[Publib] 2006 Google Year-End Zeitgeist

[Joe Schallan]

In the spirit of assessing the collective consciousness,
Google has released its end-of-the-year list of the
top ten searches in main Google and Google News:

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2006.html

And for those of you who prefer tinyurling (the
method of compressing long URLs, not the
Swedish fish-cleaning technique):

http://tinyurl.com/wykfx

This year's Sign of the Apocalypse is Paris
Hilton coming in at No. 1 on Google News
searches. (World hunger, Iraq, or Darfur didn't
make the list.)

And I must have become truly Jurassic this
year, since THREE of the search terms on the
main Google Top Ten were ones I'd never
even heard of.  Sheesh.  (This is what comes
from having my nose in books all the time and
listening to opera.)

But thanks to Google's list, I now know about

bebo
rebelde
mininova

The *weekly* Google Zeitgeist, btw, may be viewed
at

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

(This is only 42 characters and thus ineligible
for tinyurling, in accordance with CFR 29.1.2(b).)

I mush dash now . . . got a lot of cow-themed
presents to wrap for the relatives . . .


Joe Schallan
Phoenix

PS. I love the word "Zeitgeist" btw.  Roughly
translated, it means "spirit of the times" or
"spirit of the age."  Or, in a more elevated
way of putting it, "intellectual climate"
(if you call obsessing over Paris Hilton an
intellectual climate).
   Besides "Zeitgeist," English has imported from
German several similar wonderful words.  We have
Weltanschauung (yes, two U's in succession),
which means one's overall view of how the
world works, and one of my faves, Schadenfreude,
taking delight in the misfortune of one's rival
or persecutor:
  "When Joe's library director slipped and fell
onto the fresh cowpie, a delicious sense of
schadenfreude warmed his micromanaged
soul."
   Although I love these polysyllabic Teutonic
locutions and find them euphonious or even
melodic, and throw them into conversation or
email whenever I can get away with it, others
regard them as abominations:

Twain, Mark, "Die Schrecken der deutschen
Sprache" (The Horrors of the German Language).
Hamburg: Projekt Gutenberg (e-text).
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/twain/speeches/horrors.htm

Twain seemed challenged by German culture.  He
attended a performance of Wagner's "Parsifal"
at the Festspielhaus (festival theater) in Bayreuth,
and reported that after he had spent hours in there
he glanced at his pocket watch to discover
that only about twenty minutes had in fact
elapsed.  However, he generously allowed
that Wagner's music "was not as bad as it sounds."
  A lot of what we take for granted in the theater
comes from Herr Wagner.  Prior to the rules he
enforced at his theater in Bayreuth (built for him
by the "mad" king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who
also built Neuschwanstein castle of German
travel-poster fame), there was no dimming of
house lights.  The custom was that lights
were kept on during the performance, so the
attendees could see one another and more
easily socialize.  Wagner would have none of
that:  No yakking, eating, flirting, etc., while
HIS opera was on stage.  Ve vill turn off ze
lights and you vill pay attention.  (No, I don't
know how Twain glanced at his pocket
watch in the dark.)

John Richmond has just given me an
electronic tap to tell me I really must go
away now, and wonders not only if I am capable
of posting to Publib without digressing
but also if I can ever write a posting with
a digression SHORTER than the
message it is appended to.

Probably not, John.