Ex anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke spoke for an entire hour yesterday on Meet the Press, continuing to give former President Bill Clinton more or less a complete pass while severely criticizing George W. Bush.  Describing his opposition after 9−11 to an attack on Iraq, Clarke said he provided the Bush Administration with what he considered the definitive ludicrous analogy for that proposal, to wit:  “Invading Iraq after 9−11 is like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor!”

It's understandable why after proclaiming this “wisdom” to his bosses, as Clarke said, “That didn't go over well!” — because it's an extraordinarily stupid thing to say.  Looking back over the history of the Second World War, it's true the United States and its allies didn't invade Mexico after Pearl Harbor, but they did do something, on the face of it, apparently as patently absurd: they invaded Morocco!

As Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless pointed out even before the Iraq war, but which facts Richard Clarke appears ignorant of, it wasn't at all ridiculous for the U.S. to invade Morocco and North Africa following Japan's strike half a world away on Pearl Harbor.  America and its allies were in (and knew they were in) a struggle to the death (“total war”) against the worldwide “Axis of Evil” of the day, which required much more than simply defeating the particular organization perpetrating the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The World War II Allies did not regard it as a diversion for them to devote huge resources to Europe and Africa rather than only in the Pacific theater.

In this light, it is by no means “obvious,” as Clarke haughtily seeks to categorize it, that liberating Iraq was a diversion from the overall war on terror.  It's quite arguable (indeed, obvious to me and to a host of thoughtful people) that a broader struggle, to a degree analogous to the worldwide Second World War, is underway today, within which the conquest of Iraq, and the democratizing of the Middle East that the Iraq war was intended to unleash, are intimately bound up with victory in this wide-ranging conflict.

Like some other Democrats (Clarke admits he voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election: though, truth to tell, I did, too), I'm afraid Richard Clarke comes across as a small man, an analyst, with a parochial attitude and a partisan ax to grind, fixated on only a small piece of the problem and unable to see the “Big Picture,” who then deigns to savage policymakers (who do have access to and imagination enough to encompass a larger perspective) for not sharing his small-minded point of view.
 
 

UPDATE:  2004-03-29 18:00 UT:  Lynn at In Context has remarks concerning other statements Richard Clarke made during his interview — statements I'd also wanted to fisk but was too weary after listening to him for an hour to contemplate.  Thanks Lynn, and to Instapundit for the link.  Don't miss the Chris Muir comic strip that In Context has posted in this regard.

Beyond that, Glenn Reynolds the InstaPundit has also linked to Impearls' article here.  Welcome Instapunditers! — if I may call you (us) that.  You might also like to check out recent postings in Impearls such as “When did they attack us?” (permalink) and “What a Quagmire!” (permalink).

UPDATE:  2004-04-04 15:00 UT:  Clay Ranck of Ranck and File both links to Impearls' article here and discusses significant problems with some other of Clarke's statements in his Meet the Press interview.

Tamara and I have been watching Stephen Ives' fascinating video series The West¹, and I was reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville's discussion (in an appendix to his famous Democracy in America) of a visit he made (one among many during his progress across the United States in the 1830s) to a frontier homestead.  Here's how Tocqueville described it — beginning near the end of his chapter concerning the character of American women, itself quite intriguing: ²
 

In no country of the world are private fortunes more unstable than in the United States.  It is not exceptional for one man in his lifetime to work up through every stage from poverty to opulence and then come down again.

American women face such upheavals with quiet, indomitable energy.  Their desires seem to contract with their fortune as easily as they expand.

Most of the adventurers who yearly go to people the empty spaces of the West belong, as I have noted in my earlier book, to the old Anglo-American stock of the North.  Many of these who launch out so boldly in search of wealth have already gained a comfortable living in their own land.  They take their wives with them and make them share the dangers and innumerable privations that always go with such undertakings.  In the utmost confines of the wilderness I have often met young wives, brought up in all the refinement of life in the towns of New England, who have passed almost without transition from their parents' prosperous houses to leaky cabins in the depths of the forest.  Fever, solitude, and boredom had not broken the resilience of their courage.  Their features were changed and faded, but their looks were firm.  They seemed both sad and resolute.  (See Appendix I, U.)

I am sure that it was the education of their early years which built up that inner strength on which they were later to draw.

So, in America the wife is still the same person that she was as a girl; her part in life has changed, and her ways are different, but the spirit is the same.  (See Appendix I, U.)
 

I find the following passage in my travel diary, and it will serve to show what trials are faced by those American women who follow their husbands into the wilds.  The description has nothing but its complete accuracy to recommend it.

“… From time to time we came to new clearings.  As all these settlements are exactly like one another, I will describe the place at which we stopped tonight.  It will provide a picture of all the others.

“The bells which the pioneer is careful to hang round his beasts' necks, so as to find them again in the forest, warned us from afar that we were getting near a clearing.  Soon we heard the sound of an ax cutting down the forest trees.  The closer we got, the more signs of destruction indicated the presence of civilized man.  Our path was covered with severed branches; and tree trunks, scorched by fire or cut about by an ax, stood in our way.  We went on farther and came to a part of the wood where all the trees seemed to have been suddenly struck dead.  In full summer their withered branches seemed the image of winter.  Looking at them close up, we saw that a deep circle had been cut through the bark, which by preventing the circulation of the sap had soon killed the trees.  We were informed that this is commonly the first thing a pioneer does.  As he cannot, in the first year, cut down all the trees that adorn his new property, he sows corn under their branches, and by striking them to death, prevents them from shading his crop.  Beyond this field, itself an unfinished sketch, or first step toward civilization in the wilds, we suddenly saw the owner's cabin.  It is generally placed in the middle of some land more carefully cultivated than the rest, but where man is yet sustaining an unequal fight against the forest.  There the trees have been cut, but not grubbed up, and their trunks still cover and block the land they used to shade.  Around these dry stumps wheat and oak seedlings and plants and weeds of all kinds are scattered pell-mell and grow together on rough and still half-wild ground.  It is in the midst of this vigorous and variegated growth of vegetation that the planter's dwelling, or as it is called in this country, his log house, stands.  Just like the field around it, this rustic dwelling shows every sign of recent and hasty work.  It is seldom more than thirty feet long and fifteen high; the walls as well as the roof are fashioned from rough tree trunks, between which moss and earth have been rammed to keep out the cold and rain from the inside of the house.

“As the night was coming on, we decided to go and ask the owner of the log house to put us up.

“At the sound of our steps the children playing among the scattered branches got up and ran to the house, as if frightened at the sight of a man, while two large, half-wild dogs, with ears prickled up and outstretched muzzles, came growling out of the hut to cover the retreat of their young masters.  Then the pioneer himself appeared at the door of his dwelling; he looked at us with a rapid, inquisitive glance, made a sign to the dogs to go indoors, and set them the example himself, without showing that our arrival aroused either his curiosity or apprehension.

“We went into the log house; the inside was quite unlike that of the cottages of European peasants; there was more that was superfluous and fewer necessities; a single window with a muslin curtain; on the hearth of beaten earth a great fire which illuminated the whole interior; above the hearth a good rifle, a deerskin, and plumes of eagles' feathers; to the right of the chimney a map of the United States, raised and fluttering in the draft from the crannies in the wall; near it, on a shelf formed from a roughly hewn plank, a few books; a Bible, the first six cantos of Milton, and two plays of Shakespeare; there were trunks instead of cupboards along the wall; in the center of the room, a rough table with legs of green wood with the bark still on them, looking as if they grew out of the ground on which they stood; on the table was a teapot of English china, some silver spoons, a few cracked teacups, and newspapers.

“The master of this dwelling had the angular features and lank limbs characteristic of the inhabitants of New England.  He was clearly not born in the solitude in which we found him.  His physical constitution by itself showed that his earlier years were spent in a society that used its brains and that he belonged to that restless, calculating, and adventurous race of men who do with the utmost coolness things which can only be accounted for by the ardor of passion, and who endure for a time the life of a savage in order to conquer and civilize the backwoods.

“When the pioneer saw that we were crossing his threshold, he came to meet us and shake hands, as is their custom; but his face was quite unmoved.  He opened the conversation by asking us what was going on in the world, and when his curiosity was satisfied, he held his peace, as if he was tired of the importunities and noise of the world.  When we questioned him in our turn, he gave us all the information we asked and then turned, with no eagerness, but methodically, to see to our requirements.  Why was it that, while he was thus kindly bent on aiding us, in spite of ourselves we felt our sense of gratitude frozen?  It was because he himself, in showing his hospitality, seemed to be submitting to a tiresome necessity of his lot and saw in it a duty imposed by his position, and not a pleasure.

“A woman was sitting on the other side of the hearth, rocking a small child on her knees.  She nodded to us without disturbing herself.  Like the pioneer, this woman was in the prime of life; her appearance seemed superior to her condition, and her apparel even betrayed a lingering taste for dress; but her delicate limbs were wasted, her features worn, and her eyes gentle and serious; her whole physiognomy bore marks of religious resignation, a deep peace free from passions, and some sort of natural, quiet determination which would face all the ills of life without fear and without defiance.

“Her children cluster around her, full of health, high spirits, and energy; they are true children of the wilds; their mother looks at them from time to time with mingled melancholy and joy; seeing their strength and her weariness, one might think that the life she has given them exhausted her own, and yet she does not regret what they have cost her.

“The dwelling in which these immigrants live had no internal division and no loft; its single room shelters the whole family in the evening.  It is a little world of its own, an ark of civilization lost in a sea of leaves.  A hundred paces away the everlasting forest spreads its shade, and solitude begins again.”
 

¹ Ken Burns presents The West, a film by Stephen Ives, 1996, PBS Home Video, Turner Home Entertainment, ISBN 0-7806-1350-3.

² Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 12th Edition, 1848, edited by J. P. Mayer, translated by George Lawrence, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., New York, 1969; pp. 593-594, 731-733.

Note too the previously presented Alexis de Tocqueville acknowledgments and links.

See the Yahoo group WWS “Women Wearing Spacesuits” and its offshoots (WWS2 etc.) for many more examples of this delectable style of photography.  (Thanks to Victoria Tangoman of the Space Studies Institute list for the tip.)

Eleven months ago, after the successful conquest of Iraq by U.S.-led coalition forces and the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, Impearls published this piece on “When did they attack us?”  Today is the 17th anniversary of that murderous attack by an Iraqi jet on the American destroyer the U.S.S. Stark, as well as essentially the first anniversary of the start of the second Iraq war, and we commemorate these by republishing this story from 2003-04-30.

People anti the recent war in Iraq often voice the question “When did Iraq (or more personally, Saddam Hussein) ever attack us?” — clearly expecting that the answer is never.  Of course, American prisoners of war that Iraqis under Saddam Hussein mistreated during Gulf War I certainly ought to qualify in this regard (especially as there was never a peace accord at the end of that conflict), as should count all the allied aircraft who've been shot at ever since the first Gulf War while patrolling the (recently defunct) no-fly zones over Iraq.  Antiwar activists never seem to accept these cases, however, perhaps because they appear to believe the U.S. “provoked” Saddam in Gulf War I and ever since in the no-fly zones.

While cataloging all Iraq's attacks on America, however, one must not forget the strike by one of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Mirage F-1 jet fighters (a product of France) on the destroyer the U.S.S. Stark on 1987-03-17 (March 17, 1987: 16 years almost to the day before the opening attack against Hussein by coalition forces in this latest war) which put two French-made Exocet missiles into the Stark, killing 35 American sailors along with two lost at sea.  See this site (search for “USS Stark”, select article 58, “The USS Stark Incident”) for a full description.

It's remarkable that between a quarter and a third as many Americans were killed in that one attack as in the whole recent Iraq war (Gulf War II).  I've never believed that Iraq's strike on the Stark was an accident.  Thus, when antiwar activists demand “When did they attack us?”, here's an answer.

It's worth noting, too, the response of Saudi Arabian ground controllers when requested by an observing U.S. AWACS radar plane to vector patrolling Saudi F-15s to intercept the maurauding Iraqi jet.  As the pointed-to article put it, “ground controllers at Dhahran airbase said they lacked the authority to embark on such a mission, and the Mirage was safely back in Iraqi airspace before approval could be obtained.”  Some things don't change.
 
 

UPDATE:  2003-05-13 00:07 UT:  Sgt. Stryker's CPO Sparkey e-mails:

I had a friend I met at college that was on the Stark, the fires go so hot that it melted the nylon underwear some to the bodies of some men who were wearing it.  Back then guys would wear nylon skivvies instead of cotton because it would last longer, and stay white (good for inspections).  The Navy banned nylon after the Stark.

UPDATE:  2004-03-17 12:44 UT:  After a second attempt failed to correct (and keep corrected) the link to the source article at The Eighties Club (they keep changing their article URLs), we're now just pointing to their home page and saying search for it.

The anti-liberation left continues to talk out its Vietnam War redux fantasies, insisting against all evidence and reason that the current situation in Iraq is a “quagmire” like Vietnam.  Early on after the coalition's conquest of Iraq, it was arguable perhaps that even if coalition casualties at that time were relatively low, by Vietnam War and most other historic standards, the Iraqi “resistance” (as the fascist-loving left insists on calling it) hadn't yet gotten going good — rather like early days in the Vietnam War — and just you wait!

Eleven months after the collapse of the Baathist regime, that case is getting very much harder to make.  According to reports, the Saddamite remnants were pretty much wiped out last December — including the capture of Saddam Hussein himself — and the opposition currently in Iraq appears to be mainly foreign Jihadists acting with little support and refuge among the Iraqi people.  The new Iraqi police and army continue to ramp up in numbers and experience, while massacres of Shi'ites successfully perpetrated by the terrorists were accomplished by a few suicide bombers walking through the midst of a vast throng, together with an accomplice who threw grenades out a hotel window — i.e., not terribly demanding as an organizational job.  This “success” shows the weakness in the terrorist opposition rather than its strength.  As Iraqi forces grow, eventually the infiltrators will be cut off.  Iraq could even construct something like the Israeli “fence” along its frontiers if need be to supervise its trans-border traffic, but I think the situation will come under control short of that.

A good measure of just how much the current situation in Iraq actually resembles the Vietnam War “quagmire” may be constructed by simply considering the question of how long it would take at (e.g.) last month's (February's) coalition casualty rate to produce the U.S. death toll in Vietnam.

Any objection that February's casualties were “unnaturally” low merely emphasizes the fact that the rate has been declining dramatically and nearly uniformly since the high of last November (2003-11).  See the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count site for details on how the trend has progressed.  So far, this month is doing slightly better than the last, while last month (February) the coalition suffered — from both action and mischance — a total of 23 fatalities.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy for the person concerned and their families as well as nation, but compare with Vietnam:  from the moment American troops increased into the tens of thousands in what was then South Vietnam and were authorized by President Kennedy to shoot back when fired upon (i.e., by the end of 1962), up to the time that Congress forbade further U.S. military activity in Indochina (August of 1973), is an interval — including the final August — of 10 years, 8 months (i.e., 128 months, or 3,896 days).  During this lengthy period, the U.S. lost more than 47,000 killed in action and nearly 11,000 as a result of other causes, in toto some 58,000 fatalities.  That is nearly 15 American fatal casualties per day, day after day throughout the more than decade-long war.

Taking last month's total of 23 casualties, and using the actual number of days in February (29), so nobody can object that it was a short month, gives an average of 0.793 fatalities per day during February.  The number of days necessary to reach a Vietnam War toll at that rate would then be 58,000 ÷ 0.793, or 73,130 days.  Dividing further by 365.249 days per year, we find that the interval required to reach a Vietnam War-sized death toll in Iraq is thus over two hundred (200.22) years!

In my view, any “quicksand” that takes more than two centuries to sink into — an interval nearly as long as the whole time the United States of America has existed — ought better be called terra firma.

This is about the C-word!  You have been warned.

With regard to Impearls' earlier article on the subject of the C-word, Lynn Sislo at Reflections in d minor posted a link to it.  Dean Esmay at Dean's World also linked back to the piece (forming a perfect ring, or perhaps properly it would be a spiral through Blogosphere space-time!).  Some of the comments to Esmay's piece are hilarious.  I have to disagree gently, however, with one of Rosemary's admonitions.  As was mentioned in Impearls' earlier article, there is, I believe, a place for men as well as women to judiciously use the C-word — in my view, however, primarily as lovers speaking erotically to their mates (or as a writer writing about same), not as a term of opprobrium labeling people as individuals, by gender or class.

Dean Esmay goes on to dispute the C-word's etymology that Impearls' earlier piece alluded to, saying:  “I'm pretty sure its ultimate roots are from the Latin word cunnus, although etymologists are doubtful about that from what I understand.”

Dean's suggestion of the Latin word cunnus (meaning a woman's sexual genitalia, as well as prostitute¹) as the origin for the English word cunt is a fascinating one.  After looking into the issue, however, I must reluctantly conclude it appears not to be backed up by linguistic scholarship.  Dean doesn't explain why he feels so strongly that this is the case, but lacking academic support, the idea, interesting though it seems, ends up in pretty much the same locale as those other urban legends (such as the one whereby the popular “F-word” is supposed to be an acronym) — i.e., wrong!  I should note, however, in this context that, according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary², the word cunnus (plural cunni), meaning female external genitalia, is also an English word — which certainly complicates the situation with regard to the similar C-word and its associated variants.

Here's how several different English-language dictionaries describe the C-word's etymology:

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language³:  “Middle English cunte, perhaps of Low German origin, akin to Middle Low German, kunte.  See ku- in the Appendix.”  (A list of some of the Modern English words derived from this old Germanic root, as shown in the indicated Indo-European Roots appendix to the volume, was given in Impearls' earlier piece.)
2. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary⁴:  “ME cunte; akin to MLG kunte female pudenda.”
3. Webster's Third New International Dictionary⁵:  “ME cunte: akin to OFris & MLG kunte female pudenda, MD conte, Norw & Sw dial. kunta, MLG kutte female pudenda, MHG kotze prostitute, and perh. to OE cot cottage — more at COT.”
4. As one might expect, The Oxford English Dictionary provides the most elaborate entry for the C-word.   The OED indicates the following etymology⁶:  “ME. cunte, count(e), corresponding to ON. kunta (Norw., Sw. dial. kunta, Da. dial. kunte), OFris., MLG., MDu. kunte:— Gmc. *kunton wk. fem.; ulterior relations uncertain.”

All which is fully consistent with a Germanic, not Romance, origin for the C-word in English.

While here, let's consider usages over time as shown in the OED, which are fascinating.

1.  The female external genital organs.  Cf. Quaint sb.

Its currency is restricted in the manner of other taboo-words: see the small-type note s.v. *Fuck v.

[c 1230 in Ekwall Street-Names of City of London (1954) 165  Gropecuntelane.]  a 1325 Prov. Hendyng (Camb. Gg. I, 1) st. 42  Yeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.  c 1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 172/12  In wymmen þe necke of þe bladdre is schort, & is maad fast to the cunte.  c 1425 Castle of Perseverance (1904) 1193  Mankynde, my leue lemman, I my cunte þou shalt crepe.  1552 Lyndeslay Satyre Procl. 144  First lat me lok thy cunt, Syne lat me keip the key.  a 1585 Polwart Flyting with Montgomerie (1910) 817  Kis þe cunt of ane kow.  c 1650 in Hales and Furnivall Percy's Folio MS. (1867) 99  Vp start the Crabfish, & catcht her by the Cunt.  1743 Walpole Little Peggy in Corr. (1961) XXX. 309  Distended cunts with alum shall be braced.  c 1800 Burns Merry Muses (1911) 66  For Ilka hair upon her c--t, Was worth a royal ransom.  c 1888-94 My Secret Life VII. 161,  I sicken with desire, pine for unseen, unknown cunts.  1934 H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1935) 15  O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours?  1956 S. Beckett Malone Dies 24  His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives.

transf. and fig.  a 1680 Ld. Rochester Poems on Several Occasions (1950) 28  Her Hand, her Foot, her very look's a Cunt.  1922 Joyce Ulysses 61  The grey sunken cunt of the world.  1928 D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley xvi. 296  If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after.

2.  Applied to a person, esp. a woman, as a term of vulgar abuse.

1929 F. Manning Middle Parts of Fortune I. viii. 159  What's the cunt want to come down 'ere buggering us about for, 'aven't we done enough bloody work in th' week?  1932 ‘G. Orwell’ Coll. Essays (1968) I. 88  Tell him he's a cunt from me.  1934 H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1935) 28  Two cunts sail in — Americans.  1956 S. Beckett Malone Dies 99  They think they can confuse me… Proper cunts whoever they are.  1965 V. Henriques Face I Had 69  ‘What d'you think you're doing, you silly cunt?’ the driver shouts at her.

3.  Comb.

1680 Anon. in Rochester's Poems on Several Occasions (1950) 36  Fam'd through the World, for the C--nt-mending Trade.  1868 Index Expurgatorius of Martial 32  A satire on Baeticus, who was a priest of Cybele, and a cunt-sucker.  1891 Farmer Slang II. 230/2  Cunt-struck, enamored of women.  1923 Manchon Le Slang 97  Cunt-hat…chapeau de feutre.  1965 F. Sargeson Memoirs of a Peon ii. 28  We were all helplessly and hopelessly c…struck, a vulgar but forcibly accurate expression.

One ought also consider that close variant on the C-word, “Quaint”: ⁷

Quaint,  sb. Obs. rare. Also 4 queynt(e. [? f. the adj.]  (See quot. 1598.)

c 1320 Sir Tristr. 2254  Hir queynt abouen hir kne Naked þe kni₃tes knewe.  c 1386 Chaucer Miller's T. 90  Pryvely he caught hir by the queynte.  1598 Florio, Becchina,  A womans quaint or priuities.

Then there's the diminutive variant of the C-word, “Cunny.”  As the OED puts it: ⁸

cunny  {…}  slang.  [Prob. dim. of *cunt; but cf. Cony sb. 5 b.] = *cunt 1.

1720 D'Urfey Pills VI. 197  All my Delight is a Cunny in the Night, When she turns up her silver Hair.  1865 E. Sellon New Epicurean (1875) 11,  I frigged and kissed their fragrant cunnies.  1879-80 Pearl (1970) 216  Your private parts, or cunny, Should not be let for money.  1891 Farmer & Henley Slang II. 230  Cunny-haunted…lecherous.  1922 F. Harris My Life & Loves I. x. 208  She had limbs like a Greek statue and her triangle of brown hair lay in little silky curls on her belly and then — the sweetest littly cunny in the world. 

I'm afraid it gets even more complicated than that.  As the above quote notes, one must also see the (Modern) English word Cony, meaning rabbit — memorably heard most recently in the phrase “a brace of conies” in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.  In earlier times, “cony” was often spelt “conny,” sometimes even “cunny,” and pronounced identically with the above word “cunny” — which is to say, so as to rhyme with honey and money.  Given this, associations between “connies” and “cunnies” were inevitable, just as (with less linguistic cause) the term “pussy” is sometimes applied today for the female genitalia.  As a result, according to the OED, certain meanings of cony have aligned with those of the C-word: ⁹

5.  A term of endearment for a woman.  Obs.

a 1528 Skelton El. Rummyng 225  He calleth me his whytyng, His nobbes and his conny.  a 1553 Udall Royster D. Arb. 27  Ah sweete lambe and coney.  1562 J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 181  Iane thou sellest sweete conies in this pultry shoppe : But none so sweete as thy selfe, sweete conye moppe.  1611 Beaum. & Fl. Knt. Burn. Pestle Induct.,  Wife … Husband, husband.  Cit. What sayst thou Conie?

b.  Also indecently.

1591 Troub. Raigne K. John (1611) 52  Now for your ransome my cloyster-bred conney.  1622 Massinger Virg. Mart. II. i,  A pox on your Christian cockatrices!  They cry, like poulterers' wives, ‘No money, no coney.’  {…}

Conies (rabbits) are mentioned in the Bible, so one can imagine the tittering in church centuries ago when those scriptural passages were recited — the result being that cony began to be pronounced (at first only in church) using the long-o vowel sound.  Thus, the pronunciation seen today.
 

¹ Cassell's Latin Dictionary (Latin-English and English-Latin), revised by J. R. V. Marchant (Scholar of Wadham College, Oxford) and Joseph F. Charles (Assistant Master at the City of London School), Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London; p. 146.

² Webster's Third new International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, 1971, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago; p. 554.  (See also Britannica.com.)

³ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, edited by William Morris, 1969, American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., and Houghton Mifflin Company, New York; pp. 322, 1524.  See also the online American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

⁴ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1994, Merriam-Webster, Inc., Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.  See also Merriam-Webster.com.

⁵ Webster's Third new International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 1971, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago; p. 554.  (See also Britannica.com.)

⁶ The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume III: Supplement, 1987, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, New York (Library of Congress catalog no. PE1625.C58 1987 423 87-1592, ISBN 0-19-861211-7 (v.3)); pp. 176-177.  See also OED Online (subscription only).

⁷ The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume II: P-Z, 1971, Oxford University Press, New York (Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 76-188038); p. 2382.  See also OED Online (subscription only).

⁸ The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume III: Supplement, 1987, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, New York (Library of Congress catalog no. PE1625.C58 1987 423 87-1592, ISBN 0-19-861211-7 (v.3)); p. 176.  See also OED Online (subscription only).

⁹ The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume I: A-O, 1971, Oxford University Press, New York (Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 76-188038); p. 549.  See also OED Online (subscription only).

In belated appreciation of the 40th anniversary of the death of author C. S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis, 1898-1963), which occurred this last November 22 (2003-11-22), Impearls presents Lewis' pithy poetic critique of much of science fiction literature, as he then, and we today (per Sturgeon's Revelation†), must see it.  Whether Lewis' own work fully lives up to these expectations is another matter, that some, no doubt, would argue for or against.  It's the principle we at Impearls cherish!

(†Science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon once stood before a science fiction convention and proclaimed, “Ninety percent of science fiction is crap!”  Then, before outraged fans could lynch him [joke!], Sturgeon added:  “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”  This has since become known as “Sturgeon's revelation,” and presumed to have general relevance.)

On to C. S. Lewis' poem.  (Copied as a boy from the frontspiece of an old F&SF collection, onto a tiny slip of paper that somehow never got lost….)
 

Why did you lure us on like this,
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empire that cover galaxies,
If at journey's end we find
The same old stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnel Green?

Why should I leave this green floored cell,
Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For some reason's grasp had just gone by?

Thanks to Philip Marlowe's Hard-boiled nerd blog, posting dated 2003-03-06 (March 6, 2003).