Category Archives: Uncategorized

Stupid

I've long wondered if the words "stupid" and "stooped" were related. Perhaps "stupid" was derived from the adjective "stooped" - as if, in 1300s England, someone decided that a handy personification of someone likely to come up with bad ideas was someone who was bent over, eyes-averted, perhaps shuffling, low-class, etc.. "Young master Chowderhead's comments are stooped and infirm." And then "stupid" became a spelling variant of "stooped", etc..

Today, I finally looked it up.

stupid (adj.)

1540s, "mentally slow, lacking ordinary activity of mind, dull, inane," from Middle French stupide (16c.) and directly from Latin stupidus "amazed, confounded; dull, foolish," literally "struck senseless," from stupere "be stunned, amazed, confounded," from PIE *stupe- "hit," from root *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)). Related: Stupidly; stupidness.

And:

stoop (v.)
"bend forward," Old English stupian "to bow, bend," from Proto-Germanic *stup- (source also of Middle Dutch stupen "to bow, bend," Norwegian stupa "fall, drop"), from PIE *(s)teu- (1) "to push, stick, knock, beat" (see steep (adj.)).

PIE being Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed root language of most European and many central Asian languages.

So, the relationship between "stupid" and "stooped" isn't a bit of middle-English wordplay. They are actually both derived, separately, through two different languages, from a word that meant to be beaten or hit. And they've preserved the sound of that original word for five thousand years.

MJP

"I'm going to be called Dr. Marijuana Pepsi!" she declared.

...

It's fitting that an African American woman who has gone through life as Marijuana Pepsi chose as her dissertation topic: "Black names in white classrooms: Teacher behaviors and student perceptions."

Marching Towards Doom

For better or worse, it’s getting easier than ever to doctor video footage, and the latest development in this field is as scary as it is impressive. A new algorithm developed by researchers from Stanford University, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Princeton University, and Adobe makes it possible to alter human speech in a video, just by changing the text in its transcript.

This method is said to alter the video while preserving the speaker’s characteristics. To accomplish this, the algorithm first reads the phonemes and pronunciation of letters and words from the original video, and creates a model of the speaker’s head to accurately replicate the speaker’s voice and movements.

Once you edit the transcript, the algorithm performs a search for segments containing lip movements that make the words you’ve typed in, and replaces the original phrase. But the replaced part can have a lot of pauses and cuts, because it’s stitched together tiny segments of video from across the clip. So, the algorithm applies some intelligent smoothing to make the edited video appear more natural.

We humans aren't smart enough to not trust what our eyes and ears tell us. If we see a video of someone saying something, we're going to believe she said it.

Leon Redbone, RIP

Leon Redbone, the singer who built a career out of performing ragtime, vaudeville and American standards with a sly wink and an unmistakable, nasally voice, died Thursday. He was 69.

A statement on Redbone’s website confirmed his death, though it did so with a sweet bit of humor, joking that he was actually 127 years old.

“He departed our world with his guitar, his trusty companion Rover, and a simple tip of his hat,” the statement read. “He’s interested to see what Blind Blake, Emmett, and Jelly Roll have been up to in his absence, and has plans for a rousing sing along number with Sári Barabás. An eternity of pouring through texts in the Library of Ashurbanipal will be a welcome repose, perhaps followed by a shot or two of whiskey with Lee Morse, and some long overdue discussions with his favorite Uncle, Suppiluliuma I of the Hittites. To his fans, friends, and loving family who have already been missing him so in this realm he says, ‘Oh behave yourselves. Thank you… and good evening everybody.'”

He is one of my favorites, always has been.

Leon Redbone - Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone 1977