24 March—Non-news first: Remaining readers of the Republican-American may have noticed that the comics in the interior pages of this morning’s Sunday Republican comic section are the very same ones that were published last Sunday, dates and all; that is, they’ve been reprinted using last Sunday’s plates. There is, of course, a plethora of less grievous errors that should and would have been caught and corrected by a copy editor and proofreader. But evidently the Waterbury rag has neither. None.

Will the delinquent comics be printed in tomorrow’s Republican-American?

Now to the news of the day: Today is Palm Sunday. So in recognition of it, here’s a short disquisition on palm reading, also known as palmistry, chiromancy, and chirology. The chiro- part, sometimes spelled cheiro-, comes through New Latin chiro- from Ancient Greek χείρ (kheir), meaning hand.

Thus, chiropractors, who manipulate the body with their hands. Etymologically, chiropodists fiddle with hands and feet (from Greek πόδ-, pod-, meaning foot); but you don’t find many of them around today; and foot doctors are properly called podiatrists, though some people still improperly call them chiropodists.

Hand doctors, on the other hand (sic), are simply called orthopedists or orthopaedists, like any doctors involved in curing or correcting deformities—originally in children. Hence, ortho- (from Greek ορθός, meaning straight or correct, as in orthodox) and ped or paed (from Greek παιδιά, meaning children, as in pediatrician or paediatrician).

Then there’s the -iatrist and -iatrician, from ἰατρός (iatros), meaning doctor.

Finally, then, to palm reading. Palmistry, while not quite junk science, is at best a pseudoscience, kind of like anthropogenic climate-change alarmism, both of which purport to be factual but are actually incompatible with the scientific method. Both, for instance, rely on exaggerated, unprovable but undisprovable claims; absence of rigorous, reliable, reproducible results; emotional and/or political motivation; and, of course, consensus of cooperative experts and trashing of dissenters. Think of religious torture and execution of heretics.

The essence of anthropogenic climate-change alarmism is politically motivated Henny Penny paranoid fear mongering. The essence of chiromancy, often turned to by the paranoid and otherwise insecure, is that human palms have three major lines: heart line, head line, life line. Some lucky or unlucky people have a fourth line, the fate line. The three or four lines or creases are in fact characteristic of most palms, along with many less prominent ones. Those lines can be interpreted by whomever to tell a subject whatever. And that’s all there is to it.

That’s what palm reading is about. So enjoy Palm Sunday . . .