Fun With Etymology

I sometimes like to imagine what it would be like to give a tour of the modern world to someone from the past. "Pretty fucking awesome, huh?" I'd say while flipping a lightswitch on and off.

But then I'd probably say something that I thought made complete sense, and yet the person wouldn't comprehend. So for instance, imagine this conversation:

me: A beer bottle that lets you know when the beer is cold. Bet you never imagined that back in the day, eh, Julius Caesar?
Julius Caesar: [unintelligible]

You see, Julius Caesar didn't speak English. He wouldn't be able to understand a word I said.

Now imagine that Julius Caesar could speak English, but only the English that would have existed at the time he lived, had people spoken English back then. Try this out:

me: I was going to write a paper on sovereign debt, but I got sidetracked.
Julius Caesar: What is this... sidetracked you speak of?
me: Are you shitting me?

But he wouldn't be shitting me, because "sidetracked" is one of those words that you think is ancient but actually didn't come into existence until the way railroads function was widely understood. You see, if you're a train, and you're going down the tracks, but then you get diverted onto the siding - the side tracks - you're not going anywhere, buddy.

Another thing that didn't come into existence until railroads is time zones. How do you define noon? Traditionally it was when the sun was directly overhead. Therefore there was a different time for every longitude... there were infinitely many times, and they changed continuously as you moved east or west. I've blogged about this before (but note that, embarrassingly, I mixed up "west" and "east" when I discussed which people get screwed by the discrete, zoned system). Anyway, things were working just fine without time zones, until trains started slamming into each other at full speed. I bet they wished they'd gotten sidetracked. Anyway, we invented discrete time zones so as to coordinate train schedules better. I don't know why Greenwich got all the credit. If any city deserves the credit, it's Chicago, which is a major railroad hub.

Actually, I like to imagine that the historical figure I'm showing around is Black Hawk. See, Black Hawk was given a tour of the western world, in an attempt to impress upon the natives that resistance was futile (and that, hey, our way of life was pretty awesome). I don't think he quite bought it, though.

Hey, James, why aren't you working? What do we pay you for?

Oh, sorry, I was working on the assignment but I got sidetracked. If you even know what that means.