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Originally From: mitch@spimageworks.com (Mitch Wade) "If a deity doesn't perform a miracle in a forest when there aren't any believers present, does it still require doubt about the existence of a higher power to be an agnostic?"
An acquaintance of mine on the net sent me this "questionable" bit of history. Whether there is truth in it or not is irrelevant. The iomportant part of it is that you can dazzle people at dinner with the details and they will leave thinking that you are either brilliant or brain battered. And if anyone thinks you are just dumb, well then give them the bird...
The "Car Talk" show on NPR with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the "Puzzler," and their most recent "Puzzler" was about the Battle of Agincourt. The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off of all captured English soldiers so that they could never fight again. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. The puzzler was: What was this body part? The following answer was submitted by a listner:
Dear Click and Clack,
Thank you for the Agincourt "Puzzler" which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore, and emotional symbolism. The body part which the French porposed to cut off of the English after defeating them was, of course, the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew."
Thus, when the victorious English waved their middle finger at the defeated French, they said, "See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!" Over the years some "folk etymologies" have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since "pluck yew" is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative "f", and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that symbolic gesture is known a "giving the bird".
And yew all thought yew knew everything!
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