Damus

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David Penfold :verified: profile picture
One year Earl and Edna went to the county fair and Edna said ,”Earl, I’m 85 years old and if I don’t ride that helicopter I might never get another chance.”

To this, Earl replied, “Edna, that helicopter ride is fifty bucks, and fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”

The pilot overheard the couple and said, “Folks, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say a word, I won’t charge you a penny! But if you say one word, it’s $50.”

Earl and Edna agreed and up they went.

The pilot did all kinds of fancy maneuvers but not a word was heard. He did his daredevil tricks over and over again but still not a word.

When they landed the pilot turned to Edna and said, “By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn’t. I’m impressed.”

Edna replied, “Well, to tell you the truth, I almost said something when Earl fell out, but you know…fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”
Roberto von Archimboldi · 1w
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpqa383v4jt0lu6tjq385gt7l8r0hw6ucshylpell773fjuwamy6w2sz93mz6 that is funny
David Penfold :verified: profile picture
John Finnemore on the French horn/cor anglais:

"I was idly wondering why the cor anglais has a French name meaning ‘English horn’, and the French horn has an English name meaning… well, ‘French horn’. I looked it up, even though I knew there would just be some reasonable but rather dull explanation.

"There isn’t. There is a completely bonkers explanation, in both cases. Here’s the first.

"So. The cor anglais isn’t English, or French. But that’s nothing, because another thing it isn’t is… a horn. It’s basically an overgrown oboe, and it’s from Silesia. But being thin with a bulb on the end, it looks a little like the trumpets angels are shown playing in medieval art.

"Or at least it did to the Germans, who started calling it the Engellisches Horn, or angel’s horn. Can you see the hilarious misunderstanding that’s about to happen? Well, that happened. The Italians thought the Germans called it the English Horn, so they translated it to corno inglese. The French got it from the Italians, and called it the cor anglais. The British got it from the French, and presumably stared at it, thought ‘We can’t call that an English horn! It’s nothing to do with us, we’ve only just this minute seen one!’ …and I suppose decided just to keep the French name to save embarrassment.

"But that is rationality itself compared to what happened with the “French” horn.

"Right. The French horn. It isn’t French, or English… but it is a horn. So that’s something. (In fact, horn players just call it ‘the horn’, and they wish you would too, but they can’t make you.) This story is simpler than the cor anglais one, but even more gloriously stupid.

"The French were famous for making beautiful hunting-horn type horns: curly tubes that made a nice noise when you blew through them. Then the Germans came up with a more complicated horn with slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you. So British horn players started calling the horns they played in orchestras French Horns, to make it clear they were having nothing to do with those funny looking new German horns with all the bits hanging off them. But the thing is… slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you are a really good idea. You can play tunes with them and everything. So, before long, in a brilliantly British combination of ruthless pragmatism and equally ruthless face-saving, British horn players were playing German horns… but still calling them French horns.

"In summary then: the cor anglais, or English horn, is a Silesian oboe that the Italians thought the Germans thought was English, but the Germans actually thought looked angelic. Whereas the French horn is a German horn that the British called the French horn to distinguish it from the German horn… which is what it is.

"All clear? Good. Carry on."
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) · 2w
Almost 25 years ago, I wrote a blog post with the title ‘jumping ship slowly’ about leaving Windows (XP was awful, it was mind boggling to me that Vista managed to make people nostalgic for XP). M...
David Penfold :verified: profile picture
@nprofile1q... I was technical lead for a customer Y2K migration to NT4.0 including over 900 applications.

It was a huge job but we managed it. It would have been way easier doing it as you suggest and without the impending time constraints that we had.