Assorted comments

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

I do not recall the term "slapjack" execpt as a children's card game, in which  cards were dealt into a pile and whenever a certain condition occurred, whoever slapped the pile first got to keep it.

-jack was and remains a very productive suffix in English, e.g. "Lo-Jack".

>> A classmate of mine once insisted that "speed"
>>and "velocity" were just as synonymous. � I tried to disabuse him by pointing
>>out that "velocity" was far more prevalent in more technical contexts; in
>>addition, I believe it has certain technical connotations and nuances that
>>"speed" does not. � Naturally, he shrugged off my objections.

The nuance is very simple.  "Velocity" refers to speed in a given direction, e.g. you can have a speed of 100 km/hr, but a velocity of 100 km/hr due north.  John W. Campbell Jr. of Analog Science Fiction gave an interesting mnemonic---a friend of his was ticketed by a "velocity cop"---for going the wrong way on a one-way street.

>Reminds me of a more-recent phenomenon that I've noticed.
>Country-blues singers still sound pretty much as they always have,
>except that Texans have stopped using "gwine." (I was really surprised
>to find out that "gwine" was once quite common in Texas BE, at least
>among the blues-singing classes.)

ah, the /ai/ for /oi/ thread again.  I recently came across a Civil War quote that referred to a "biled shirt".






>Generally, there are several sources that collect "conservative"
>columnists. The two largest (and largely overlapping) are Townhall.com
>and JewishWorldReview.com--BYO regurgitation receptacle. I can't really
>think of a comparable source on the left.

the Huffington Post?


>On the other hand, if print sources are desired, Washington Times and
>WSJ editorial page are great sources of bias in one direction. Boston

Please.  An editorial page that is not "biased" is not worth reading.

from Wilson Gray:
I know about that, but I was never in The City till *many* years after
that, not until PM was but a memory. What happened was that my
father's brother, who lived in NYC and "ran on the road" as a
dining-car waiter for the old Pennsylvania RR, used to bring it to us,
whenever he came to Saint Louis on vacation, etc. As is now true for
members of the military using Air Force planes (there is / was a term
for this, but I can't bring it to mind, at the moment) and for airline
employees, he could go anywhere for free by hooking up with a series
of trains headed in the right direction till he reached his
destination.

The military term is "Space Available" usually shortened to "Space-A".  On railroads and airlines a non-paying passenger is a "dead-head", although I believe that term is usually reserved for employees being shuttled around on company business (e.g. if your uncle had to be sent from New York to Philadelphia to work a train leaving Philadelphia).

           James A. Landau
           test engineer
           Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
           8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
           West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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