[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national
emergency-even if I'm in a Cabinet meeting.

Ronald Reagon

 

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help
section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

George Carlin

 

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would
trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn't know that money trickled up.
Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it
before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor
fellow's hands.

Will Rogers

 

It gets late early around here...

Yogi Berra

 

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell

 

Time flies. It's up to you to be the navigator.

Robert Orben

 

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Sophisticated

 

Sophisticated is closely connected with sophistry. Though that word in turn
came from the Greek sophos meaning wise, sophists in classical Greece -
around the fourth century BC - were itinerant teachers of philosophy and
rhetoric who didn't enjoy a good reputation. They were skeptical about the
possibility of achieving genuine knowledge and were thought by many to be
more concerned with winning arguments than arriving at the truth. Plato
considered them to be a dishonest bunch of lecturers, and sophistry came to
mean fallacious reasoning.

 

In medieval times, the Latin verb sophisticare was invented with a related
sense of dishonest tampering with something. It was applied particularly to
traders who added foreign substances to expensive goods to bulk them out and
so increase their profits. The earliest example we know of refers to
merchants meddling with pepper, then a rare and valuable spice. So the verb
from its first appearance in English meant adulterate. Later writers applied
it to those who added cheap wines to bulk out expensive ones, and to those
who adulterated tobacco with the sweepings of the floor. In the early
nineteenth century, it was hard to find a basic foodstuff on sale in London
markets that hadn't been sophisticated in some way: alum in bread, roasted
acorns in coffee, dried hedgerow leaves in tea, and so on.

 

Curiously, while all this was going on, sophisticated itself was shifting
sense. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, it could refer to a thing
that had been deprived of its primitive or natural state, and so rendered
artificial. But the real shift was going on with unsophisticated. Early on
this meant something that was genuine, but then moved to refer to somebody
who was in a natural and unspoiled state, and so was ingenuous or
inexperienced. It was only around the end of the nineteenth century that it
began to be possible to use sophisticated as the opposite of unsophisticated
in this sense, for somebody worldly-wise, well versed in life's ways and who
had a subtle and discriminating nature. And it was applied to theories,
techniques and equipment even more recently - only from the middle of last
century on.

 

Sophistication in this sense is a truly modern phenomenon.

 

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How are the mighty fallen

 

This expression derives from the Bible. The earliest version in English is
found in the Great Bible, Samuel 1:19, 1539:

 

Oh howe are the myghtie ouerthrowen.

 

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What animal did the Carthaginians use to defeat the Romans at sea during the
third century B.C.?

A: Snakes.  The Carthaginians catapulted earthenware pots of poisonous
snakes onto the decks of the Roman ships.

 

When during World War II did Russia declare war on Japan?

A: On August 8, 1945--two days after the U.S. bombed Hiroshima.

 

How did Napoleon Bonaparte finance his invasion of Russia in 1812?

A: With counterfeit money. After printing it at a factory he set up in
Paris, he used it to purchase military supplies.

 

What bathtub-bathing edict did England's King George VI issue for Buckingham
Palace and Windsor Castle to cut down on the use of fuel during World War
II?

A: He decreed that tubs could be filled with no more than five inches of
water--and had lines painted at the five-inch level to make the depth of his
commitment clear.

 

What utensil were British sailors forbidden to use until the very late
nineteenth century because it was considered both unmanly and harmful to
discipline?

A: The fork.

 

Who was Emil R. Goldfus of Brooklyn, New York?

A: Colonel Rudolf Abel, the Soviet intelligence agent convicted of spying on
1957, who was exchanged for downed American U-2 reconnaissance pilot
"Francis Gary Powers in 1962.

 

What did the real Butch Cassidy do after escaping to Bolivia with his
partner-in-crime, the Sundance Kid?

A: Cassidy whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker, reportedly returned to
the U,S, and went into the adding machine manufacturing business.