Psychiatry is different from psychology in that psychiatry is a branch of medicine aimed at treating mental illness whereas psychology is the science that studies the mental aspects of motivation and behavior. Both words, however, come from a common Greek root psyche . In ancient Greece psyche referred that ethereal aspect of ourselves that isn’t our physical self. And also more literally to our breath, needed for life.  By extension, this word for the fluttery breath of life became the Greek word for “butterfly.” In Greek mythology Psyche is also the name of a most beautiful mortal young woman with whom the young god Cupid falls in love. Cupid being the god of love this has a nice sort of “love of life” tone to it. The cover of my book Carnal Knowledge has two images of the human body on it; one male, one female. The male is Bacchus. The female is that beautiful Greek Psyche. Her image is actually a detail from a painting called The Awakening of Psyche by Guillaume Seignac. It isn’t shown in the detail on the book but here’s a link to a more complete image where you can see that the lovely Psyche actually has butterfly wings sprouting out of her back. Returning to our word of the day, psyche meaning “soul” or “spirit” came into English in the 17th century during the renaissance when the most scholarly things always had something Latin or Greek about them. The word psychology also appeared in English in the 17th century but psychiatry waited another hundred years before it appeared in print—this because there wasn’t much thought of curing crazy people before that, mostly they were locked up in asylums. The ending of the word psychiatry is also from Greek and means “healing” whereas the end of psychology is from the Greek word logos which literally means “word”—which is why a logophile is a “word lover.” But logos also has to it the sense of “to speak,” “discuss” and “reason.” So the literal meaning of psychiatry is “spirit healing.” Breaking down psychology into its parts we get “spirit understanding.” Less

Political pressure and personal bias have hounded American journalists since the first newspapers were printed. Interpreter Dennis Watson talks about the Virginia Gazette. Less

A nasty virus has robbed Bob of his voice, so for the next few days we'll be posting podcasts from the archives. Less

When Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, he hoped to demoralize the South. Learn the details behind President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in this podcast from HowStuffWorks. Less

I’ve talked before about how word meanings change and also how words go in and out of fashion.  The word dapper is an example of a word that did both and what’s more, the variability of fashion meant that the word was once a complement, then became a bit of a teasing insult and then returned to being complementary. To begin with let me relate the contemporary definition of dapper . Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary says “neat and trim in appearance.” The Oxford Dictionary of English says much the same but specifies that this is applicable to a man, not a woman. The source of the word dapper is “Flemish or another Low German dialect” according to the OED.  In those languages the related word doesn’t mean “well dressed,” but instead means “heavy.” The idea is that someone who is weighty and important will look the part. The same word root is thought to have diverged in meaning in Modern German and in Old Norse so that the Modern German sense of tapfer is “brave” and “warlike” while the Old Norse dapr means “sad.” I think it’s interesting how a sense of weightiness can split off in so many directions that still make sense. I should also say that what the OED calls “Modern German” it is probably extracting from documents more than 100 years old. Google translation tells me though that tapfer means “valiant” so I guess the meaning still holds. I said that not only had this word dapper changed meaning over time, it had also changed from sincere, to slightly mocking and back again.  Around 1440 when the word first shows up in English it meant much the same as it means now.  By about 100 years ago if you said someone was dapper it would mean that they were overly concerned with their appearance, they were perhaps a little stuck up. Today though that sense seems to have receded and dapper again means well dressed. I ran my eye down a series of newspaper articles using the word dapper to see if the Oxford claim that dapper was more applicable to men held any water.  Most of the references were to men, but I did see that the uses weren’t exclusively male. Since the particular Oxford dictionary that made this claim is primarily a British one, I did a scan on UK news articles as well.  There I didn’t see one dapper female so perhaps it’s one of those differences between American and British English. Tony Thorne’s Dictionary of Contemporary Slang which is also British goes further in saying that dapper applies to “a stylish, successful or dominant male.” Less

Julius Caesar had an eventful career on his way up the Cursus Honorum. He won the Civic Crown in Asia, was captured by pirates on his way to Rhodes, and served as Governor of Hispania Ulterior. 39- The Young Julius Caesar Chronicles Less

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” BuddyPress beta Banda Bleffe Vereadores e prefeitos são empossados Ofensiva Israelense Israel veta jornalistas e propaga sua versão sobre ação em Gaza Reitor da Universidade Islâmica de Gaza Marinha de Israel impede barco com material médico de chegar a Gaza Coluna de tanques israelenses entra na Faixa de Gaza Tags do Technorati: gaza, WordPress Less

A nasty virus has robbed Bob of his voice, so for the next few days we'll be posting podcasts from the archives. Less

January 02, 2009; Volume 05, Number 01 Click here for a transcript of today's program Happy New Year to you and yours, from all of us in Columbia, South Carolina. I hope you will find for another year enough of interest on the Japan Considered Podcasts to bring you back for more. Now that I'm an officially retired person, I can no longer use the "day job got in the way" excuse for not producing programs on time. So hopefully we'll have even more of them this year. No promise! But I'll do my best. This week I have a real treat for you. Dr. Jim Auer of Vanderbilt University agreed at the last minute to do an interview to explain the ins and outs of the collective self defense issue for us. Even though he was in the midst of year-end and year-beginning family festivities over there in Tennessee. Thanks, Jim! Quite a few of you wrote in after the last program asking for more detail about this subject. And since it's well beyond my area of expertise -- even my presumed area of expertise -- I thought it best to call in an expert. I'd hoped also to consider the timing of Japan's next general election. But that didn't work out. Next time for sure. There's lots of interest for us to consider there. Even though Japan's media has been full of the topic for the past couple of weeks. Less

A nasty virus has robbed Bob of his voice, so for the next few days we'll be posting podcasts from the archives. Less

A senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, Melvin A. Goodman served many years as an analyst at the CIA and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. A critical observer of the intelligence community, he elaborates on his thesis about the decline of U.S. intelligence, specifically its militarization, privatization, and deteriorating analysis capacities. Less

Before I tell you about the etymology of the word crisis I’m going to tell you about my midlife crisis. The crisis is that I missed my midlife crisis. The guy who invented the midlife crisis , or at least came up with a name for it was Elliott Jaques.  He said that the typical age for a midlife crisis was 35. I seem to have missed it. I have to say I resent missing it because aren’t you supposed to get a candy apple red sports car when you have your midlife crisis? Or maybe an extramarital affair? I missed out on those. But I guess that was my decision, which is appropriate.  It’s appropriate because although you and I might think of a crisis as some kind of time of trouble, the origin of the word actually points to a time of decision. English got the word from Latin in the 1500s and Latin in turn had gotten it from Greek.  The Greek root is said to go back to an Indo-European word meaning “to discriminate.” In between, the word crisis was applied to the point in an illness when the patient takes a turn for the worse, or for the better. So the reason a crisis is called a crisis is because it is in crisis that new directions are decided upon. The contemporary understanding of the word crisis as a time of trouble appears to have emerged just over 100 years ago. The notion of crisis as a decision point, along with the current financial crisis, brings me back to the ideas of the guy who coined midlife crisis. One of the important elements of Elliott Jaques thinking was a concept of personal time horizon. Jaques was involved in corporate psychology, working to help managers with the human element of their workforces.  He was also the guy who came up with the idea of corporate culture. Anyway, he felt that different people had different capacity for long term planning and that the higher level manager someone was, the longer term perspective they should be able to take.  Really senior people, he figured, should be able to plan out 20 years ahead. Now my first reaction to that was that the world is a different place than when old Elliot was thinking his big thoughts.  Things change more quickly now.  Who can have a 20 year planning perspective?  20 years ago there was hardly an internet.  20 years ago no one was talking about decoding the genome for extinct animals. But then I thought, maybe if people running the most powerful governments and corporations in the world had 20 year perspectives we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Maybe that’s our real crisis. Less

Welcome to another episode of Radio Revolver. Episode 32 features our second episode of Cloak and Dagger! Cloak and Dagger opened over the NBC network on May 7, 1950. It had a short run through the Summer on Sundays, changing to Fridays after its Summer run. The last show aired Oct. 22, 1950. The series told fictional stories of OSS agents during World War II who took dangerous missions behind enemy lines, knowing they may never return alive. You can find the OGG version of this episode here. Check back next Wednesday for the next episode of Radio Revolver! Get our weekly episodes automatically by subscribing to the RSS feed Less

The year 2008 had the fewest fatal airline crashes in any year since AirSafe.com began it's annual review of airline safety events in 1996. This 13th annual review discusses seven fatal airline events, and fifteen other significant events from 2008. As AirSafe.com looks back at the fatal and significant aviation safety events of last year, the most noticeable fact about this 13th annual review is that 2008 had fewer fatal airline events than any of the previous 12 years reviewed by AirSafe.com. The most was 19 fatal events in 1997, and the previous low was eight fatal events in 2003, 2006, and 2007. Less

A Union chaplain from Kansas picked up this slouch-style hat on a Civil War battleground in Arkansas. This little-known western battle involved Native Americans, African Americans, and whites. Less

Several treasure hunters think they might have found Nazi gold. Learn about the history of Nazi gold, the role of Swiss banks and much more in this podcast from HowStuffWorks. Less