A good cause

I went to, I think, my first fundraising dinner last night. All for the excellent cause of de-mining. Apparently it's already been ten years since the Ottawa land mines treaty, (!) and there's still lots of work to be done. Basically it was just the IES crew, most of us anyway, except for the usual suspects, and Lusty L, who was off wooing some new girl or other; we were also joined by various hangers on, romantically affiliated in one way or another with the IES. Anyhoo, it was all very glamarous, but you could really tell that it was organized by the undergrad International Relations society, because of the parade of snafus and awkward moments that interrupted the evening (like when they tried to auction a piano, or the upsetting technical problems, or the breach of diplomatic protocal, mispronounced names, etc...). But I don't want to dump on it, because overall, I, at least, had a good time. Plus I learned that Denmark IS apparently one of the 85 countries afflicted by landmines. (But their telling me that kind of lowered my appreciation for the cause, because if Denmark counts as being "afflicted" by landmines, then it doesn't seem all that bad).

The other wild excitement around here was a lecture by James Scott, talking about Globalization and local vernaculars (not the "Real" vernaculars, but the academic understanding of the term, meaning local eccentricities). He was a good speaker, (he's eminent enough that I think he does this pretty often) and suitably fawned upon by the local polisci grad students. He also told a funny anecdote, that I hadn't heard before, but probably should have, about how in English the closer a word is to the land, or nature, the more likely it is to be of ancient derivation, and that as soon as you move the word into a more civilized, or cooked food related context it is more likely to be of Norman descent, ie. cow v. beef; sheep v. mutton; and various others that I forget.