[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Try to save something while your salary is small; it's impossible to save
after you begin to earn more.

Jack Benny

 

Nowadays, when a speaker tells the graduates that the future is theirs--is
that a promise or a threat?

Milton Berle

 

And God said 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me.
And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.'

George Burns

 

America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population
believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.

David Letterman

 

REHAB is for quitters!

Unknown

 

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people
to get their work done.

Peter F. Drucker

 

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Keep a stiff upper lip

 

To keep a stiff upper lip is to remain resolute and unemotional in the face
of adversity.

 

This is such a clichéd expression that it is difficult to imagine doing
anything else with a stiff upper lip apart from keeping it. If you try to
hold your upper lip stiff your facial expression will appear aloof and
unsmiling, betraying little of any feeling you might be experiencing. That
demeanor is the source of 'keep a stiff upper lip'. The phrase is similar to
'bite the bullet', 'keep your chin up', and 'keep your pecker up'. It has
become symbolic of the British, and particularly of the products of the
English public school system during the age of the British Empire. In those
schools the 'play up and play the game' ethos was inculcated into the boys
who went on to rule the Empire. That 'do your duty and show no emotion'
attitude was expressed in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light
Brigade:

 

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

 

Over time the stiff upper lip has gone out of favor in the UK and British
heroes have been able to show more emotion. Footballers now cry when they
lose and soldiers cry at comrades' funerals, both of which would have been
unthinkable before WWII.

 

So, where did the 'stiff upper lip' originate? In 1963, P. G. Wodehouse
published a novel called Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and you can't get much
more English than that.

 

Strange then that a phrase so strongly associated with the UK should have
originated in America. The first printed reference found is in the
Massachusetts Spy, June 1815:

 

"I kept a stiff upper lip, and bought [a] license to sell my goods."

 

That citation doesn't explicitly refer to keeping one's emotions in check,
but a slightly later one, from the Ohio newspaper The Huron Reflector, 1830,
makes the meaning unambiguous:

 

"I acknowledge I felt somehow queer about the bows; but I kept a stiff upper
lip, and when my turn came, and the Commodore of the Police axed [sic] me
how I come to be in such company... I felt a little better."

 

The expression can be found in several US references from the early 19th
century and was commonplace there by 1844, which is the date of the earliest
example found from a British source.

 

'Keep a stiff upper lip' is one of the many phrases in English that are used
to give advice.

 

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What was the original purpose of ENIAC, the world's first "modern" computer?

A: To compute ballistic trajectories for artillery shells. ENIAC--an acronym
for Electronic numerical integrator and Calculator --was introduced in 1946.

 

How long is a Martian Year in Earth days--a year being the length of time it
takes the planet to revolve once around the Sun?

A: 687 days.

 

What two elements comprise almost 100 percent of the matter in the universe?

A: Hydrogen (approximately 75 percent) and helium (approximately 25
percent). The remaining, heavier elements constitute a mere fraction of
existence.

 

What important point did Scottish mathematician John Napier come up with in
the early seventeenth century?

A: The decimal point.

 

What was the name of the first computer used for weather research?

A: MANIAC--an acronym for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and
Computer.

 

When is Halley's comet, first observed in 240 B.C. and last seen in 1986,
expected to appear again?

A: In the year 2061.

 

Which disease is spread in minute water drops?

A: Legionnaire's disease.