[Vhfcn-l] Merry musings

[Gary Thewlis]

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

William Wrigley Jr. 

 

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Mark Twain

 

The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.

Victor Borge 

 

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.

Samuel Goldwyn 

 

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who
have not got it.

George Bernard Shaw 

 

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition
that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it
is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

G. K. Chesterton

 

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Chequered past

 

Somebody with a chequered past (British spelling) has had periods of
fluctuating fortune, though the focus is often on some past spell of
reprehensible conduct. For example, The Times wrote on 6 June 2008: "He
joined the church as a fully ordained Baptist minister in 1996 after a
chequered past as a gambler."

 

If the game of chess comes to mind, that's a good guess, although it's not
the twists of fate experienced by the players that are meant, but the board
that it's played on. If American, you may also (or instead) be thinking of
the game of checkers, played on the same board, which British players know
as draughts (whose name, by the way, is from the obsolete draught in the
sense of a move in a game).

 

Something chequered is marked like a chess board, with a geometric pattern
of squares in alternating colours. It's pretty much the same word as
checked, both of which appeared in English in the fifteenth century. The
latter was frequently spelled chequed in Britain until about a century ago
but has now settled down to the ck spelling everywhere. Chequered in the
literal sense is less common than it once was, although the chequered flag
that's waved when a racing car passes the winning post is well known.

 

That usage links us directly with its origin. Chequered came out of
heraldry: the first known example is in the Book of St Albans in 1486. That
said - in modern language - that heraldic arms are said to be chequered when
they are made in two colours in the manner of a chess board. The word came
from French escheker, derived from late Latin scaccarium, a chess board. Our
exchequer is from the same source and originally also meant a chess board,
though it came to be connected with finance through a table covered with a
cloth divided into squares on which the accounts of the revenue were kept by
means of counters.

 

The figurative idea behind chequered is of alternations of good and bad,
like the colours of the squares on the board. As well as a chequered past,
you can talk about a chequered history or a chequered career.

 

---------------

Who coined forecast?

 

Robert FitzRoy captained HMS Beagle on the famous voyage to explore and
survey the coast of South America with Charles Darwin. He later became an
admiral. FitzRoy was an early enthusiast for meteorology who in 1854 became
head of a new government department that evolved into the Meteorological
Office; he produced the first forecasts of stormy weather for shipping in
1861.

 

FitzRoy's contribution to weather forecasting was marked internationally in
2002 when the shipping forecast area to the west of the Bay of Biscay known
as Finisterre was renamed in his honor.

 

FitzRoy used forecast because, as he commented in 1863 in The Weather Book:
A Manual of Practical Meteorology, "Prophecies and predictions they are not.
The term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is a result
of scientific combination and calculation."

 

Other writers similarly claim FitzRoy invented forecast but they are wrong.
The Oxford English Dictionary does cite a letter he wrote to The Times in
April 1862 as its first example in the sense of weather forecasting, but the
noun has been recorded since at least the late seventeenth century, having
been derived from the much older verb.

 

Those that perpetuate the story presumably think in this way: Admiral
FitzRoy invented the weather forecast, therefore he must also have invented
the word forecast. It is probably much too late to expunge this folk
etymology from the public mind.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Jefferson Memorial

 

THE PROPERTY WAS CREATED BY LANDFILL.

The land on which the memorial stands was created by landfill, dredged from
the Potomac River. [PDF]

 

IT WAS ONCE THE SITE OF ONE OF WASHINGTON'S MOST POPULAR BEACHES.

You certainly can't swim in the Tidal Basin today, but it was once a
summertime hotspot, featuring a diving platform and a cabana. At the time,
it was also a "whites-only" facility. Congress originally approved funding
for a similar swimming area for African-Americans, but after debate about
the new spot intensified, the Tidal Basin was closed to everyone instead.

 

ONE PROPOSAL WOULD HAVE DEDICATED THE MONUMENT TO VARIOUS 'ILLUSTRIOUS MEN
OF THE NATION.'

Had the proposal been followed, the monument would have featured statues of
these vague illustrious men. They would have been part of an entire compound
that would have also included baths, a theater, a gymnasium, and other
athletic facilities. Congress was apparently not interested in this idea,
because the land went undeveloped for four decades after this proposal.

 

IT WAS ORIGINALLY A MEMORIAL TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

After the beach closed in 1925, a competition was held for architects to
design a memorial for the location that would honor Teddy Roosevelt.
Architect John Russell Pope (who had lost the Lincoln Memorial competition
in 1911) won with a design that included "two quarter-circle colonnades
flanking a large circular basin, which was to contain a central island with
an arrangement of a sculpture and a fountain," according to the National
Park Service. And that fountain? It was intended to be a 200-foot tall jet
of water. But no government money was actually appropriated for the
memorial, so nothing became of it.

 

FDR PERSONALLY REQUESTED A MONUMENT HONORING THOMAS JEFFERSON.

In 1934, FDR personally contacted the Commission of Fine Arts about creating
a memorial for Thomas Jefferson, whom Roosevelt admired. Another powerful
figure pushing for the memorial? New York Congressman John J. Boylan, who
campaigned for the creation of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission, was
appointed as chairman, and managed to get Congress to appropriate $3 million
for the project.

 

THE LOCATION WAS A BIT CONTROVERSIAL.

The site of the monument, just south of the White House, wasn't a popular
spot with everyone. Some thought the memorial was too grand for a man as
humble as Jefferson, who didn't include being president on the list of
accomplishments he dictated for his tombstone. Putting the monument on the
Tidal Basin, others argued, would call for the destruction of a number of
fully grown elm and cherry trees. The Commission of Fine Arts was
particularly opposed, arguing that the vista should be kept open as in
Pierre L'Enfant's original plans for the layout of Washington, D.C. In 1939,
they even published and distributed a pamphlet denouncing the location and
design of the monument.