MemeMachineGo!

An entertaining, but probably apocraphyl, etymology of ‘hep.’

Hep or Hip. “With it”—wise to what is happening. According to David Maurer in The American Confidence Man, it came from a misunderstanding of the original usage, which came from the name of an 1890’s Chicago saloon owner, Joe Hep. His place was a grifter hangout, but he didn’t know it. Evidently, he thought all his customers were just businessmen and salesmen. The story goes that when a musician or other stranger was brought over to a con man table, the question “Who’s your friend?” was answered, “Oh, he’s Joe Hep.” This meant the guy didn’t have a clue and it was all right to talk around him using grifter’s slang. The “friend” usually misunderstood, and taking it as a compliment, thought that “Hep” meant “with it” or “cool,” and that is how the term gravitated into the musician’s lingo.

The decline of the participation of the upper classes in the military:

Thanks to Sen. John McCain’s youngest son checking into Marine Corps boot camp, the number of Congress members with enlisted children will skyrocket a whopping 50 percent. McCain’s son Jim joins two other enlisted service members who have a parent in Congress (a few members of the officer corps are children of federal legislators). In all, about 1 percent of U.S. representatives and senators have a child in uniform. And the Capitol building is no different from other places where the leadership class in this country gathers — no different from the boardrooms, newsrooms, ivory towers and penthouses of our nation. Less than 1 percent of today’s graduates from Ivy League schools go on to serve in the military.

Why does it matter? Because, quite simply, we cannot remain both a world power and a robust democracy without a broad sense of ownership — particularly of the leadership class — in the military. Our military is too consequential, and the implications of our disconnect from it too far-reaching. We are on the wrong path today.

Those who opine, argue, publish, fund and decide courses of action for our country rarely see members of their families doing the deeds our leaders would send the nation’s young adults to do, deeds that have such moment in the world. […]

When the deciders are disconnected from the doers, self-government can’t work as it should. Most of these decisions about whether and how to use the U.S. military are hard, and we need to be as best equipped as possible to make them. We need to be intellectually capable and have as much real knowledge as possible about what the military actually does, but we also need to be morally capable, which means we need a moral connection to those Americans we send into harm’s way. Moreover, we need the largest pool of talent from which to draw those troops. Military work must not simply become fee for service.

A Duke University study demonstrates that it matters whether civilian decision makers have military experience: A review of U.S. foreign policy over nearly two centuries shows that when we have the fewest number of veterans in leadership and staff positions in Congress and the executive branch, we are most likely to engage in aggressive (as opposed to defensive) war fighting. And we are most likely to pull out of conflicts early.

According to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, as related in the FDA consumer magazine:

There are many common human foods that are toxic to both cats and dogs, including onions, onion powder, chocolate (baker’s, semi-sweet, milk, dark), alcoholic beverages, yeast dough, coffee (grounds, beans, chocolate covered espresso beans), tea, salt, macadamia nuts, hops (used in home beer brewing), potato leaves and stems (green parts), tomato leaves and stems (green parts), rhubarb leaves, and moldy or spoiled foods.

A little dated now, but still funny. A convenient table for your reference:

I Spy; Doesn’t Everyone?

She picked up his cellphone and began a game of scrolling through his address book and deleting other women’s phone numbers. “He had to make a case for everybody who stayed,” she said.

Warning Signs of Abusive Relationships

Is jealous or possessive toward you. […]
Tries to control you by being very bossy or demanding.
Tries to isolate you by demanding you cut off social contacts and friendships.

So, it turns out that Metafilter is a hotbed of groin crackers.

This explication of the Windows XP EULA (end-user licensing agreement) includes this striking bit:

Microsoft is not responsible for any damages. This includes loss of profit, the release of confidential information, or the loss of your privacy.

Microsoft is further not liable for failing to use “good faith,” “reasonable care” or for negligence.

Microsoft is not liable even if they break the terms of this agreement.

Just in case you thought your lawsuit withstood all the previous disavowals of liability.

If the flight attendant’s spiel were true:

Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it. We will have to come clean about this next year, when we introduce in-flight calling across the Veritas fleet. At that point the prospect of taking a cut of the sky-high calling charges will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate.

From Earl Como’s autobiography:

There was a large warehouse, apparently abandoned, since there was never any activity around there. One day, Federal agents and police raided it and it was found to contain several hundred kegs of beer. As this was during prohibition, the officers rolled all the kegs out of the building to the rear and smashed in the tops. They then turned them on their sides rather than upending them, which showed a certain amount of sympathy on the part of these officers for all the local drunks. Everyone in that section brought any container available to cart beer home. My own father worked all one night hauling beer until he had every pot and pan in the house filled with it. My mother complained that we had nothing to cook with or drink out of, so he washed the bathtub out and dumped it all in there. He and a few friends went on a binge until the beer went flat, but by that time there was little left.

From Peter Barmann Brewery’s history:

January 20th 1920 (prohibition) set in motion the demise of the Barmann brewery. Prohibition had caused the brewery financial troubles. The brewery had to find ways to ease it’s financial burdens. This is when Jack “Legs” Diamond became involved with the Barmann Brewery. John T Diamond (aka - Jack “Legs” Diamond) was a bootlegger and gangster during prohibition that made his home in the Hudson Valley. “Legs” Diamond ran the illicit operations that involved the Barmann Brewery during prohibition. According to a June 2nd 1931 Kingston newspaper, Barmann brewery was raided by the “Flying Squadron” (an “elite” group of revenue agents). Persons with ties to Diamond were arrested during the raid. That seizure had been one of the largest of it’s time, a “Million Dollar Seizure”. The brewery had been brewing beer and shipping it out to other locations via a pipeline that ran through the sewers of Kingston. There was a 2 1/2 inch rubber hose was laid out through the city sewers during the late night hours when all respectable persons were inside their homes. The pipline had been laid out by plumbers who were hired by “employees” of the brewery. Being plumbers, their work in the sewers would not draw too much attention from passer-byers. The pipeline ran from the brewery to a warehouse several blocks away on Bruyn Avenue. At the warehouse, the beer was either bottled or kegged and then loaded onto waiting trucks to be shipped out to speakeasys in New York City and Albany/Troy. These speakeasys were run by Jack “Legs” Diamond. (The rubber hose pipeline was only discovered during the late seventies, but it was said that everybody knew about it - they just didn’t dare mention it, fearing Jack Legs Diamond’s wrath.)

The dwarf planet formerly known as the planet with the working name of Xena has been named Eris.

Discordians rejoice!

How to get extra-special care for your luggage, and get to put a real lock on it? Pack a gun.

A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols - those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets - are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.

I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

This AskMe question revealed something surprising: the commonplace that ears and noses continue to grow has been so little examined that the medical literature on the subject is scarcely enough to assert that it happens at all, let alone why.

And the same goes for why older men grow more hair in their ears and noses.

The tragus is the pointy projection on the front side of your ear opening. Interestingly, tragus can also mean any of the hairs growing at the entrance to the ear. So I guess what you’ve got there, Ernest, is a bad case of tragus on the tragus.

I hadn’t know that tragus could have two meanings. The OED lists only the ear-part definition, not the hairy one.

Discouraging news.

Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles. […] Drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed. Dr Ian Walker was struck by a bus and a lorry during the experiment. He was wearing a helmet both times.

=v= In an early Simpsons episode, Homer is pounding on a mailbox, and the town drunk (Barney Gumble) remarks, "I'm with you, Homer! Fight the power!" Barney then walks off, playing a boombox, a pathetic simulacrum of Radio Raheem.

I was reminded of Barney Gumble (not to mention the very concept of a simulacrum) when I parked my bike in front of the Macy's in San Francisco, and found a little sticker on it that said, "Fight The Power! Libertarian Party", plus an URL.

The sticker was too small to include a disclaimer, which in an ideal world would have included a disclaimer: "Public-sector power only. Abuses by private-sector power will be rationalized away, in convoluted fashion, as actually being the fault of the public sector."