[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

You can sum up this sport [boxing] in two words: 'You never know.'

Lou Deva

 

He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time
it is.

Lou Deva. again.

 

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only
animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal
that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology
isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest
best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

Mark Twain

 

Clones are people two.

Bumper sticker

 

My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I forgot to
do. 

Anonymous

 

God please give me patience. If you give me strength I will just punch them
in the face. 

Anonymous

 

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Double-dog dare you

 

Like so much slang, the phrase isn't that well recorded and so it's hard to
pin down its origins. It's certainly an American expression, though, and one
that's still quite common.

 

Chapman's Dictionary of American Slang mentions it and dates it carefully as
being current at least as far back as the 1940s. Many subscribers to this
newsletter have long memories, so there is little doubt that they could take
it back further without much effort. Jonathon Green, in the Cassell
Dictionary of Slang, says it's nineteenth century. He's certainly right,
since it's listed in a book of 1896, The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought
by Alexander F Chamberlain.

 

Mr Chamberlain also mentions several other forms. As well as the immemorial
I dare you, he gives I dog dare you, I double dog dare you, I black dog dare
you, and the ultimate challenge that must surely have been impossible to
pass up without appearing totally chicken, I double black dog dare you. 

 

A couple are based on yet another form, one that he interestingly doesn't
give, but which has long been common almost everywhere: I double dare you,
an obvious escalation of taunt that must have independently occurred to
generations of young people, but which only appears in printed works from
the end of the nineteenth century on. The oldest example found is from a
story of young love (much more chaste than its title of Cordelia's Night of
Romance appears to us moderns), which appeared in Harper's New Monthly
Magazine in April 1895: "Maybe one day I'll give you a dare. I'll double
dare you, maybe, to call me Clarice."

 

Where the dogs come in is unclear, except that dog is a good strong word,
with lots of potentially disparaging undertones, whose alliteration must
have made it especially attractive. The reference to black dog has caused
one writer to suggest a link with a bad shilling, so named in Britain in the
slang of Queen Anne's reign nearly three centuries before, but that's
stretching any transatlantic link well beyond breaking point. It is just
possible that it's somehow linked to the use of black dog to refer to an
incarnation of the Devil, but - unless something is missing - it is likely
that black dogs were just that much more scary than any old sort of dog.

 

After the piece first went out, many American subscribers mentioned the
film, A Christmas Story, which was based on the reminiscences of Jean
Shepherd about his childhood in the 1930s. Henry Willis summarised the
incident in which the expression appears: "At one point in the film one of
his friends dares another friend, named Flick, to stick his tongue on the
flagpole in front of the school on a snowy winter day. The kid who has been
dared shows normal innate common sense until his friend ups the ante by
double-daring then double-dog-daring him. At which point the movie's
narrator comments: 'Now it was serious. A double-dog-dare. What else was
there but a "triple dare ya"? And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the
sinister triple-dog-dare'. At that point, of course, Flick has no choice but
to accept the challenge with the predictably disastrous results".

 

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For about 20 years (from 1962 to 1977), the computer controlled launch code
for the US nuclear missiles was 00000000. 

 

The word password is among the most used passwords. 

 

Name of the first electronic computer was ENIAC. It was massive as it
weighed 27 tons and it was spread over 1800 sq. feet.

 

TYPEWRITER is the longest dictionary word that can be typed using keys in
only one row on your standard querty keyboard.

 

A small percentage of world's total money is in physical form. It is
estimated that just about 10% of world's money exists in the form of
currency notes and coins. Rest of the money exists only in computers.

 

The first computer mouse was made of wood. Computer mouse was invented by
America engineer Doug Engelbart.

 

The first hard-disk was the size of two refrigerators and it could store 3.5
MB data.