down from an individual who lived approximately 1,000 years ago.

Genghis Khan died ~750 years ago, so assuming 25 years per generation, you get about 30 men between the present and that period. In more quantitative terms, ~10% of the men who reside within the borders of the Mongol Empire as it was at the death of Genghis Khan may carry his Y chromosome, and so ~0.5% of men in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, do so.

By the way, I just read today that four out of ten Americans believe that we descended from Adam and Eve ten thousand years ago.

Please let that be an inaccurate poll.

Our human family is growing rapidly.

In 1800, about one billion people lived in the world.  This number had doubled by 1930, tripled by 1960, and officially reached six billion in October 1999. The world population is now over seven billion and rapidly climbing.

Because of this population explosion, everyone alive today shares recent common ancestors.

 

The average marriage in Europe is between sixth cousins, who share a great, great, great, great, great grandparent. However, this varies a lot from place to place, and people living in isolated communities will be more closely related.

We all share the same ancestors multiple times.

The awareness of our ancestors is limited to a few generations so we have difficulty believing that all of us in the world are connected.

The populating of the planet by our ancestors was accomplished progressively outward from a region situated between the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa. Thus, all contemporary human beings are descended from immigrants.

It is an illusion that there are races. The diversity of human beings is so great and so complicated that it is impossible to classify seven billion individuals into discrete ‘races.’

The term race refers to a difference of origin which is non-existent for humans.

Ancient peoples stigmatized ‘others’ on the grounds of language, custom, class, and especially religion, but they did not sort people according to physical differences.

The concept of race is a recent invention, only a few hundred years old.

It is worth keeping in mind that, though we are all related, each of us is unique. Eighty billion human beings more or less have lived on Earth over the time since our common origin. With the exception of true identical twins, never have any two among them have had exactly the same genetic heritage.

The number of different possible human individuals is many times greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

The problem of travel between two objects in space where even the speed of light would take years or even centuries to traverse may ulmately be solved by some kind of teleportation such as is now achieved on the photon level.

And now for some really deep and close relationships.

A light photon in Cleveland will start spinning in one direction and another light photon in Melbourne will instantly begin spinning in another direction.

These photons are said to be entangled.

Talk about being closely related.

A Combination of the Two:   Entanglement of light photons

Quantum entanglement, whereby two or more objects are linked by an unseen connection can be thought of as a pair of dice that always land on the same number.

It is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa.

It is, however, impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed.

Measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.

Quantum entanglement has applications in the emerging technologies of quantum computing and quantum cryptography, and has been used to realize quantum teleportation experimentally.

One of the most intriguing aspects of entanglement is this quantum teleportation, in which the quantum state of a particle or atom is transferred to its entangled partner, even if they are separated physically.

Such relaying of quantum information could form the backbone of long-distance quantum communication channels.

This network, however, is a long way from being realized.

A group of researchers have made headway in quantum teleportation, and thus communication. The team, led by physics graduate student Steven Olmschenk at the University of Maryland, College Park, succeeded in teleporting quantum information between ytterbium ions (charged atoms) one meter apart.

Quantum teleportation has been demonstrated across macroscopic distances (hundreds of meters) for photons, the fundamental particles of electromagnetic radiation, but ions are better candidates for quantum memory because they can store information for relatively long periods of time.

The fundamental advantage of quantum information systems is that whereas a conventional digital bit can be 0 or 1, a qubit can be in a so-called superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Normally, you have to collect particles that come from the object to image it, says Anton Zeilinger, a physicist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. “Now, for the first time, you don’t have to do that.”

Two photons need not be of the same energy, Zeilinger says, meaning that the light that touches the object can be of a different color than the light that is detected.

Thus, we are all entangled in ways that we have not even imagined. We are all related.

Sam Andrew         Your cousin

_________________________________________________

We Are All Related.

Not only are we related to other people, we are also related to all other known life on the planet.

Max Clarke photograph

If you are ever at a party and some bright person says, “I am related to Janis Joplin, hold up your hand and respond cheerfully, “I am too!

You are, you know, and more closely related to her than you might think.           Photo:   Max Clarke

I read this the other day:    Every American president is in some way related to our nation’s preeminent Founding Father George Washington.

Of course this is true.  This is one of those statements that masks the fact that we are ALL related to every American president, to George Washington and to each other. If we wanted to be serious about it (but no one, and I mean no one, wants to look at it this way) people that feature in videos on sites like www.dosexvideo.com read more into other adult sites also, are technically committing incest? No matter how many generations apart.

It’s just a matter of numbers.

I have written elsewhere, and it only seems to be common sense, to realize that we are all incredible winners just to be here.

Think about it.  You are the result of millions of couplings, all of them successful.                           Photo: Max Clarke

Your ancestors lived long enough to procreate, and I am talking about all of your ancestors going all the way back to something like 3.5 billion years ago.

You are the happy result of a long, long chain of lucky chances, felicitous opportunities, good weather, excellent timing, timing down to the second, timing down to the split second.

You have two parents.

And each parent has two parents.

So you have four grandparents and eight great grandparents.

You can see that it doesn’t take a long climb up the family tree for you to be connected to a large number of people.

We’re only talking about parents here. Not uncles, aunts, cousins and other collateral relatives.

I have written about Samuel David Andrew, a man who fought in the Civil War, and who lost an arm at the battle of the Wilderness, one of the many Sam Andrews in our family going back for hundreds of years.

Just tracing my lineage back back to Samuel David Andrew means I have to keep track of 250 people, parents, grandparents, great grandparents straight back in a line to him, and he only lived a hundred years ago.

Two hundred and fifty mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers in only eight generations back to, say, 1840.

If you trace your own lineage back to 1600, which is relatively recent, it’s the modern era, just counting your mother and father and their mothers and fathers and so on, you will find that your family tree is a bit crowded. There are now 16,384 people who are directly responsible for you.

Think of all that love, all that intrigue, all that monkey business, all of those human relations, all that human intercourse.   Photo: Max Clarke

Let’s see, half of 16,384 is 8,192.  Eight thousand, one hundred and ninety two women met 8,192 men since 1600, and they carried on in such a manner as to result in you.

That’s a lot of kinfolk. And we’re only talking about four hundred years here.

In Elizabethan England, there were, in the entire country, only about three, four million people, the population of the San Francisco Bay Area now. You could be related to all of them. You ARE related to all of them.      Photo:   Max Clarke

Samuel David Andrew lived eight generations before you.

Twenty generations before you the number of people who were amorous, lecherous or whatever on your behalf reaches 1,048,576.

Photo:   Max Clarke

Each of those million plus couplings had to be successful to result in this little boy who turned out to be Jimi Hendrix.

Each of those million plus people had to be not murdered before the magic moment of procreation that resulted in you, not diseased and infertile, not smashed flat by an errant boulder, not killed in a war, each of the million plus people had to live to an age of fertility and procreate successfully.  That’s an amazing chain of good luck.

Think about the people we have seen disappear in our own lifetimes, Jimi Hendrix being one of them. Life is fragile. It’s not easy living long enough to make the next generation.

If you look on your family tree back to the time of, say, Julius Caesar, and just count your mother and father, and all of their mothers and fathers, the number of people who have resulted in you becomes one million trillion.

You are intimately related to one million trillion people.  That’s more people than have ever lived. By far.

How is that possible?

Lots of incest.  Most of it not illegal or immoral, although there was doubtlessly much of that too.

No, when you’re related to that many people, that means that each of those people are related to that many people too, so it won’t be long before you’re engaging meaningfully with a more or less closely related person.

To put it another way, you are most likely related to the person who is your significant other. Indeed, it would be unusual if that were not the case.

To put it still another way, if you walk into, say, Yoshi’s nightclub on Fillmore and Eddy in San Francisco, take a good look around because you are related to everyone in there.

These considerations give the phrase ‘We are all one’ a whole new meaning.

There is a family in Georgia, a big family, and their name is Bembry. Some are African American and some are not.  I am related to all of them.

So are you. Probably not as closely as I am, but they’re your kin too.

If we are related to one million trillion people counting back to Caesar’s time, and after all, that is not really a long time in the general scheme of things, we are related to everyone, not only who lives now, but who has ever lived.

Saints, scoundrels, heroes, villains, holy women, hypocrites, Roundheads, Cavaliers, Guelphs, Ghibellines, Visigoths, Suebi, they’re all family.

There was an old song that had a line, ‘Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a hundred kings.’   Just so.

In the Middle Ages, people sang, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

Genetically we are 99.9 % the same.

You have probably read that we are 95% the same as chimpanzees, so, there you go, we are related to them too.

But humans?  It is thought that we all come from an original population of about 10,000 individuals.

We are extraordinarily alike.  There is more genetic variety in a large troop of baboons than there is in the entire human species.

Mitakuye Oyasin (All Are Related) is phrase in the Lakota language, which reflects the world view of interconnectedness held by the Lakota people.

The phrase translates as “all my relatives, “we are all related, or “all my relations.

Every person on earth’s most recent common ancestor might have died less than 2,000 years ago.

There simply aren’t enough ancestors for each of us NOT to be related.

It’s quite common for people to have the same great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents.

Some geneticists believe we’re all at least 50th cousins to everyone else on this planet.

Is there a single common ancestor that every person on earth shares?

In a discussion such as this there are three different ‘common ancestors’ to consider.

There is the most recent common ancestor, a random individual who happens to be the latest person who connects to everyone.

Photo:   Max Clarke

Mitochondrial DNA is a distinct subset of genetic material found not in the cell nucleus but rather in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell.

Female egg cells completely destroy the mitochondria in the male sperm cell shortly after fertilization, leaving only the female mitochondria behind.

Thus, there is a ‘mitochondrial Eve’ who passed down her mitochondria relatively unchanged to every human alive today.

Every female alive today will continue to pass down her mitochondria indefinitely.

Mitochondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago.

We know this from tracking the mutations to the mitochondrial DNA and establishing which human groups are most closely related.

What about Adam?

Only men have a Y-chromosome. Fathers pass it on to their sons, which allows geneticists to trace patrilineal descent in much the same way that mitochondrial DNA allows us to trace matrilineal descent.

Genetic evidence suggests that Y-chromosomal Adam lived about 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, much more recently than mitochondrial Eve.

Whatever language we speak, whatever color of our skin, we share ancestors who were slaves in Egypt, farmers in the Yangtse delta, horsemen on the steppes, farm women in North and South America.   Photo:   Max Clarke

A substantial proportion of men in the world are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. They carry Y chromosomes which seem to have come down from an individual who lived approximately 1,000 years ago.

Genghis Khan died ~750 years ago, so assuming 25 years per generation, you get about 30 men between the present and that period. In more quantitative terms, ~10% of the men who reside within the borders of the Mongol Empire as it was at the death of Genghis Khan may carry his Y chromosome, and so ~0.5% of men in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, do so.

By the way, I just read today that four out of ten Americans believe that we descended from Adam and Eve ten thousand years ago.

Please let that be an inaccurate poll.

Our human family is growing rapidly.

In 1800, about one billion people lived in the world.  This number had doubled by 1930, tripled by 1960, and officially reached six billion in October 1999. The world population is now over seven billion and rapidly climbing.

Because of this population explosion, everyone alive today shares recent common ancestors.

 

The average marriage in Europe is between sixth cousins, who share a great, great, great, great, great grandparent. However, this varies a lot from place to place, and people living in isolated communities will be more closely related.

We all share the same ancestors multiple times.

The awareness of our ancestors is limited to a few generations so we have difficulty believing that all of us in the world are connected.

The populating of the planet by our ancestors was accomplished progressively outward from a region situated between the Middle East, North Africa, and East Africa. Thus, all contemporary human beings are descended from immigrants.

It is an illusion that there are races. The diversity of human beings is so great and so complicated that it is impossible to classify seven billion individuals into discrete ‘races.’

The term race refers to a difference of origin which is non-existent for humans.

Ancient peoples stigmatized ‘others’ on the grounds of language, custom, class, and especially religion, but they did not sort people according to physical differences.

The concept of race is a recent invention, only a few hundred years old.

It is worth keeping in mind that, though we are all related, each of us is unique. Eighty billion human beings more or less have lived on Earth over the time since our common origin. With the exception of true identical twins, never have any two among them have had exactly the same genetic heritage.

The number of different possible human individuals is many times greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

And now for some really deep and close relationships.

A light photon in Cleveland will start spinning in one direction and another light photon in Melbourne will instantly begin spinning in another direction.

Photo: Max Clarke

These photons are said to be entangled.

Talk about being closely related.

Photograph:        Max Clarke

A Combination of the Two:   Entanglement of light photons

Quantum entanglement, whereby two or more objects are linked by an unseen connection can be thought of as a pair of dice that always land on the same number.

It is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa.

It is, however, impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed.

Photo:    Max Clarke

Measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.

Quantum entanglement has applications in the emerging technologies of quantum computing and quantum cryptography, and has been used to realize quantum teleportation experimentally.

One of the most intriguing aspects of entanglement is this quantum teleportation, in which the quantum state of a particle or atom is transferred to its entangled partner, even if they are separated physically.

Such relaying of quantum information could form the backbone of long-distance quantum communication channels.

This network, however, is a long way from being realized.

A group of researchers have made headway in quantum teleportation, and thus communication. The team, led by physics graduate student Steven Olmschenk at the University of Maryland, College Park, succeeded in teleporting quantum information between ytterbium ions (charged atoms) one meter apart.

Quantum teleportation has been demonstrated across macroscopic distances (hundreds of meters) for photons, the fundamental particles of electromagnetic radiation, but ions are better candidates for quantum memory because they can store information for relatively long periods of time.

The fundamental advantage of quantum information systems is that whereas a conventional digital bit can be 0 or 1, a qubit can be in a so-called superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Normally, you have to collect particles that come from the object to image it, says Anton Zeilinger, a physicist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. “Now, for the first time, you don’t have to do that. Two photons need not be of the same energy, Zeilinger says, meaning that the light that touches the object can be of a different color than the light that is detected.

Thus, we are all entangled in ways that we have not even imagined. We are all related.

Sam Andrew         Your cousin

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