The community.livejournal says this idiomatic expression is used to describe something that pleases you or strongly engages your interest. As I expected, it is also a euphemism for sexual interest. “Tickle” means a spontaneous excitement such as when someone is physically tickled. “Fancy” can be a notion or whim. The expression was used in Abraham Tucker’s 1774 In the Light of Nature Pursued, with a passage about animals “…whose play had a quality of striking the joyous perception, or, as we vulgarly say, tickling the fancy.” The expression went even further to the vulgar side after World War II, when the slang for a male homosexual “Nancy” was noted to rhyme with “Fancy.” An alternate is “strike your fancy.”
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Merchant of Power, Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis
This book by John F. Wasik is an ideal follow up to the one by Petr Beckman about the best way to produce electrical power, because it is an excellent reference to understand how electricity became so important in our lives. The book tells the remarkable story of Samuel Insull, who escaped an impoverished childhood in England by travelling to America to become the trusted secretary of Thomas Edison. His willingness to work tirelessly combined with his ethical nature endeared him to Edison. He became Edison’s accountant and marketer responsible for finding investors. He had to be aggressive and creative in the constant search for money, because Edison was often on the verge of being broke. Edison arranged to lay the power lines to light Wall Street, but he did not have a method for measuring electrical usage. He made his profits selling light bulbs. Insull eventually split from Edison’s endeavors, moved to Chicago, and built an empire with power generating capacity and a power grid to light Chicago and other metropolitan areas. He saw everyone without electricity in their homes as a potential new customer. (Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit mocks the residents of Floral Heights and their desire to keep up with the neighbor’s most recent electrical purchases.) Insull built General Electric with financing from J.P. Morgan, and marketed electrical appliances. He became a very wealthy man, which set him up to lose massively in the Depression.
Insull pioneered “massing production,” which was later shortened to “mass production” by Henry Ford. His plants made generators and distribution systems, and he developed and implemented the idea of the government regulating electrical rates. Continue reading
Pitch a Fit
I thought it would be appropriate to give a bit of history on Dagwood Bumstead, since this expression is the second in succession from that comic strip. Wikipedia says Dagwood was the “…heir to the Bumstead Locomotive fortune, but was disowned when he married a flapper (originally known as Blondie Boopadoop)…” Dagwood went to work for the J.C. Dithers & Company as the office manager.
In the recent Sunday comic Dagwood inquires, “Has Dithers pitched a fit about anything lately?” The Urban Dictionary says the expression, “pitch a fit” describes “…an emotional outburst using verbal and animated expression normally seen in the Southern United States.” In baseball the pitcher throws the ball, which is apparently the source of the variation to “throw a fit.” There is an expanded definition of “fit”, which can be caused by both physical ailments or emotional reactions given in the explanation “fits and starts” posted previously.
Which President Authorized Wiretaps?
George W. Bush faced a storm of criticism and threats of impeachment because he authorized the National Security Agency to use warrantless wiretaps on foreign enemies, but those enemies were communicating with U.S. citizens. Regardless of your position on his actions, his name isn’t the only possible correct answer. The question posed in the title is a trick, because it should say “Which President didn’t authorize wiretaps?” The Time Magazine archives contain several articles on the matter. An article dated May 10, 1976 says there had been six Presidents beginning with FDR who had taken the liberty to authorize wiretaps on suspected “subversives.” I think they missed one, because Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are mentioned. I’ve found references that Eisenhower was receiving reports from the FBI providing him intelligence collected on his critics. Perhaps he just left authorization from Truman in place. Ford authorized warrantless wiretaps, so that makes it seven of seven for the time period covered.
Roosevelt’s Attorney General and J.Edgar Hoover had resisted doing wiretaps, but the President overcame their objections with a memo he sent to Attorney General Jackson on May 21, 1940. The book “Roosevelt’s Secret War” says the memo acknowledged the Supreme Court had ruled against the legality of wiretaps. FDR then writes, “I am convinced the Supreme Court never intended any dictum in the particular case which it decided to apply to grave matters involving the defense of the nation.” He then proceeded to authorize wiretaps “of persons suspected of subversive activities.” He did implore that the wiretaps be limited to “…to a minimum and to limit them insofar as possible to aliens”
Not all of the wiretapping was done under the guise of national security. “A squad of FBI men used informants, undercover agents, and bugging to let Lyndon Johnson know what was happening behind the scenes at the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City.” The Nixon administration “…was installing illegal wiretaps and using the Internal Revenue Service to hound its domestic ‘enemies’…”
I haven’t found a President since FDR that didn’t authorize or accept results of warrantless wiretaps “under certain conditions.” President Obama even took the position to maintain the secrecy of the wiretapping authorized by George W. Bush. The thorny issue of how far a President should or can go in infringing on individual rights in the name of national security undoubtedly is not resolved. I’m confident that the Presidents were doing what they thought was necessary to protect the country (except for maybe Johnson and Nixon). However they weren’t listening to Benjamin Franklin’s warning when he said, as listed in Wikiquotes, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We’ll have to guess what his ghost would say about the actions of many Presidents.