assorted comments

Thu Apr 14 00:07:22 UTC 2011

Not just circa 1800..right up to this very day the boat used to convey a
ship's captain is called the "gig" in the US Navy.

Bill P

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 7:23 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> <
JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:

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> Poster:       "James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>"
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> Subject:      assorted comments
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>
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:49:43 -0400
> victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM> wrote
>
> <q>In fact, "brown-bag lunch" has acquired a fairly recent association with
> lunch-time seminars. One interesting aspect is that conference "brown-bag
> lunches" often have a distinction with school brown-bag lunches in that the
> former is supplied to the participants by the organizers (sometimes free,
> sometimes buy-in).
> </q>
>
> At the place I worked 1984-85 we had "brown-bag lunches" meaning lunch-time
> seminars as often as once a week.  However, we had to bring our own lunches
> to the seminars.  I still have the slides for a seminar I gave:
> "Lunchtime talk scheduled for 1/24/85"; unfortunately the slides do not
> contain the phrase "brown-bag".
>
> I can cite an example a decade and a half earlier, but unfortunately I have
> no documentation and cannot give the date as more precisely than 1969-1972.
>  It was at the Pentagon, during those years of constant protests directed at
> the Pentagon about Vietnam (directed at the Pentagon for publicity, as the
> decision to stay in Vietnam was made by the President and seconded by
> Congress when it passed the necessary appropriations; for some reason nobody
> ever protested against Vietnam in front of the Capitol.  But I digress).
>  The cafeterias or maybe the snack bars at the Pentagon raised their prices
> and somehow word spread throughout the Pentagon that on a certain day
> everybody was to boycott the cafeterias/snack bars.  And on that day most
> everyone did, prompting a we-are-not-amused response from building
> management.
>
> Unfortunately I have no recollection of whether the term "brown-bag" was
> used and I did not keep any written souvenirs.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> re: the j/gig is up:  I'm sure it is totally irrelevant, but circa 1800 in
> the Royal Navy (and probably the US Navy) the boat used by the captain when
> he left the ship was known as the "gig".  Hence when the captain returned
> the gig was hoisted up, i.e. "the gig was up".
>
> Which reminds me:  when did the word "down" first come to mean "out of
> order, not operational"?  I met this term when I started working in
> computers in 1965, so it must have been around earlier.  To the best of my
> knowledge it started among computer people.  (The late George Flynn of the
> New England Science Fiction Association reported that where he worked the
> elevator was frequently out of service, reported by the ambiguous phrase
> "the elevator is down".)
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:53:59 +0000  (apparently he is writing from
> Greenwich England) Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> <q>In the Atlantic City area long ago folks who brought their lunch to the
> shore were called shoobies ~shuebeez because it was often in a shoe box.
> Basically meaning cheap customers.  The term may still be around for that.
> Building of another casino has recommenced.  The economy is back.
> </q>
>
> I believe the term "shoobie" for visitors to the "Shore" (South Jersey term
> for the Atlantic seashore area) is still around, although I haven't
> encountered it in a while.  But then I don't have much contact with
> tourists.  As far as I know, one can be a shoobie without bringing one's
> lunch from home or while staying for several days.
>
> I do not know if the shoe-box etymology be correct---it sounds like a guess
> to me.
>
> I've long been of the opinion that too many casinos have been built in
> Atlantic City (look at the number that have gone through bankruptcy) and the
> fact that a new casino is being built merely means that one was born every
> minute.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:32:06 -0400
> Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>  wrote:
>
> <q>According to Simon van Booy, ed, _Why Do We Fight?_ (N.Y.: Harper
> Perennial,2010), <snip> the same work improbably attributes the following to
> George Bernard Shaw (as
> do thousands of websites): "I learned long ago, never wrestle with a pig;
> you get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."</q>
>
> This reminds me of a story attributed to Katherine Parr who told it to her
> husband.  It seems that a man got money from a king on the promise to teach
> a horse to sing within a year.  When asked about what would happen at the
> end of the year, "I might die, or the king might die, or the horse might
> die, or who knows?  Maybe the horse will learn to sing."
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:20:30 -0400 victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
> <q>
> "lynching" has a long and diverse history, starting with Judge Lynch
> locking up Royalists during the Revolutionary War. If there were any
> "lynchings" of blacks between 1775 and 1860, they would have been isolated
> and would not qualify as a social phenomenon. "Lynching" became associated
> with black victims
> only during or shortly after the Civil War.</q>
>
> Perhaps.  But J. C. Furnas _Goodbye to Uncle Tom_ New York: William Sloane
> Associates, 1956, no ISBN page 134
> "Theoretically all whites did rotating service in the patrol, which was
> often tied into the militia system.  Actually the well-to-do usually shirked
> and paid nominal fines.  In many places this left the overseers as backbone
> of patrolling.  Elsewhere, the country hired a regular patrol from among
> poor whites or small farmers, thus giving young men from those strata a
> special taste for abusing [N-word plural] which until recently remianed
> lively in Southern lynch mobs.  These ill-disciplined parties of young
> fellows organized under community sanction, often pasing the bottle freely
> while on their rounds, may well have been the nucleus suggestion for the Ku
> Klux Klan of post bellum renown.  Well before the Civil War th paddy rollers
> bulked large in slave folklore.  Fractious children were threatened with
> them.  Ole Massa was mad at Sluefoot Tom so he gin him a pass and tole him
> he could go to town, but Tom he couldn't read and the paddy rollers cotch
> him and they lookat his pa!
>  ss, and it say, 'Give this [N-word] hell,' so they gin him hell right
> there on the big road.</q>
>
>    - James A. Landau
>
>
>
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