[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Thomas Huxley

 

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button.

Sam Levenson

 

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

Yogi Berra

 

The Republican platform promises to do better. I don't think they have done
so bad. Everybody's broke but them.

Will Rogers

 

The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be
filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line
and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous
amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Steven (R-AK), explaining the
workings of the Internet during a debate on net neutrality

 

Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose
their incentive to invest. As for the poor, conservatives tell us the
poor've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.

George Carlin

 

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Ice house

 

It is said that the Chinese invented the ice house as a building to preserve
winter ice for use in summer, they having learned as early as the eighth
century BC to store ice in caves or pits, using the evaporation from some of
it to keep the rest cool.

 

In Britain, the first recorded ice house was built at Greenwich in 1619,
though there are earlier ones in southern Europe. The heyday of building
them came in the eighteenth century, when no aristocratic estate was without
one.

 

Ice houses were built underground, as a brick-lined pit 25 to 30 feet deep,
usually in the shape of a blunt cone with the point downwards. The pit was
covered by a more-or-less ornate domed roof with a north-facing entrance
passage. Blocks of ice were cut from ponds or rivers on the estate and
transported to the ice house, where they were stacked between layers of
straw. Ice so preserved could keep for up to three years.

 

In the US, ice houses were once common, though there they tended to be
surface constructions; as Richard Allen said decisively in The American Farm
Book of 1858: "It is not necessary to dig into the earth for the purpose of
securing a good ice house".

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Zilch

 

Dictionaries are almost uniformly cautious about the origin of this word,
which means "nothing; zero". It appears first in print in the mid 1960s (the
first example in the big Oxford English Dictionary is from a slang
collection at the University of South Dakota dated Winter 1966).

 

Some reference books suggest the Ballyhoo humor magazine, first published in
1931, was a possible source. This had as one of its characters a Mr Zilch
(actually there were several of them: the front page of the first issue
advertised "President Henry P. Zilch. Chairman of the Board Charles D.
Zilch. Treasurer Otto Zilch"). The character was not actually pictured in
cartoons in the magazine, but was obviously present, so he was "the little
man who wasn't there".

 

This name may have come from college slang of the 1920s, in which Joe Zilsch
was the archetypal average student - the average Joe, in fact, marching in
the same column as Joe Blow, Joe Doakes and the more recent Joe Sixpack.
That sense is still around and sometimes used in the same way as John Doe,
to refer to an individual who is otherwise unidentified. In the 1920s,
however, Joe Zilsch could also be an insignificant person or (in modern
terms) a loser. The spelling suggests a European origin (and Zilsch is a
real German surname of Slavic origin). The name was probably borrowed with
zero and nil in the back of the creator's mind.

 

But the years between the 1930s and the 1960s are a complete blank as far as
the development of the word is concerned, so we have no way of confirming
that this is the source. Indeed, the long gap might be indirect evidence
that it isn't. Alas, etymology is not an exact science, so "Origin unknown".

 

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The 7th Earl of Cardigan led the charge of the Light Brigade during the
Crimean war. What was the name of the British commander who ordered the
ill-fated attack?

A: Lord Raglan.  Both men are better remembered for fashions they introduced
during the war--Cardigan for the woolen jacket he designed for his troops,
and Raglan for the unique sleeves on the coat he wore.

 

What type of aircraft was used to drop bombs in the first German air raids
on London in 1915?

A: A Zeppelin.

 

Which of the U.S. service academies was the first to admit women?

A: The Coast Guard Academy, in July 1976.

 

How many times did the nuclear submarine USS Triton surface during its
historic 1960 underwater circumnavigation of the globe?

A: Twice--once to remove a sick crew member, and once to pay tribute to
Ferdinand Magellan on the island of Mactan in the Philippines, where the
explorer was killed in 1521 during his circumnavigation of the globe.

 

Who was issued ID number 01 when the U.S. military started issuing dog tags
in 1918?

A: General John J. Pershing.

 

How long did the Battle of Waterloo last?

A: About nine and a half hours.

 

Who signed Major Clark Gable's army discharge papers in 1944?

A: President-to-be Ronald Reagan, then a captain.