![]() "had to be the best at everything he did." But, unlike Dennis Stock, whose Even at UCLA, he once told a biographer, Dean Was always a young man going places, and everyone seemed to know it.īellah was no exception. This interview was posted on American Legends in 2000 James Bellah died in 2015. Whose novels include The Avenger Tapes (co-author) and Imperial Later, Bellah himself became a successful paperback writer Was James Bellah, whose father, James Warner Bellah, had written the screenplayįor Fort Apache. Jimmy also joined Sigma Nu fraternity where one of his pledge brothers At UCLA, he took aĬross-section of academic courses and enrolled in a ROTC program as an airĬadet. Of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the fall of 1950. The name sounds like a drug in heavy advertisement rotation on cable news: “Ask your doctor about Omicron (warning: Omicron may cause death and despair).” Or maybe a minor cryptocurrency (oh, wait, it is one, and of course its value briefly soared).Santa Monica City (now Junior) College, James Dean transferred to the University The meme machine has been cranking overtime, likening Omicron to an evil Transformer villain (sample Tweet: “He will do whatever is necessary to further the Decepticon’s conquest of the Universe, even if it costs him personal harm.”) How come no one had ever heard of it before? Maybe it’s one of those Clinton-Kamala Harris-Nancy Pelosi-Anthony Fauci-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-Lame Stream Media hoaxes. Not only is it a common last name, it’s the name of China’s president, Xi Jinping. Using the letter Xi would probably have landed the WHO squarely in the fraught situation it was trying to avoid by using Greek letters in the first place. “That’s what I’m asking - what’s the new one called?” Because it sounds like “new,” naming experts feared we’d end up in some crazy “Who’s On First? Type” situation: Considering that the most recent named variant before Omicron was Mu, the letter Nu should have been next, followed by Xi, and then Omicron.īut there was no Nu. WHO turned to the Greek alphabet to make the names easy to say and remember, and to get away from geographic stigma and discrimination.īut of course, nothing is simple. “WHO convened an expert group of partners from around the world to do so, including experts who are part of existing naming systems, nomenclature and virus taxonomic experts, researchers and national authorities.”Įxperts who are part of existing naming systems. “There’s madness all the way down,” he said cheerfully.įor people not following the lesser dramas of the World Health Organization, it might come as a surprise to learn that the decision to identify the variants with Greek letters was not a simple administrative matter, but in fact decided upon after “wide consultation” and a review of “many potential naming systems,” according to a May 2021 announcement. “Do we want to go after geometry?” he asked, quickly moving on to the letter Rho, which would be tricky because “some people will want to trill it,” and as for Sigma, it takes so many written forms that it, too, could be a challenge. Then he started riffing about upcoming alphabet-related naming challenges. “I might have tweeted about it,” the professor allowed. Theta - the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet - is short for Thanatos, in Greek mythology the personification of death. “I made a joke early on that we didn’t want to get to ‘Theta,’” Christensen said, sounding not unproud. “But I do find it a bit odd that the BBC news is saying omicron with the stress on the first syllable.” Later in the Twitter thread, she revealed that she prefers the stress on the middle syllable - the “mic” part.Īnd of course they have their alphabet humor (but probably no one should quit their day job). ![]() “I am NOT a technical ancient linguist,” the British celebrity historian Mary Beard tweeted. It’s probably safe to assume that classicists are as upset as the general population about the emergence of this latest threat.īut they, at least, can distract themselves with pronunciation debates. He recalled, for example, that when the Brad Pitt movie “Troy” came out, in 2004, even though it wasn’t critically acclaimed - “Homer’s estate should sue,” Roger Ebert said - student interest in courses on Greek mythology and history enjoyed a surge at NYU, where Christensen was then teaching. “We’re in such an esoteric field I don’t think is a negative,” said Joel Christensen, a classical studies professor and department chairman at Brandeis University. But even as scientists spoke ominously of mutations and spike proteins, markets shuddered, and borders slammed shut, one group was experiencing a tiny moment in the spotlight: classical studies scholars.
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