[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[VHFCN1 Pilots and Crew]

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the
end of that day that says, "I will try again tomorrow."

Mary Anne Radmacher

 

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Graffito

 

The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to make
it up.

Scott Adams

 

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.

Evan Esar 

 

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead
of using it.

Gordon R. Dickson

 

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.

Anonymous

 

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Grok

 

We must look to Robert Anson Heinlein for the origins of this word, which he
invented for his science-fantasy book Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961. In
this, Valentine Michael Smith, a human being raised on Mars, returns to
Earth with psi powers given him by the Martians and is transformed into a
messiah.

 

Grok is a word borrowed from Martian (and you won't see that written very
often) in which it literally meant to drink. However, in its figurative
sense, to grok is to gain an instant deep spiritual understanding of
something or to establish a rapport with somebody.

 

"Smith had been aware of the visit by the doctors but he had grokked at once
that their intentions were benign; it was not necessary for the major part
of him to be jerked back from where he was."

 

The book became a cult classic despite its deeply flawed nature. Heinlein
remarked self-deprecatingly about it that it was incredible what some people
would do for money; it was originally published in a brutally edited form
and became available as originally written only in 1990.

 

The term went into the language, at first among countercultural types in
California and among SF fans (there used to be lapel buttons around with the
message "I grok Spock"), but was later taken up by computer geeks and
scientists, among whom it has largely remained.

 

"I recall well when I first grokked Newton's arguments giving the special
properties of the inverse square law. I was so moved by the elegance of the
constructions, I found myself wiping away tears."

 

Segue

 

It's pronounced segway, but it's spelled segue. In the mid-sixties at the
BBC this term was taught for the action of jumping straight from one record
to the next without any announcement in between, or, as the Oxford English
Dictionary more soberly puts it, to make an "uninterrupted transition from
one song or melody to another". It's Italian, the present tense of seguire,
to follow. It was borrowed into English - probably in the 1920s, though it
is first recorded in the 1930s - originally as musicians' and radio
broadcasters' slang. More recently it has been extended to cover any smooth
transition, as in a conversation, or from one film scene to another.

 

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During whose presidency were the greatest number of states admitted to the
Union?

A: Benjamin Harrison's. He served from 1889 to 1893 and saw six states added
t the Union: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington in 1889;
Idaho and Wyoming in 1890.

 

What American president was First Lady Barbara Bush's
great-great-great-uncle?

A: Democrat Franklin Pierce. Mrs. Bush's maiden name is Pierce.

 

What American president had an electric horse installed in his White House
bedroom--and rode it almost daily?

A: Calvin Coolidge.

 

What is former Vice President Dan Quayle's first name?

A: James.

 

Who was the only U.S. president not to use the word "I" i his inaugural
address?

A: Theodore Roosevelt.

 

President Herbert Hoover's middle name was what? 

A: Clark.

 

Puerto Rican nationalists tried unsuccessfully to assassinate whom in 1950? 

A: President Truman.