h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*is just passing through*

hi chaiwallah,

There's a town near where I live called Zahara de los Atunes. It's an Arabic word isn't it? Azahar is Spanish for orange blossom (my favourite flower).

Me? I've got Irish and Canadian Indian (Cree) genes battling it out in my poor old tired body. On the whole I can't complain but would have much preferred Indian hair. Oops, apparently I'm not supposed to call myself part Indian anymore, but instead part aboriginal Canadian (uh, I rather don't think so).

az

Hi, Az,

Indeed, I have a postcard of Zahara de los Atunes which my daughter sent me from Spain when she was there earlier in the year.

small world, innit?

I think Zahara is Persian, hence the connection via Ismaili Gujerat, but the Ismaili ( Shi'ite ) names spread throughout the Arabic world, and hence into Spain. I seem to remember that it means either "shimmering light," or "rose," which would probably relate it to the Spanish Azahar. One of which ( orange blossom ) is flowering outside my window here magnificently....aaaaaah the smell of it.

So, you're living in southern Spain? My nominally Irish genes ( got to maintain the correct subject matter of the thread here ) would not let me live in such heat and sunshine, but my mixed "race" children thrive in it. Another advantage of interracial cross-fertilization. How I have longed for tannable skin, But the best I get is the intense turkey-egg-freckled look! So, I love the sunshine so long as I don't have to sit in it.

Well, so much for genetic conditioning. I was born and lived most of my childhood in 'Winterpeg' and I never ever got used to the cold. Now that I live in Seville the people here cannot understand how a Canadian can put up with +40º temperatures in summer. But I love it.

Then again, maybe I'm actually a cat! Sometimes I wonder about so many things.

az

My what a small world. Last month I visited my son in Seville and we stayed a night in Zahara (de la Sierra I think) which we were drawn to both by its beauty and the fact that a friend of mine has a daughter called Zahara.

I think the idea of 'Irish genes' (I am a Dubliner) is far-fetched. The Irish are a mixed race (as Edmund Burke said) and in any case genetically there is more difference inside Africa than outside it.

And yet . . . you can still recognise the broad skull of the Tipperary Ryans . . .

It is a small world.

But I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

H.

white-washing

white-washing ?

Well this is a fascinating thread.

I've just read (zipped) through the lot, including post 140 which identifies my friend with a daughter called Zahara as none other than the highly esteemed and pressed Chaiwallah.

The thread is a microcosm of h2g2 and of web conversation in general. It was started by a provocative question from someone who poked the fire a little and then said no more. Incredible restraint? Trolling? Utter indifference? I got the impression of someone doing a game of "Miss One-question" (interviewer stops celebrity, asks one question and then clams up; the game is to guess how many seconds the celeb will stay on camera before they get spooked and go away). However other researchers' opinions of the behaviour of the protagonist suggest that utter indifference is the probable answer.

Nonetheless we got a marvellous discussion! A beautifully put answer in post 40 and some interesting calming of ruffled feathers. Looking dispassionately it is curious that anger enters into it at all. It's a trap; the game I think PYT was playing is "Let's you and him fight".

Racism is only one version of the bad behaviour of exclusivity, and as such is motivated by non-racial intentions; selfish genes run deeper than xenophobia. It comes naturally, and should not be a matter of shame that one *feels* racially inclined; it is a thing like superstition, that we inherit from an earlier world, and that rationality cures.

And finally (I've been away from hootoo too long -- forgive me) let me give a rendition of an old favourite, in reply to post 43:

I saw a thing coming out of the sky
It had one big horn and one big eye
My knees went shaky and I said "Oo-ee
It looks like a purple people eater to me"

It was a
One-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater (x3)
What a sight to see

Well I said "Mr People Eater what's your line?"
He said "Eating purple people and it sure is fine
But that's not the reason that I came to land
I wanna get a job in a rock'n'roll band

It was etc.

Well he went away then but what do you know
I saw him last night on a TV show
He was rocking around and really knocking them dead
Playing rock'n'roll mussic through the horn in his head

It was etc.

(Dredged from memory; recorded in the late fifties by Nervous Norvis I do believe.)

Dear Recumbentman,

You must have overlooked my entries 139 and 140 in this thread, which described my "Irish" genes as a mixture of Scots, Norse, Spanish etc.etc.( and introduced Zahara . I thought that Azahar's nickname might have been an anagram of Zahara, only to discover it was her local village!) And indeed, it is interesting that there really is no such thing as a racially "pure" genetic line, even in Africa.

So the "whitewashing" ( with regard to my childrens' wild genes ) must have occurred back in Gujerat to allow recessive blue eyes and red hair to arise in my kids! Maybe around the time of Alexander's invasion?

I posted this in another thread, but it suddenly seems apposite here. It's a quotation from the wonderful book "1066 And All That", by WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman, a history book of the history as you remember it, rather than as it happened. (example "The Ancient Britons were by no means savages before the [Roman] Conquest, and had already made great strides in civilisation, e.g. they buried each other in long round wheelbarrows (agriculture) and burnt each other alive (religion) under the guidance of even older Britons called Druids or Eisteddfods, who worshipped Middletoe in the famous Druidical churchyard at Stoke Penge.")

Anyway, Sellar and Yeatman beautifully sum up the confusion of origins of the various inhabitants of these isles thus:

"The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa)."

H.

(Apologies, Recumbentman, we were both scribbling away at the same time, and your entry got onscreen just before mine, so I hadn't read it before writing etc.etc....)

Indeed, Hoovaloo, Sellar and Yeatman are brilliant. Maybe a new thread could be devoted to them. If you enjoy the confusion of race in "1066 and All That," you ( and Recumbentman ) would enjoy the wonderful scrambling of chess and knitting in their subsequent opus, "And Now All This."

Maybe there is a place on hootoo for "Brief Entries", besides all that laudably well-researched serious stuff, just to enable references to the likes of Sellar and Yeatman when they crop up, as now?

C

"The secret practice of knitting live Angora rabbits into muffs was forbidden by The Sublime Porte in 1761."

Can't see where chess comes into it though...

H.

Whose move is it anyway?
Black or White?
me? I prefer a good

Cheers>

Dear Hoovooloo,

I really have to go and do the supermarket shopping. Then I will dig out my copy of 'And Now All This," and write out the hilarious scrambling of a knitting pattern with a chess game. Of course, it was the old chess-move notation, P to K4 and all that blended into "Knit 1, knot 2 etc..." You couldn't do it with contemporary chess notation.

C

No need! Got it!

"To knit a gent's endless white comforter", etc.

I just didn't read it that closely... ( at self)

H.

Phew! Wotta relief, I was just about to start in on it. You've saved me half-an-hour of typing. Still, for the benefit of Recumbentman, and any other enthusiastic chess players, the reference is to page 51, in "And Now All This," by Sellar and Yeatman.pub.Methuen 1932. Still off the main topic of this thread ( sorry ) do you, Hoovooloo have a copy of their "Garden Rubbish and Other Country Bumps," which I've never seen? I have a copy of Horse Nonsense.

I don't, but when I do you'll be the first to know

H.