Skip to main content

The meaning of words

Much of the global debate about the Pope's speech misses the point. The linked article from The Guardian is, however, much better than most reports. It still confuses states and religions in its strapline.

The point The Guardian makes is that the Vatican is unhappy about persecution of Christians in Muslim states. This obviously links to the popes denunciation of the use of force for proselytising.

What I would like to know is how the speech came to global attention. This may rest upon the meaning of the word "erstaunlich". The main meaning is "astonishing" which can be taken as implying an apology for the meaning of the quotation. An alternative nuance, however, involves positive connotations such as admirable. My German is not good enough to judge which applies. However, it is on that point that the meaning of the speech can switch. If the speech was brought to people's attention from a fluent german speaker then it does make a material difference.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.