Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991 TAG: 9103210089
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A. Before we get into that, let's observe that nursery rhymes are probably a huge scam designed to make children grow up into fans of slasher films. They're so bloody! Think about what happens to that pitiful baby rocking in the treetops. What kind of a WHY THINGS ARE JOEL ACHENBACH demonic fiend would put a baby in a tree?
Then there's the Three Blind Mice, who are mutilated.
Spouse abuse is another theme: "Peter, Peter pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her, put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her, very well."
Obviously, some of these are cautionary tales: Children learn, through metaphor, not to trust wolfish characters posing as friends, and not to be reckless, and so forth.
So what about the weasel? You have to wonder: Is the "Pop!" the sound of the weasel's eyeballs coming out of its head, or something gross like that?
Negatory. The word "weasel" did not originally refer to a furry critter. "Pop goes the weasel" was a dance hall song in 19th century England. A "weasel," as everybody knew at that time, was a device used by tailors, cobblers and hatmakers. According to Jean Harrowven in "The Origins of Rhymes, Songs and Sayings," "`Pop goes the weasel' refers to a tailor's `goose,' or heavy iron." Our sources are not clear on what this device did or why it went `pop.' We've 4 1 WHY Why heard that it was part of either a stitching machine or a spinning wheel. One verse of the rhyme confirms the clothing reference: "A penny for a spool of thread, a penny for a needle, that's the way the money goes, Pop! goes the weasel."
But the real question is:
Q. Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his cap and call it "Macaroni"? Was he drunk?
A. No. Just foolish.
The Yankee Doodle song dates to pre-Revolutionary America. It became popular among British soldiers, in derision of colonial Americans, or "Yankees." In those days it was the rage, particularly in London, for young men to dress in elaborate, ludicrous finery. They were called "Macaronis," not in reference to pasta but perhaps to flamboyant Italians.
Yankee Doodle, by contrast, was just some hayseed from the sticks, riding into town on his silly little pony. He's so excited to be where the action is that he tries to affect the look of a dandy by sticking a feather in his cap. He thought that made him a Macaroni! What a dunce.
After the battle of Bunker Hill, the Americans started singing the Yankee Doodle song themselves, to mock the British - a way of saying, "See here, you snobs, we Yankee Doodle Dandies just kicked your kiester."
From the mailbag
John W., of Gaithersburg, Md., asks, "Why is there anything?"
He explains: "This, I think, was my first experience of the sense of wonder, of awe. I later learned that philosophers ask it this way: Why is there something rather than nothing?"
Johnny, we called up an actual philosopher, Robert Nozick of Harvard, and he said that, yes, he'd handled that one. He was all over it. The answer was in his book, "Philosophical Explanations," he said. We checked it out and found the material to be, um, abstruse.
Rather than be discouraged we'll just answer the question the best we can, which is to offer one morsel of conjecture: Nothing does not exist because Nothing cannot exist.
The question is prejudiced, you see, in that it presumes that Nothing is a more natural condition than Something, that there is a greater onus to explain Something than there would be to explain Nothing. But is Nothing a natural state? Ask yourself: What does "Nothing" mean? When you imagine Nothing in your head you probably picture a large, dark void - but would that be Nothing?
Actually it would be something - call it Not Much - because, as you picture it, it has dimensions, including a time dimension. It has a presence. But the pure, unadulterated Nothing should have no characteristics! It would not "exist" in the way that Something exists. And a nonexistent thing couldn't turn into Something.
"If ever nothing was the natural state . . . then something could never have arisen. But there is something. So nothingness is not the natural state; if there is a natural state, it is somethingness," Nozick writes.
There's always the "God" answer, but as Nozick puts it, "That's not much of an explanatory theory."
What all this implies is that the universe is infinitely old, that it had no beginning. The infinite regression of the past is not something that is easy to imagine, but it can be easily portrayed mathematically. If that's any consolation. Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB