This post provides a link to the subject video that is a haunting presentation prepared by Isao Hashimoto of the 2053 detonations in the 53 year time frame. I also put the link in the book about Rocky Flats, but want to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. The United States conducted 1032 of the total detonations. The first was Trinity and the next two were over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It takes about 15 minutes to watch, but I recommend it.
A Hog on Ice
Charles Earle Funk, author of “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions, The Origin & Development of the Pungent and Colorful Phrases We All Use,” explains the title in the Foreword. His mother would say with a toss of her head, “as independent as a hog on ice” when she “…saw a pompous person strutting down the street, a girl leading the way to a restaurant table without the head waiter’s guidance, a young man with hat atilt jauntily striding along…” “She meant cockily independent, supremely confident, beholden to none.” The author recounts the many literature sources he searched for a clue about the origin and meaning of the expression, and also consulted with experts on hogs. He learned that the smooth pads of a hog’s feet don’t allow the animal to walk on ice. The hog will often have to be dragged off the ice before it attempts to move. He also found that the curling stone is called a “hog” on occasion, and speculates that might have something to do with the origin of the expression. Regardless of the origin, the meaning can be as the author’s mother intended, a description of someone or thing that is awkward or helpless, or used to describe someone who is idiotically independent. Mr. Funk describes his efforts to research the expression in several pages, and you should find a copy of his book if you have further interest in this or the hundreds of other expressions it describes. I bought a used copy from Abebooks.com.
Money is no object, world of credit?
A portion of the RockyFlatsFacts.com website is dedicated to “Expressions” because I’m interested in the derivation of how we communicate. I believe the two expressions mentioned in this title can be used to develop a commentary about how our nation is being run today. We want our representatives to give us everything now, and we don’t want to worry about the impact for the future. What is the meaning of “money is no object?” The word “object” in this case is usually taken to mean money is no cause for attention or concern. What I’m inferring is that the expression instead means that we are behaving as if money is not real. We can print it at will to buy everything the government thinks we want right now. The other expression “a world of credit” is usually intended to mean that someone has performed admirably, and deserves credit from everyone. My interpretation is that expression has changed to mean that we are, in addition to printing money freely, borrowing from everyone in the world to fund our excesses.
Purpose of this “Expressions” Blog
In this “Expressions” blog we offer brief essays on the origination of common expressions, addages, maxims, epigrams, and aphorisms. I’ve developed an interest in colorful sayings, and reinforced that interest when I bought a book, “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” by Charles Earle Funk from Abebooks.com. I will use that book extensively for this “Expressions” blog, and will be certain to explain the expression included in the title.
Book Reviews
I consider myself an “amateur historian,” and have read several books about the Soviet espionage in the United States, and the first review is about the Venona Project which gave the first information about how massive that espionage was.
I intend to intersperse reviews on those books other subjects for those who are less interested in the subject than me. I’ll occasionally write an opinion article based on my reading.
Venona, Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan persuaded the American intelligence community to declassify the Venona Project in 1995, which was more than forty years after the Soviets learned that the project had uncovered their massive espionage penetration of every sensitive department of the United States government. The project began because Colonel Carter Clark did not trust Joseph Stalin. In February 1943 he ordered the Signal Intelligence Service, the Army’s elite code breakers, to attempt to decode cables between Soviet diplomats in the United States and Moscow. The cables were virtually impossible to decode as long as they were sent using a complex two-part ciphering system. However, about 1700 cables, or a bit over one percent of the total were sent in which the “one time pad” had been reused, and that allowed at least partial decoding. “The deciphered cables of the Venona Project identify 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies.” About 200 were never identified except by code name, which means that those people remained in their government and military positions unimpeded in their activities.
The Soviets learned about the Venona project from a high level official in the Roosevelt administration within a year and a half of its origin. Ironically, the first cables weren’t successfully decoded until 1946, which was after the Soviets learned of Venona and had corrected the mistake of reusing the one time pads. Continue reading