What does OK stand for?

It turns out that in the 1830s and 1840s, about a hundred and fifty years before anybody was writing "kewl" or ROTFL their AO in chat rooms, misspellings and abbreviations were a huge fad.

From The Straight Dope:

The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for "oll korrect." They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s.

The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes."

Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."

Read the whole article for all the myths that have been spread about its origin, some involving Andrew Jackson. Also, find out how Martin Van Buren helped popularize OK. What an interesting etymology!

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What is that place?

I was intrigued, about a month or so ago, when I looked out of the car window and saw a business called, "The Other Woman." It was in kind of a seedy neighborhood near the freeway. What could this be? Was it an escort service? A private detective agency run by women, for women? My imagination ran wild with scenes of distressed wives and the vixens who tracked down their errant husbands. I finally remembered to look it up today, only to find out that it's a cleaning service. How dull.

A sign on another building I noticed today said BHP. Very subtly, etched in the bottom of the window next to the front door, I read "Black House Project." Of course, I looked it up on Google, but didn't find much, other than people who are presumably building houses for the Mr. and Ms. Blacks of the world. It also looks like there has been an art installation called The Black House Project... Perhaps they're working on one in Portland?

From The Village Voice:

ROB PRUITT AND JONATHAN HOROWITZ
Together these two artists bought a big old Victorian house in the Catskills, painted it black, and spent a year making it spooky. Pruitt says The Black House Project is "a big sculpture you can live in." Horowitz adds that it's also about "decorating as a historically gay form of expression." They just might turn the gallery into a real estate office, offering it for rent as an art object. Anybody know what this is about?

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New approaches in job hunting

Something that's never occurred to me when job hunting is yelling and swearing at the person interviewing me. This morning, B had a phone interview scheduled for 10:00, but was a bit late because her cat was sick. At 10:10, the interviewee (let's call her Joanna) called the office in a snit. J answered the phone and was told, in a thick New Jersey accent, "I had an interview TEN MINUTES AGO."

J went into B's office and said that her 10:00 phone interviewee was on the phone. "I don't think you should hire her," he opined.

By the time B picked up the phone, the woman's manners had not improved. Joanna questioned B's professionalism and, as far as the story was told to me, didn't really give her a chance to explain why she was late. B made a snap decision and told her, "I don't think this is going to work out. Telephone communication is a big part of the job."

The phone call ended, she called back. I don't remember if profanity made it into the first phone conversation, but she swore a blue streak in those that followed. B told her again that she was no longer a candidate for the position. She called back. Seven times. Most of those times, she went to voice mail and hung up. A couple of times, J or D answered and told her that B wasn't going to take her calls anymore. She threatened to call the Better Business Bureau. Going out with a bang, she sent B this email:

Good going BITCH! You're thinking you're professional with an HR certification! I don't think so! You talk like a valley girl who doesn't know how to do her goddamn job right! You are so fucked right now!

I'll have to remember that approach next time I'm in the market for a job.

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A footnote

From a footnote in The Map That Changed the World, by Simon Winchester:

The first denial of the existence of phlogiston, the so-called "inflammable being" that was believed to be contained in all burnable objects, came with Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen in 1775. But throughout [William] Smith's youth, phlogiston was the prime explanation behind flammability: Chemists only formally decided otherwise in 1800.

How crazy is that? It was 1800 before chemists formally adopted what is our current understanding of fire? That's not much more than 200 years ago, which, if you think about it, isn't really that long ago. I guess, what with the rumors that cavemen discovered fire and all, I always assumed we had it figured out much earlier than that.

To put this in some historical perspective:

• Isaac Newton knew not how fire worked. He died in 1727, before oxygen was discovered.
• Jane Austen may have heard about it; she was 25 in 1800.
• John Adams was president of the United States.
• The Napoleonic Wars were just beginning.

Strangely, John Adams being president makes it seem longer ago than any of the other historical events I looked up (which merely points out how muddled history is in my brain). But the other events also make it much clearer just how recent so many important scientific discoveries are. Extrapolating from that, it seems absurd that oxygen was only discovered a few years* before the United States became a country. But at the same time, given these other events, it makes our country seem very young indeed.

Anyhow, I'm babbling now. I highly recommend the book. It's about William Smith, who is the father of modern Geology. I've only just started, but so far Winchester has done a great job of laying out the background information: where Smith grew up, what people in Oxfordshire believed, how the church influenced people's thinking, etc. Good stuff.

* Some other people also discovered oxygen previously, but it wasn't recognized as an element until 1775.

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Mobile updates

It would actually be easier to go upstairs, get my laptop, and take advantage of a real keyboard. But Ransom's internet appliance is mmore fun and doesn't require moving. He got a Nokia 770, and it's neat!

Updating in this manner is slow going, however, so I'm going to leave off for now. But I just wanted to say hi.

Hi.

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