Naval origins of some English expressions

I recently read the book The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann (2022) about an ill-fated secret expedition by the British navy that left England in 1740. It was part of their imperial war against Spain and it required the ships to reach the Pacific Ocean by going around Cape Horn at the tip of South America in search of a treasure-filled Spanish galleon. The expedition was a disaster, with the fleet experiencing the most atrocious weather with one ship The Wager being shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of Patagonia.

Facing tremendous deprivation, what remained of the crew experienced a disintegration of command, followed by mutiny, deaths and cannibalism. Incredibly though, a small group managed to put together one small flimsy boat containing remnants of the original crew that had mutinied against the captain and managed to get to Brazil in 1742, while six months later an even smaller remnant led by the captain who had been left behind on the island reached the coast of Chile. The two separate returns to England by crew members that had long been presumed to be dead created a sensation and led to a court martial inquiry to try and determine what had happened.
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Even a cult leader’s death does not kill the cult

Two years ago I wrote about a particularly bizarre cult surrounding John F. Kennedy Jr. that believes that he faked his own death and would be returning as serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) running mate for 2024. A large crowd of believers of this cult congregated at Dealey Plaza (where JFK was assassinated) in November 2021 on the 58th anniversary of his death thinking that both father and son would appear there. Spoiler alert: They did not appear.

The leader of this particular QAnon subcult was someone named Michael Protzman who also went by the label Negative48.
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The other GOP primary

The Republican primary race is heating up even though the first actual contest in Iowa is still six months away. The first debate among the candidates is scheduled for August but which members of the already crowded field will meet the criteria set by the. Republican National Committee is still unknown.

Another big unknown is whether serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) will take part in the debates. Typically, a candidate who is far ahead in the polls (like SSAT is) will try to avoid taking part in debates, and those who are far behind are eager to do so. The low-ranking candidates seek to raise their national profile by appearing on a national stage on an equal footing with their competitors while the high ranking ones want to deny them that opportunity.
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Musk has the mind of a six-year old

Twitter has been in the news a lot and not in a good way, as Elon Musk erratically makes changes to its operations, seemingly without necessarily thinking things through, most significantly firing more than half of its workforce as a cost-cutting move that has had a deleterious impact on the user experience. The resulting chaos has resulted in widespread grumbling among users as well the entry of competitors like Meta’s Threads system seeking to take advantage of its woes. Threads racked up over 100 million users within a week of its unveiling and Twitter has reportedly blocked links to that service.

As is often the case when reporters write about these things, they contact the people and companies they are writing about to get a response before going to press. Sometimes the respondent simply says ‘no comment’ or issues some kind of bland statement. But not Twitter. They do not have a media relations department anymore but when a reporter contacted them to ask about a $500 million lawsuit that was filed against them by laid-off employees who had not been given the contracted severance payment, the company responded with a poop emoji.

This is not the first time that Twitter has responded this way to media requests. It has apparently become company policy to respond this way. Musk is claiming credit for this practice, saying that he has decided that all press requests will get this automatic reply.

One has to wonder about the mind of an adult who has not outgrown the notion that scatological references are clever and/or funny.

A bizarre reason for allowing groping

A judge in Italy has issued what can only be described as bizarre reasoning in acquitting a school caretaker of groping a 17-year old student. There was no doubt about what the groper had done. The attacker did not deny it.

The case involves a 17-year-old student at a Rome high school.

She described walking up a staircase to class with a friend, when she felt her trousers fall down, a hand touching her buttocks and grabbing her underwear.
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Against travel

A few years ago, when I told family and friends that I was going to retire, many of them assumed that I would spend a large portion of my time traveling. After I came to California, many of the people I have met here seem to enjoy traveling. While I do not dismiss the idea that they might be getting a lot out of it, I have done very little traveling since I retired since I do not enjoy it, especially if it involves airlines. I have done a lot of traveling in my life, either out of the desire to see family or for work. Seeing new places for its own sake has very little allure for me and now that I do not have to do it, I avoid doing so. I only travel if it means visiting family and friends, nowadays only going to see my grandchildren.

While I enjoy learning about other places and people and cultures, taking a short visit to those places does not satisfy that need. I would much rather read about them or see them on TV. The closest I get to nature is through David Attenborough documentaries and that suits me fine.

So I was interested to read this article by Agnes Collard who shares my antipathy to travel and makes the case against it.
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The evolution of Columbo

The TV series Columbo created one of the most endearing police detectives in TV history. It was extremely popular, with Peter Falk playing the rumpled, hair disheveled, trench-coat wearing, cigar smoking detective who had a perpetually befuddled expression and apologetic manner that was discarded only at the end of each episode when he confronts the murderer with convincing evidence of the crime. He drives a junky beat-up Peugeot Cabriolet and when asked if he has another car, sometimes replies “I do have another car, which my wife uses. It’s nothing special, just for transportation.”

This hilarious scene from episode 2 in Season 4 in 1974, captures the nature of the character when a kindly nun (played by Joyce Van Patten), who runs a homeless shelter, mistakes Columbo for a homeless person, when he has merely gone there to interview a homeless person who was a witness to a crime.

In the same episode, he is turned away from a junk yard by someone thinking he has brought his car to abandon it.
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There is no dark side of the moon

This comic illustrates a common misconception, that there is a side of the Moon that is in permanent darkness.

(WuMo)

In reality, as the Moon orbits the Earth, any hemisphere (‘side’) experiences equal amounts of sunlight and darkness, just like the Earth. What is true is that due to tidal forces caused by the Earth, the Moon is ‘locked’ with the Earth so that only one side faces the Earth at all times. As a result, it experiences cycles of two weeks of sunlight and two weeks of darkness as it orbits the Earth.

So while there is no dark side, there is such a thing as the ‘far side’ of the Moon that we cannot see from the Earth. The USSR space probe Luna 3 was the first to photograph the far side in 1959.

I am not sure when the notion that the Moon has a permanent dark side originated. Historically, the ‘dark side of the Moon’ was used colloquially (and correctly) to mean ‘hidden’ or ‘unseen’ but at some point became popularly associated with ‘unlit’. That idea may have gained popularity from the massive success of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon, although this was an allusion to lunacy and has nothing to do with astronomy.