Heard in a movie, The Fourth Protocol:

[Sarah]

On 2011-03-02, at 5:53 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Heard in a movie, The Fourth Protocol:
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:43 PM -0800 3/2/11, Sarah wrote:
>> There are various meanings of "Chinese" in the archives (I was
>> looking for "Chinese baseball" aka "kickball"), but (and again
>> without context) they were talking about mass and not size. As the
>> critical mass of Pu-239 is ~24lbs, needing 200lbs, even for a dirty
>> bomb, is at best ridiculous and definitely "chaotic, badly
>> organized" as LH said.
>>
>> S.
>
> There's also Chinese handball, which was popular in upper Manhattan
> in the 50's and may still be for all I know.  I can't remember the
> details of how it differed from the other (usual?) kind, but the ball
> was the same, just the rules were different.

Yes, I saw that. The only similarity I saw was that both were variations on games that were considered "normal." I'm still not sure how "a game played very much like softball, only one kicks a (usually red) rubber ball that was also used to play dodge/murderball instead of hitting a ball with bat" in Edmonton, AB during (at least) the 1980-90s came to be known as "Chinese baseball."

S.

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