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This we derive by notarikon, interpreting “news” as an acronym for the four cardinal points: north, east, west, and south. There is a second notarikon of the same form. In Greek, the four cardinal points are arktos (north), dysis (west), anatole (east), and mesembria (south). When God took dust from the four corners of the world to make the first man, He named him after those four corners in notarikon; thus, “Adam”. Despite this similarity, the two words have a difference: news goes n-e-w-s and Adam, converted to the English equivalents, goes n-w-e-s. The middle two letters are reversed. Why? (when I was explaining this to Ana, I added that there was a third word in this class, that being “snew”. When she asked “What’s snew?” I said “Not much! What’s snew with you?” and she refused to speak to me for the rest of the day.) I offer the following explanation for the variation. During the day, the sun goes from east to west. This sunrise – sunset cycle represents the natural course of the

Unsong Home Table of Contents Author’s Notes Comments Feed RSS Feed Unsong --> Chapter 12: Borne On Angels’ Wings Posted on March 20, 2016 by Scott Alexander May 11, 2017 San Jose Sitting in bed with her computer on her lap, Erica Lowry watched the sun rise and writing the news. The overt meaning of “news” is “new things”. The kabbalistic meaning of “news” is “the record of how the world undoes human ambitions”. This we derive by notarikon, interpreting “news” as an acronym for the four cardinal points: north, east, west,

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