[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

I'm afraid I'm elected.

Ulysses S. Grant

 

"How long does getting thin take?" Pooh asked anxiously.

A. A. Milne

 

It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common,
and moral courage is so rare.

Claude Monet

 

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

B. F. Skinner

 

The town where I grew up has a zip code of E-I-E-I-O.

Martin Mull

 

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.

David Coblitz

 

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Push the envelope

 

This phrase comes from mathematics, specifically as it is used in airplane
design. It was popularized by Tom Wolfe's book of 1979, The Right Stuff,
about test pilots and the early space program. It's an excellent example of
the way that a bit of specialized jargon known only to a few practitioners
can move into the general language.

 

In mathematics, an envelope is the enclosing boundary of a set or family of
curves that is touched by every curve in the system. This usage is known
from the latter part of the nineteenth century. It's also used in electrical
engineering for the curve that you get when you connect the successive peaks
of a wave. This envelope curve encloses or envelops all the component
curves.

 

In aeronautics, the envelope is the outer boundary of all the curves that
describe the performance of the aircraft under various conditions of engine
thrust, speed, altitude, atmospheric conditions, and the like. It is
generally taken to be the known limits for the safe performance of the
craft.

 

Test pilots test (or push) these limits to establish exactly what the plane
is capable of doing, and where failure is likely to occur - to compare
calculated performance limits with ones derived from experience. Test pilots
called this pushing the edge of the envelope in the 1950s and 1960s, but
this was soon shortened.

 

Following Tom Wolfe's book and film, the phrase began to move out into the
wider world; the first recorded use in the more general sense of going (or
attempting to go) beyond the limits of what is known to be possible came in
the late 1980s.

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

Give one's eye teeth

 

Down the years, a welter of idiomatic expressions have been created to
indicate the vastness of a person's desire for a particular thing or
outcome: people have in rhetorical outpourings offered their hair, their
right arms, their last penny, their firstborn, their shirts, their last drop
of heart's blood, even their lives and immortal souls. To offer one's eye
teeth is a good example of the type.

 

The pointed long teeth - also called canines because they look a bit like
those in dogs - are called eye teeth because the pair in the upper jaw lie
directly below the eyes. Originally, only the upper pair were given the name
but later the pair in the lower jaw also came to be called eye teeth.

 

Why people seize on eye teeth as a dramatic way to indicate their longing
for something is harder to get a grip on. If the expressions was to cut
one's eye teeth it could be pointed out that the eye teeth are among the
last of a baby's first set of teeth to appear and so to cut them (have them
emerge from the gums) implies that babyhood is in effect over. To say that
somebody has cut his eye teeth means he's wide awake and isn't easily
fooled. If you're cutting your eye teeth (or just teeth) on something you're
gaining experience in a situation you're new to.

 

These suggest that eye teeth are especially valuable, because they
figuratively embody hard-learned skills and one's experience of life. The
association with eyes results in an even more powerful evocation. To lose
them would cause one to be severely hampered, not merely in eating but in
everyday affairs.

 

Do I look like a fool? Barton'd give his eye-teeth to put the halter round
my neck with his own hands. - The Story of Kennett, by Bayard Taylor, 1866.

 

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

 

How were the height and width of modern American battleships originally
determined?

A: The ships had to be able to go beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and through
the Panama Canal.

 

What is the meaning of the Comanche phrase posah-tai-vo, the term Indian
code-talkers in the Army Signal Corps used on the battlefield during World
War II to refer to Adolf Hitler?

A: Crazy white man.

 

In World War II American army slang, what was a GI Moe?

A: An army mule.

 

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.

 

What was the cause of the brief undeclared war that broke out between
Honduras and El Salvador in July 1969?

A: El Salvador's victory over Honduras in the three game World Cup soccer
play-off. The war is known as the Soccer War.

 

How long did the Battle of Waterloo last?

A: About nine and a half hours.

 

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.