August 28, 2006 - Aegis

aegis \EE-jis\, noun:
1. Protection; support.
2. Sponsorship; patronage.
3. Guidance, direction, or control.
4. A shield or protective armor; -- applied in mythology to the shield of Zeus.

It is this ideal of the human under the aegis of something higher which seems to me to provide the strongest counterpressure against the fragmentation and barbarization of our world.
-- Ted J. Smith III (Editor), In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963

A third round of talks is scheduled to begin on May 23rd in New York under the aegis of the United Nations.
-- "Denktash declared head after rival withdraws", Irish Times, April 21, 2000

In real life, Lang's father was commercially astute and fantastically hardworking, and under his aegis the construction business flourished.
-- Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Aegis derives from the Greek aigis, the shield of Zeus, from aix, aig-, "a goat," many primitive shields being goatskin-covered.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for aegis


Finally, a semi-normal word. Apparently, Street Fighter III has a character with a signature move called the Aegis Reflector or something because there are a metric shitload of videos of this move being performed. There's also a character or mecha in Gundam Wing called Aegis or something because that's a constant recurring theme today too. I'm going to include a couple of videos because there wasn't anything that just jumped out at me as the clear winner (not like Hoopered from Robustious the other day). Enjoy!

First, Kids jumping up walls to, believe it or not, French hip hop. The PK in the name is short for Parkour (or freerunning) and this is a training video or something.


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Second, this is what happens when you take your action figures out of the box. Mint-in-Box isn't about collection, it's about protection!


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Third, bored Filipina has too much fun with a web cam and a magic mic. Not that kind of fun, perv! It's probably better if you speak tagalog, but it's not that great one way or another. This is mostly included because the song she's sings was all over the search results and this was the most interesting version of it. Plus, she's not a bad singer.


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And, finally, cute Korean Christian kids. Just cuz, well, daycare babies = cute and they are, they believe, under the aegis of God, or Jesus, or whatever, and the song is a little catchy.



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