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Tony Cooper
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:19 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On 28 Sep 2005 12:11:51 -0700, "Weatherlawyer"
<Weatherlawyer@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
Tony Cooper wrote:
I skipped over the "sinecure" angle on the basis that Michael Moore
doesn't concern himself with sinecures and because the person being
alluded to thinks a "sinecure" is a treatment for a sexually
transmitted disease.
I replied to your post because you wrote so little to any effect and
yet insisted on quoting so much that did.
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What in the world are you on about? The above is the only reply you
made to my post, and my post addressed the question of what the term
was for appointing friends to political office.
I quoted no more or no less than was required to make it clear what I
was addressing.
I haven't paid much attention to your other posts, but I have to
assume that you are a non-native-English speaker. I suggest you look
up "effect" and "insisted" because it doesn't seem you understand the
meaning of either word.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
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Tony Cooper
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:33 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On 28 Sep 2005 13:22:41 -0700, "Weatherlawyer"
<Weatherlawyer@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
Skitt wrote:
Come again?
Here I am.
Talking about sinecurists.
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No, you are not talking about someone with a "sinecure".
You are using the word incorrectly.
| Quote: | Would someone in a safe job that required
little input in normal times fail so magnificently as this degenerate
did if he were not just given the job as a reward for services
rendered:
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Another suggestion: look up "degenerate". Whoever it is you are
alluding to may or may not be a degenerate, but that aspect of his
character would have nothing to do with this issue.
| Quote: | "The hasty appeal yielded one of the most controversial contracts of
the Hurricane Katrina relief operation, a $236 million agreement with
Carnival Cruise Lines for three ships that now bob more than half empty
in the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay. The six-month contract --
staunchly defended by Carnival but castigated by politicians from both
parties -- has come to exemplify the cost of haste that followed
Katrina's strike and FEMA's lack of preparation.
To critics, the price is exorbitant. If the ships were at capacity,
with 7,116 evacuees, for six months, the price per evacuee would total
$1,275 a week, according to calculations by aides to Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-Okla.). A seven-day western Caribbean cruise out of Galveston can be
had for $599 a person -- and that would include entertainment and the
cost of actually making the ship move."
You can guess where the link for this -if there were one, would lead.
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No, I can't guess. Your whole point is such a muddle that you could
be talking about anyone.
The contract, by the way, was between the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift
Command and Carnival Cruise Lines. FEMA asked the Sealift Command to
get involved, but - from what I've read - the terms of the contract
were between the U.S. Navy and Carnival. The link goes back to the
Department of Defense and not FEMA, but that's not what I think you
have in mind.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
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Tony Cooper
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:42 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 14:31:55 -0500, "Jess Askin"
<jessaskinDONTTYPETHISPART@yahoo.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Ben Zimmer wrote:
Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
Sinecure -- a remunerated position without duties -- is a useful
term, and in my view we lose a useful distinction if one applies it
to the placement of people in paid positions -- *with* duties -- on
grounds other than merit.
Fans of "The Sopranos" will know of the mafia distinction between
"no-show" and "no-work" sinecures. From a Sopranos fan site:
-----
There are essentially two kinds of job scams that the mob, in cahoots
with unions and contractors, pull on major construction sites. There
are, first, "no-work" jobs. These are "workers" who are assigned a
job, like, say, welding; they clock in and out, get a weekly certified
paycheck, and are on site in case any non-corrupt official drops by to
count heads.
Then there are the "no-show" jobs. These are workers who get a regular
paycheck but never even show up and pretend they're working. There are
fewer no-shows than no-works on a typical project because of the risk
involved. One expert told me that the ratio is usually one no-show for
every ten no-works.
Really? I would have thought the no-show jobs were less risky. After all,
with a no-work job, everybody on the site is going to know there's something
wrong.
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Yeah, but if the no-work jobs are held by mob affiliates, you gotta
see the risk of saying anything to anyone. What foreman is going to
say "Get your ass off that lawn chair and get to work" to Rico "The
Icepick" Mazzola?
| Quote: | With a no-show, nobody even needs to know you're getting paid except
the boss and the people in the payroll dept.
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--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
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Harvey Van Sickle
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:13 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On 28 Sep 2005, Weatherlawyer wrote
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
Come again?
Here I am.
Talking about sinecurists.
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I don't think you *are* talking about sinecurists -- you're talking
about political placemen, which is a different category.
| Quote: | Would someone in a safe job that required little input in normal
times fail so magnificently as this degenerate did if he were not
just given the job as a reward for services rendered:
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AUE is a language usage group; generally speaking, those of us who
read it do so because we are interested in the usage of the language.
"A safe job that requires little input in normal times" does not, for
me, define "sinecure"; it's a loose extension of a precise term, and
blurs what I'd consider to be a useful distinction.
I've no problem with a thread about the merits and morality of putting
political ciphers into influential posts. But I think -- almost by
definition -- that a "sinecure" is a non-influential post.
If you wish to discuss the political issues -- and tpp minimise the
usage questions -- it's disingenous to entitle and phrase your post as
a question about usage.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years)
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van |
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Tony Cooper
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:52 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:39:53 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
<me@privacy.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper wrote:
What in the world are you on about?
Oy!
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What in the world are *you* on about?
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
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Tony Cooper
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 7:06 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:02:23 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
<me@privacy.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Tony Cooper wrote:
What foreman is going to
say "Get your ass off that lawn chair and get to work" to Rico "The
Icepick" Mazzola?
Is "Rico 'The Icepick' Mazzola" supposed to be a plausible mobster's name,
Coop?
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How can you worry about "plausible" in a sentence where "The Icepick"
is the man's mob name?
While I wasn't thinking about him in the context of a man that would
be referred to as "The Icepick", I was thinking of a fine, upstanding
friend of mine that happens to be of Italian heritage. His name is
Enrico, but he goes by Rico. His last name is nothing like "Mazzola",
though. He's not Sicilian and his last name doesn't end with an "a".
Wandering just a little bit...Three men were recently arrested for the
murder of SunCruz former owner Konstantinos Boulis. The men are
Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello (Howard Beach NY), Anthony "Little
Tony" Ferrari (North Miami Beach FL), and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo (Palm
Coast FL).
I have a couple of questions here. Do mobsters call their fellow
mobsters by these nicknames? Do they sit outside the Italian Social
Club at those sidewalk tables and say
"Hey, Pudgy, you wanna go ice somebuddy this aftanoon? I gotta
contract."
"Hey, t'anks anyway, Little Tony, but my kid is a tree in the
T'anksgivin play at school. The ol' lady says I gotta be there."
Or, are mob names something that newspaper writers and hangers-on use,
but no one else does? Would an underling get whacked if he addressed
Mr Moscatiello as "Big Tony"?
The other question is about the requirement to have a mob name to be
an authentic mobster. What if Enrico Vincente Mazzola didn't want to
give up "Vincente" and be known as "The Icepick"? Do they take away
his white-on-white shirt and his pinky ring? No one offers him a
newspaper to hide his face when he makes a court appearance?
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
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Steve Summit
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 7:06 am
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Jess Askin wrote:
| Quote: | Ben Zimmer wrote:
There are essentially two kinds of job scams that the mob, in cahoots
with unions and contractors, pull on major construction sites...
There are fewer no-shows than no-works on a typical project because
of the risk involved.
Really? I would have thought the no-show jobs were less risky.
After all, with a no-work job, everybody on the site is going to
know there's something wrong.
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It depends on the brazenness of the scam. The most extreme
one I've heard of was in Boston, and it didn't even involve the
Mafia, but in this case the (late lamented) Metropolitan District
Commission. There was this drawbridge somewhere near the Mystic
River that for a whole complement of good reasons wasn't going
to open any more: it was too expensive to operate, it was in
need of vast amounts of maintenance and becoming unsafe, there
wasn't hardly any ship traffic any more, the (automobile)
traffic congestion when it opened was no longer acceptable, etc.
The Highway Department agreed it wasn't going to open any more,
the Coast Guard agreed it wasn't going to open any more, just
about everyone agreed it wasn't going to open any more.
But. The twelve (twelve!) drawbridge operators on each shift
(along with their exceptionally politically well connected boss)
asserted that since it was still technically a drawbridge they
still needed to be present and that no one could reassign them
or otherwise force them to leave. With the bridge no longer
operating there wasn't anything for them to actually *do*, so
rather than sitting around getting bored they removed all the
unnecessary equipment from the control room and brought in beds
where they slept for the 8-12 hours they were getting paid each
day, leaving them with with 12-16 waking hours for more enjoyable
pursuits. It was some fairly large number of years before the
mills of bureaucracy finally ground finely enough to actually
terminate their positions and their paychecks.
ObAUE: "wasn't hardly any ship traffic any more" probably ain't
the best English usage.
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com |
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Harvey Van Sickle
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 1:06 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On 28 Sep 2005, Salvatore Volatile wrote
| Quote: | Tony Cooper wrote:
What in the world are you on about?
Oy!
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Whoosh. (What have I missed that's oy-able in that?)
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years)
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van |
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Mark Brader
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 1:16 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Steve Summit:
| Quote: | (along with their exceptionally politically well connected boss)
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A boss who was well connected in a manner that was exceptionally political?
--
Mark Brader "Eventually, of course, I fell into the trap of
Toronto becoming comfortable with find(1)'s syntax..."
msb@vex.net -- Steve Summit |
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Weatherlawyer
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 1:45 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
| Quote: | Oy!
Whoosh. (What have I missed that's oy-able in that?)
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Vi? |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:59 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Charles Riggs wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:52:44 GMT, Tony Cooper
tony_cooper213@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:39:53 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
me@privacy.net> wrote:
Tony Cooper wrote:
What in the world are you on about?
Oy!
What in the world are *you* on about?
Phoney-baloney TCE, obviously.
You are who you are, Coop. Try committing that to memory.
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I was surprised to see Young Joey using "in future" yesterday, but I
didn't Oy! him. For a brief moment, though, I thought about the
conspiracy theories regarding the identity of Christopher Johnson. |
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Don Phillipson
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:10 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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"Weatherlawyer" <Weatherlawyer@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127926489.856250.21460@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | . . . the top Washington jobs with his cronies.
Is there a more descriptive term for people who are given these jobs
for their loyalty more than their ability?
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No special word distinguishes unqualified beneficiaries
of cronyism or patronage from qualified beneficiaries.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada) |
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Charles Riggs
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:54 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:52:44 GMT, Tony Cooper
<tony_cooper213@earthlink.net> wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:39:53 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
me@privacy.net> wrote:
Tony Cooper wrote:
What in the world are you on about?
Oy!
What in the world are *you* on about?
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Phoney-baloney TCE, obviously.
You are who you are, Coop. Try committing that to memory.
--
Charles Riggs |
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Salvatore Volatile
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 8:31 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Tony Cooper wrote:
| Quote: | On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 13:59:55 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
me@privacy.net> wrote:
I was surprised to see Young Joey using "in future" yesterday, but I
didn't Oy! him. For a brief moment, though, I thought about the
conspiracy theories regarding the identity of Christopher Johnson.
While "what are you on about?" is a reasonably standard bi-pondial
phrase, this parochial attitude you have about terms and phrases is
out-dated and out-of-step in today's world. It is particularly
out-of-step when you attempt to enforce it in a newsgroup like aue.
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Coop, I don't try to enforce anything. I don't even attack people for
top-posting. I leave that to Liebs.
It's not a matter of parochialism. I think it is pretentious for you to
use British-specific phrases, idioms, and expressions. An American should
not be using "at university", "in future" (unless that American is Truly
Donovan, who has special rights and privileges), "whilst", "spot on",
"roit then", "Pants!", dangling "do" (e.g. "yes, you can do"), "at the
week-end" [sic], and "what are you on about".
| Quote: | We recognize that Americanisms are not just creeping into
international English, but advancing pell-mell. Your jingoistic
stance on the reverse influences is a bit silly. It's especially
silly when a term that is universally recognized and understood is
OY!ed.
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I'll admit that I'm approaching the limit with "what are you on about",
but I think it's sufficiently British-sounding that an American who
non-ironically uses it should be condemned therefor. What's your defense
for using "whilst"?
| Quote: | I don't know how you decide where to draw your lines. Certain terms
and expressions may be completely American English in nature, but
American English as spoken in a particular geographic area. For
example, can "Wicked!" be used by a non-Boston native?
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The New England-specific usage is not "Wicked!" but "wicked good" and so
forth. No, a non-Bostonian should not be using that.
| Quote: | How far away
from the Boston city limits can the term be used and be Fontana
approved?
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It can be used in Maine (see the L.L. Bean catalog -- "wicked good
slippers" IIRC), and I knew a guy who'd grown up in Wallingford, CT (the
non-townie I talked about in a recent posting) who used the intensifier
"wicked", though now that I think of it he may have been from further east
in New England. In Fran Kemmish's neck of the woods one wouldn't want to
use "wicked".
| Quote: | How do you draw your lines on non-English words like "cliche" and
"coterie" that have been melded in to everyday English? How do you
deal with words like "Ciao" that are still non-English but accepted as
standard by many Americans? Or, more appropriately in this area,
"Hola".
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It's different when a usage has become localized or naturalized. That's
not the case with your pretentious use of Britishisms, Coop. You use
expressions that have not yet made it into AmE. When they do, feel free
to use them as much as you'd like. That's happened, for example, with
such former Briticisms as "at the end of the day". It will probably never
happen with "whilst".
| Quote: | How well have you adhered to your own rules? Do you still confine
your lexicon to the street talk of Flatbush? Of course, in your case,
do you still carry on conversations in Pottsyisms? Ron Howard grew
up, Areff, when are you going to?
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BTW, is Ron Howard related to Ross Howard? Is Ron Banister related to Rob
Bannister? EMWTK. |
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Will
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 8:45 pm
Post subject: Re: Sinecuree? |
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Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
| Quote: | On 28 Sep 2005, Salvatore Volatile wrote
Tony Cooper wrote:
What in the world are you on about?
Oy!
Whoosh. (What have I missed that's oy-able in that?)
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Me too - can't find anything exceptionable.
Will. |
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