I was first rather pointedly informed of this fact in 1975, but it goes back at least a bit further. Here's an item from a novel published in 1946 (set in 1944 or so; details at the BF entry):
``Wake up,'' someone was saying. ``We're letting down.'' It was broad daylight in the plane, late morning or early afternoon.
``Down where?'' he asked, and he pulled himself together.
``Frisco.''
``Don't call it that,'' Bob Tasmin said. ``Call it San Francisco. The citizens don't like it.''
Oh look, here's something: at one point, the Italian consulate in San Francisco had the domain name <italconsfrisco.org>. I guess they found out that might not be popular.
You know, people from Cincinnati take no offense at ``Cinci'' (also spelled Cincy) and people from Philadelphia don't mind ``Philly.'' A clerk I spoke with at a Turkey Hill store in Wind Gap, PA, called Pennsylvania ``Pennsy.'' (That's pronounced, and less often spelled, Pencey or Pency. You remember that at the beginning of Catcher in the Rye, Holden is flunking out of his latest prep school? That was Pencey Prep.)
Forget all that stuff about going with flowers in your hair and meeting some gentle people there. Don't worry about checking your heart and forgetting the ticket stub. Eric Burdon needed a fact-checker. All that stuff was propaganda. San Franciscans are just plain thin-skinned.
Hold the phone -- this just in! In response to threatening, um, I mean to characteristically polite email from many beautiful San Franciscisciscans, I am prepared to reveal my recent discovery of the true objection to ``Frisco.'' It's to avoid confusion with Frisco, Colorado, and Frisco, Texas. So considerate!
Maybe we should use ``Frisky'' instead of ``Frisco.'' Someone almost tried that, in fact. I'm thinking of Henry Glover (``with'' Morris Levy -- co-writing or maybe just co-collecting royalties), who wrote the words and music for ``California Sun.''
This charted for the Rivieras just as the British Invasion hit and changed everything. ``California Sun'' was a very representative American song of the era that closed then -- almost an instant antique. I think it was released in 1964; it entered the Top 40 on February 1, 1964 and stayed nine weeks, reaching #5. The Beatles' ``I Want To Hold Your Hand'' had its American release on December 26, 1963, and first appeared on the Top 40 in the January 25, 1964, edition of Billboard. There was a historic mob scene at JFK International Airport when the Beatles landed on February 7, and when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show two days later, they could hardly be heard over the screams of their fans. (Eventually, crowd noise was a major factor in the Beatles' decision to stop touring.) ``I Want To Hold Your Hand'' spent 14 weeks in the Top 40, including seven weeks at #1. For the week of April 4, the Beatles owned the top five slots of the Top 40.
(On the web, I've read alternative reports of the chart career of ``California Sun,'' such as that it was held at #2 or toppled from #1 by the Beatles' first American hit. There must be some basis for these reports, but I don't know what it is. I don't think it's the Billboard competitor Cashbox. The #5 ranking and associated dates are from the 7th and 8th editions (which were ready to my hand) of Joel Whitburn's The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits. What has been popularly known as the ``Top 40'' since mid-1958 is the top 40 slots of the Billboard ``Hot 100,'' based on both sales and airplay.)
The Rivieras, you'll want to know, formed when the members were in high school in South Bend, Indiana, and had some success playing clubs in the area. They were variously described as playing surf, garage, teen, and frat rock. ``California Sun'' was their one hit. There were a number of personnel changes, partly caused by the draft, and they broke up in 1966. (Not for good -- they got together again in the 80's.) Anyway, that Glover song includes these lines:
Well the girls are frisky in ol' 'Frisco --
A pretty little chick wherever you go.
The ECLIPSE website hosts areas for Doom, Dr. Who, Captain Power (Captain Who?), and Babylon 5. In 1998 ECLIPSE won a lot of web awards, but it's getting tougher all the time.
There's an on-line Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide.
Traditionally, a distinction is observed between SF, meaning ``hard-core'' Science Fiction, and sci-fi, which may be more fantasy-oriented, with ``fantasy'' often in the sense of wish fulfillment. However, non-SF sci-fi enthusiasts by and large do not cooperate in maintaining this (sometimes loose) distinction.
SFA ``is the international trade association of the snack food industry representing snack manufacturers and suppliers. Founded in 1937, SFA represents over 800 companies worldwide. SFA business membership includes, but is not limited to, manufacturers of potato chips, tortilla chips, cereal snacks, pretzels, popcorn, cheese snacks, snack crackers, meat snacks, pork rinds, snack nuts, party mix, corn snacks, pellet snacks [I think they mean M&M's and similar foods, and not bird food], fruit snacks, snackbars, granola, snack cakes, cookies and various other snacks.''
The italics on the not-limited clause serve to highlight the differences of opinion that necessarily exist on the question of what exactly qualifies as a ``snack food.'' The book Snack Food (1990), edited by R. Gordon Booth, includes in the category of snack foods pickles, sauces, and salted jellyfish. Somewhat at the opposite extreme is Snack Food Technology (1993) by Samuel A. Matz, (details at the snack food entry). Matz prefers to exclude the three aforementioned items as well as candy, although he concedes in his preface that ``a good case could be made for including all such materials in the wider category `snacks'.''
Matz's laudable fastidiousness leads to admirable caution in the case of granola, but also to excessive indecision. For example, the introduction of chapter 18, on ``Meat-Based Snacks,'' begins
There are several snacks composed primarily of raw materials derived from animals [he's not thinking of milk-chocolate-coated caramel here]. Almost every consumer would agree that fried puffed bacon rinds are snacks [hadn't we better take a survey?], because their texture, appearance, and flavor resemble those characteristics of puffed or fried cereal snacks [he must be thinking mouthfeel here; I don't recall pork rinds tasting like cocoa puffs], and they are sold in portion-size pouches for eating mostly between regularly scheduled meals. ...(Emphasis added.)
From various fortune files, here's
For all P, where P is a package of snack food, P is a SINGLE-SERVING package of snack food.
What's this ``regularly scheduled meals'' business? I take my food item when I'm hungry. As the French say: Consume mass quantities!
There is membership for individuals, students (who get a discount relative to individuals), and institutions. The principal (and only testable) criterion for membership is subscription to the quarterly journal French Historical Studies (FHS). It's pretty inexpensive, but if you're homeless, where would they deliver? I guess they're just not interested in serving the French Historical Studies needs of the North American homeless community.
The similar British organization is the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH).
Apparently there have been ``allegations of malpractice'' in Indonesia and China. There might be fraud and there might not, but judging from what I know of Latin America, the fact of bribery does not imply fraud. I mean, at least in Latin America, everyone knows what the deal is, so no one is really deceived. So bribery isn't fraudulent -- at worst it's just a little bit coy.
Initially deployed for a nominal one-year mission, they're digging in for the long haul. Gilligan's Island was a sitcom launched by a three-hour tour.
While a lot of the leftist ``underground'' newspapers disappeared along with the antiwar movement when active US involvement ended, many academic journals of the left, founded in a similar spirit, have survived as alternatives to the perceived orthodoxy when their disciplines. Examples besides the SftP (which suggests soft porn to my filthy mind) are Radical Teacher, Insurgent Sociologist (a newsletter turned journal which dumped the activism and became Critical Sociology in 1988), Issues in Radical Therapy (like, what kind of prosthesis should I get after radical mastectomy?), Conspiracy, Madness Network News, Radical Philosopher's Newsjournal, and Sipapu.
Among major history journals, Radical America, Radical History Review (see MARHO), and Socialist Revolution survived into the late 1980's, but the last renamed itself Socialist Review.
now you stop and think about your dignity!
``Even though oxygen is flowing, the bag may not inflate.''
Please bring your tray tables and seat backs to their locked and upright positions, and not vice versa.
If you are traveling with or seated next to a child, put your own mask on first and then assist the child.
If this is your final destination, may God have mercy on your soul.
Insert the metal tip into the buckle, then pull on the loose end to tighten the belt. To release the belt, simply pull forward on the buckle. Here, let me help you with that.
This is your last and final boarding call. The one before was just your last boarding call. Yeah, it can get confusing.
Because of the short duration of this flight, we will not have beverage service; however, if I can help in any way, please do not hesitate to call me by pressing the yellow button above your seat.
``Yes, could I have a warm soda, and some peanuts and small pretzels in a steel-reinforced, rip-stop kevlar bag, please?''
This concludes the entertainment portion of our flight.
Do not inflate life vest while you are inside the aircraft.
Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.
If it seems odd to you that the Coptic form of Peter should begin in a b sound rather than a p sound, see the BATA Shoe Museum entry.
alt.music.paul-simon in
the days when writing newsgroup FAQ's was popular. Unfortunately, and quite
surprisingly, as of August 2007 I can't find any copy of it on the web. To
judge from the number of links to now-defunct websites for Paul Simon, Art
Garfunkel, or both, it seems there's been a severe fall-off in interest in
them or their music in the twenty-first century. Here are a few certified live
(by me) as of this month:- Art Garfunkel's official site. Like Linda Ronstadt, he's gone classic-American-songbook -- Rodgers & Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, etc.
- Paul Simon at MySpacegt;. Phlegmatic.
- <PaulSimon.Com>. ``Buy the CD. Buy the CD/DVD. Buy on iTunes.''
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Page for S&G.
- Simon & Garfunkel Home. News as little as one and three years fresh.
- Song For The Asking
- Wilson & Alroy's decidedly non-fan thumbnail critiques of the albums.
- <Paul-Simon.Info>. There's an Animation checkbox at the lower right that you can unclick to reduce the graphics to a merely excessive annoyance.
The Net Advance of Physics site has some entries in this category.
A common question posed by the name of any society ``for <foobar>'' is whether the society promotes <foobar> or studies it -- i.e., is really a society ``for the study of <foobar>.'' (Vide UDI.) Often common sense will resolve the ambiguity. In the case of philosophies, one expects both meanings to be intended to some degree. That is, most philosophers are disinclined to study a philosophical system unless they find some element of truth in it or at least clever argumentation, so they might be expected to promote it as well.
Conversely, you can't honestly promote a philosophy you don't study. I mean, you could promote a combination dustmop-plunger without studying it -- you might just use it in the living room or bathroom. It's good for something (there's that word again) if it's any good at all. In contrast with Swiss-Army plumbers' helpers, philosophies (probably especially idealist philosophies) don't do anything. They don't have any moving parts, but they're too soft to use as hammers and too thin for pillows. Navel-gazing is the paradigmatic dog that don't hunt. Again, people: common sense.
Common sense is not something one associates with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Naturally, he developed a cult of slavish followers. The joke went that if the post coach was late from Koenigsberg, the Kantians wouldn't know what to think that day. (Kant, as I'm sure you remember now, spent all of his life within a few miles of his hometown of Koenigsberg. He was only intellectually wide-ranging. Late in life, he decided to take a trip abroad, but he aborted the trip after a few minutes' riding.)
This links to a randomly selected page with some stuff about SGML.
Oh, great: in May 1998 they changed their name to STMicroelectronics. With rebus names like this, it's no wonder the old acronym/initialism distinction broke down. Now I'll never find out what it stood for. Part of the SGS Group of companies.
T
The state's area is 15,771 sq. km. Its population was 2,554,000 by the census of 1987, estimated at 2,759,000 for 1997.
Green Stamps were introduced in 1896 by the Sperry and Hutchinson Company, and originally used by Merchants Supply Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Green stamps are not as popular as they once were. In fact, they've completely disappeared. Unfortunately, the S&H Co. survived, and now markets ``S&H greenpoints: The Next Generation of Loyalty Marketing.'' According to the greenpoints site, the year 1964 was milestone:
The S&H catalog becomes the largest single publication in the US. S&H prints 3 times as many stamps as the US Post Office, and enough catalogs to circle the earth 1 1/2 times!
Also ``by the 1960's, S&H was the largest purchaser of consumer products in the world.''
Once, ``Tesseral Harmonic'' was a common name as well.
- CCLRC
Recognized for containing the words Council and Councils in its expansion.
You know, boys and girls, there was a time when a certain natural biological phenomenon, consequent to the one not actually described in any of the preceding three terms, was considered too indelicate to name directly. To be blunt, by the standards of that time, the word pregnant was considered coarse, even obscene. As recently as the 1890's, I think, the standard term was ``in a family way.'' In the fifties, polite incoherent references to rabbit fatality were standard, and ``with child'' was still a bit, mmm, direct. (Sex education was conducted entirely in Morse Code. That's why boys learned Morse Code. It's no coincidence that codeless licensing has become the norm as the moral fiber of our nation has gone to hell.) Intransitive ``expecting'' was a common expression. Depends where you lived, of course. Did you notice the comment on embarazo near the end of the TP entry?
- An opaque, highly non-Newtonian fluid. Available in restaurants.
- [Among the old Los Alamos `device' makers] a convenient unit of time equal to 10-8 seconds. An eternity to modern pulsed laser.
When I'm trying to figure out which door to take, I always have to remember this fact about concrete nouns named on doors: in other cases the signs name what you can get inside, on a public restroom it names what you can take inside.
I always assumed that two bits (25 cents) had covered both the shave and the haircut. Maybe it once did, but here's a relevant item from The Niles Daily Star (of Niles, Michigan). It was front-page news on Saturday, August 12, 1933: ``Many Niles Barbers Revise Price Charge'':
Many Niles barber shops have adopted a price schedule of 25 cents for shaves and 35 cents for haircuts. The Master Barbers' association has submitted a code calling for a 25 cent shave and a 50 cent haircut, which the local barbers had agreed to adopt. But many have found that 50 cents for a haircut is considered exorbitant by old customers, and have reduced the price.
In the same newspaper on the same day, ``Cleaners Raise Prices'' only made page 2:
The wearing apparel cleaners of Niles have made a slight increase in their prices to correspond with increases in overhead costs of boxes, bags, and other supplies [no mention of soap!] ... Cleaners in South Bend, Benton Harbor, St. Joseph and other surrounding towns have already advanced their prices. The National Industrial Recovery Act [NIRA, q.v., which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935] code for cleaners has not yet been put into effect but with the increase in prices the cleaners will observe the NRA blanket code for wages and hours.
Oh --it's Atlas's stamina! When Billy Batson shouts this powerful incantatory acronym, he is transformed into red tights and white cape with gold trim, becoming The World's Mightiest Mortal! (Captain Marvel!)
When his sister Mary shouts SHAZAM!, it stands for Selene (grace), Hippolyta (strength), Ariadne (skill), Zephyr (speed), Aurora (beauty), and Minerva (wisdom)! (Mary Marvel!)
Quiz question:
``Howard Coward'' would be a () good or ( ) bad idea for a name?
Now back to the entry.
The Society is dedicated to the study of Hinduism and Christianity and their interrelationships. It seeks to create a forum for the presentation of historical research and studies of contemporary practice, for the fostering of dialogue and interreligious conversation, carried forward in a spirit of openness, respect and true inquiry.
This overview page of nucleus models has a link to an extended technical description (dvi).
In the colorful old nondecimal British system, a pound was divided into shillings and pence as described above, and these were abbreviated s. and d., for solidus and denarius, the Latin equivalents. (I have no idea how justified these equivalences might have been initially, but since few Roman solidi or denarii were in circulation, it can't ever have been much of an issue.) Anyway, prices were commonly stated using expressions like ``4 shillings 11,'' meaning 4s.11d. The s. was necessary to separate the numbers, while the written d., like the spoken ``pence,'' was implicit. A long ess (for an explanation see esh) was originally common. As the long ess glyph went out of use, it was replaced either by the now-standard short ess glyph or by a forward slash, which also came to be called ``solidus.''
In most of the German states, the cognate word Schilling was used with same sense (solidus, 12 Pfennig). In Bavaria and Austria the situation was more complicated.
Swedish Housemate: We could use ships!
Me (a landlubber): Ships?
SH: Yes! Maybe could rent them. Probably one would be enough.
Me: What would we do with ships?
SH: The ships would eat the grass!
Me: Ships?
SH: Yes, ships! You know, ``bah-bah''! Wool!
Me: Sheeps? Sheep! You #%#%!*-ing *@&^#%-ous *$%@^#*! The plural of sheep is sheep!
``A few years ago'' above refers to 1981. An article in the 24 July 2004 New Scientist (pp. 52-3 of the North American edition) is entitled ``The sheep that launched 1000 ships.'' It seems that Norse ships had woolen sails. They recommend visiting the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
An article in the November 2, 2011, New York Times is entitled ``Sheep
Lawn Mowers, and Other Go-Getters.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/garden/sheep-lawn-mowers-and-other-go-getters.html?pagewanted=2
![[column]](images/column.gif){kind=small}
Japanese sheep go `boo, boo.' As a consequence of drift in the pronunciation
of the Greek alphabet, ancient Greek sheep now go
`vee, vee.' (For more on this, kindly proceed to the entry on the letter
ni.)
At the beginning of Ivanhoe, Scott explains that after the Norman conquest the Saxons still herded the sheep and cattle, but the Normans ate the mutton and beef. Hence Germanic words for the animal names, and Romance names for the food names. Linguists are not convinced.
For more on sheep, see the OPT entry.
You want to know what it really means? I'm not sure I should tell you. You might lose respect for me. I'll tell you what: I'll pass along the definition at the Medicare glossary, but I won't endorse it.
A special type of health plan that provides the full range of Medicare benefits offered by standard Medicare HMOs, plus other services that include the following:(Prescription drug and chronic care benefits, respite care, and short-term nursing home care; homemaker, personal care services, and medical transportation; eyeglasses, hearing aids, and dental benefits.)
I foresee that this could cause problems when budget-line 6.1 is explained to the top military brass.
One thing that I learned from the Moonies is that you don't try to sell the the Brooklyn Bridge to someone from Brooklyn. [When I was over 'their place on Bush street in San Francisco in '79, and they were dissembling their true identity, my minder tried to explain their putatively independent group with a ``flow chart.'' It amazed me that they got any recruits at all. (Well, okay, they had this young woman guarding the door, and when I was down there putting my shoes back on to leave, she tried to persuade me to stay or come back. She was really beautiful; I guess their recruitment efforts weren't totally inept.) More about that experience at the Washington entry.]
- Conversation in Turin with Primo Levi [1]
- See the entries for writers in the paint industry and Arbeit Macht Frei.
- Conversation in Jerusalem with Aharon Appelfeld [18]
- Conversation in Prague with Ivan Klíma [40]
- Conversation in New York with Isaac Bashevis Singer about Bruno Schulz [78]
- Conversation in London and Connecticut with Milan Kundera [90]
- Conversation in London with Edna O'Brien [101]
- There's a sample of her judgment at the journalistic balance entry, and she's quoted at the entry on the importance of literature.
- An exchange with Mary McCarthy [113]
- Pictures of Malamud [120]
- Pictures by Guston [131]
- A recollection of the beginning of the friendship between two Philips, written about ten years after Philip Guston died. I milk this chapter for the TTBOMKAB entry, and skim off more for this research entry. ask
- Rereading Saul Bellow [139]
An interdisciplinary organization, SHOT is concerned not only with the history of technological devices and processes, but also with the relations of technology to science, politics, social change, the arts and humanities, and economics.''
A constituent society of the ACLS since 1973. ACLS has an overview.
Love the acronym. The year of SHOT's founding, 1958, is not exactly some random year that it all happened to finally come together. Rather, 1958 was the year following Sputnik -- start of the Soviet space program that first put man and dog (not in that order) in orbit around our little planet. It sent the US into panic, in fear that we were quickly falling behind the Rooskies in various important military and industrial technologies, and the government gave a big SHOT in the arm to academic science and technology research, in large part via NSF. Funding grew about exponentially, right through the Vietnam war, until 1970, when someone turned off the spigot, but that's another story. At the beginning, the NSF didn't invest much in social science. If some money was going to the social science for appearances' sake, though, you can imagine that history of science and technology (HST) were bound to be favored.
Nouning the parts of speech most reluctant to be nouned seems to be a habit peculiar to psychiatrists and psychologists. Freud did it with singular personal pronouns (vide id). (You know, it's nothing but sheer declensional luck that it construes out properly here in Latin too.)
Wayne W. Dyer, a doctor of psychology, wrote a book called Your Erroneous Zones (details at the F.O.O.L. entry). In a section entitled ``The Folly of Shoulds, Musts and Oughts,'' he gasps that ``Karen Horney, the brilliant psychiatrist, has devoted an entire chapter of Neurosis and Human Growth to this topic [please, please tell me that she also wrote about frustrated sexual desire], and she titles it `The Tyranny of the Should.' She comments:
The shoulds always produce a feeling of strain, which is all the greater the more a person tries to actualize his shoulds in his behavior. . . . Furthermore, because of externalizations, the shoulds always contribute to disturbance in human relations in one way or another.*Do shoulds determine much of your life? Do you feel you should [sic] be kind to your colleagues, supportive of your spouse, helpful to your children and always work hard? [Then you're a Calvinist! Oh, sorry--got carried away, I guess. I didn't mean to interrupt. Dyer continues...] And if at any time you fail in one of these shoulds do you berate yourself [Jewish? Catholic?] and hence take on that strain and disturbance [flagellant?] to which Karen Horney alludes above? But perhaps these are not your shoulds. If, in fact, they belong to others [give them back! stealing is wrong!] and you have merely borrowed them [oh sure], then you are musterbating. [Bad boy!]''
-------
* Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1950), p. 81.
Hey, I just [96.10.31] attended the ND SHPE/MAES meeting, and it was impressive: newbie self-introductions, new business, old business, four speakers, a social chairman appointed by default, pizza before and after, chatting before and after, all in a half hour!
The line is attributed to JFK, that Washington DC, has northern hospitality and southern efficiency.
What was I thinking when I wrote this entry?
Step One: stack 'em up like cord wood and wait for them to dry.
Since this is one of the few social history entries in the glossary, it's a good place to mention one of the few social history observations I have made. It has to do with the NTU homepage linked above. It shows one guy with a fake grin in the foreground and another guy half-heartedly stretching a grimace in the background. They have their hands in their pockets, which is apparently all they can do to keep from folding their arms across their chests. This isn't personal, this is social. In American society, smiling is not frowned upon. People are not assumed to be stupid just because they are happy. Optimism is good. In personals ads (I admit that I have looked at personals ads, okay?) the women are usually smiling, and they're not doing it to look clueless. European women in personals ads look irritated or at best serious. They're sophisticated to death. Cool like a gravedigger's ass. When they smile, they often wear that fake smile of the guy on the NTU page: lips pried or curled apart, eyes uninvolved or angry. They've forgotten what a happy smile feels like, so they don't realize that they're practically sneering. I don't need to read what the studies say about how happy Europeans tell posters they are -- I know: these people demand to be disappointed. Crack a real smile, FCOL! It won't kill you. Read the .dk entry. Now. See also my comments on the look at the english entry.
(Incidentally, I recognize that the, um, candid student shots are posed and need not reflect the personalities of the models. This makes it worse: the poses reflect what a photographer's experience accepts as normal and acceptable.)
When begun in 2000 the journal was intended as a local Estonian project, but international contributions have been invited since May 2002.
ISSN 1406-6203.