- me, begging: please just get up and do the work its not that hard you'll feel better when you do it
- my brain, running away from me, smashing flowerpots with a broom: hey you know what my buddy u can go fuck yourself my guy
So in my research for my thesis, I learned a thing, and it’s not useful for my thesis so I’m posting it here instead.
Okay, so, everyone knows that the words canon and cannon are not synonyms, and if you’re like me it kind of makes your teeth grind when people talk about firing the canons or historical cannon. BUT HERE’S THE THING. The word canon is a direct lift from Latin, and it means law or rule. And so when heavy metal guns were developed and needed to be called something other than ‘that big murder machine over there’, the word cannon developed directly out of canon in the sense of “to lay down the law,” the same way Samuel Colt’s gun got called the Peacemaker. Likewise, ordnance comes directly from the Latin ordinance, which also got transferred directly into English as another synonym for ‘rule.’
And that is your totally useless historical fun fact of the day.
Anonymous asked: Idk if you've answered this somewhere else, but what's your thesis on?
Actually I have NOT answered that, and I am VERY EXCITED about this thesis, please pity my roommate.
A few things you need to know to explain this whole thing:
- my college requires every student, regardless of major, to do some kind of thesis project to graduate;
- my college started as a liberal arts school/social experiment, and would probably let you summon Satan for your senior thesis as long as you could justify it (”Oh, sure, professor, I understand that you’re concerned about that intricate circle of blood on the floor of the art studio, but I have here the proof that this is part of my combined thesis on the history of religious ritual and Ancient Greek, are we good here?”);
- my college generally expects that their science majors (like myself, pre-med track) do an experimental thesis, but my explicit criterion for majoring in the pre-med track was that I not have to do a goddamn year-long experiment;
- I am a history nerd, specifically military history and obscure details that no one else cares about; and
- I have basically constructed an entire thesis around my desire to
- talk about medicine
- talk about history
- title it with a Princess Bride quote
So I’m doing my thesis on the history of battlefield medicine (probably going to have to cut that down, preferably in such a way that I still get to talk about the Revolutionary War, which is my pet obsession) and I’m going to title it “Only Mostly Dead” because I’m an irreverent little shit.
My thesis adviser already gets a little long-suffering with me and I’ve only turned in the preliminary proposal.
