PSA + pop quiz

[pauraque_bk]

PSA

bowdlerized is someone whom many of you know and love. I am sure none of you would ever want to cause her harm. Therefore, it pains me to report that she is suffering from a brand of persecution I know all too well: Rampant misspelling of her LJ name.

"Bowdlerized" means "expurgated", and is an eponym of Thomas Bowdler, expurgator extraordinaire. The word should not be spelled in any other fashion, as there has never been any such person as Tohmas Bowlder.

To repeat:

B O W D L E R I Z E D

Now none of you has any excuse. Any further offenses will be punishable by spanking. Or withheld spankings, as the case may warrant.

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Pop Quiz

I'm curious about something. Please fill out this poll with your current impression of what the answers are. DO NOT look up the answers first. That's not the point. I want to know what you THINK is true.

This will be skewed, since there are a lot of academics and linguistics geeks on my flist, but eh.

[Poll #388778]

Comments

[thecoldacre.livejournal.com]

I'm a whore for the Minoans (greatest civilisation evah!) but I'm not 100% sure about the Phaistos Disk - an American guy claimed to have deciphered it in 2001 or 2002, but to the best of my knowledge his translation hasn't been accepted by the scientific community. I was in Crete in 2003 and every museum I went to (including Iraklio, where it is kept) was still saying it hadn't been deciphered. But personally I agree with the guy who claims to have translated Linear A, because he has a strong linguistics background and sound methodology, and the translation (basically a call to arms, warning of the approach of an attacking naval fleet) makes sense and could easily be explained within the culture of the Minoans at the time (incidences of attackers arriving in fleets are backed up by several sources of Linear B, and later by Greek historians).

So I voted yes. But I think its pretty well open to interpretation; whether you believe this guy (and for the life of me I can't recall his name) or not.

[pauraque]

Neither that translation of the Phaistos Disk nor that translation of Linear A is generally accepted. Whether those facts are "open to interpretation" is, well, open to interpretation! :)