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In an article on the ESPN website this morning, I read the word "sneaks" and was able to quickly determine, from the context, that what was meant was "basketball shoes." This strikes me as a colloquialism derived from a colloquialism. If tennis shoes (and presumably basketball shoes, as well) are "sneakers" then this can be shortened to "sneaks" .. right? But how did we get to "sneakers" in the first place?
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The term "sneaker" itself was first used in 1916 by the US Rubber Company for the Keds brand, because rubber soles made the shoes less squeaky. (according to <shudder> this wikipedia entry.
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And we will soon shorten sneaks to sneas. But then everyone's gonna be saying Gesundheit.
Ah, these are the soles that try men at times.
TEd
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Acc'g. to About.com (no shudder), The word "sneaker" was coined by Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son, because the rubber sole made the shoe stealthy or quiet, all other shoes, with the exception of moccasins, made noise when you walked. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blshoe.htm
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Musing on sneaks/sneakers tennies/tennis shoes et.al. it brought to mind an anomoly that I have mused on now and then : in those TV cop shows the cops' footsteps are always heard - the women's high heels and the men, obvious from the sound - leather heels and soles. Why?
O, someone tell me why the men are not wearing rubber-soled shoes and why the women cops aren't wearing sensible-for-running shoes - also with rubber or crepe soles?
Is it too sensible? Not daramatic enough?
And the strange part is that the real police officers I have met all wear boots/shoes that have leather soles but heavy rubber heels!
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enthusiast
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Featuring footsteps from formerly fashionable footwear found Foley favor first?
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And in space, all spaceships go vroom. And in Monty Python all horse have coconut-shell hooves. Most soundtracks contain all sorts of noises that were not there to be recorded during production. Most cops I know don't go around with a full orchestra in tow.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
Musing on sneaks/sneakers tennies/tennis shoes et.al.
O, someone tell me why the men are not wearing rubber-soled shoes and why the women cops aren't wearing sensible-for-running shoes - also with rubber or crepe soles?
Is it too sensible? Not daramatic enough?
I was speaking with a retired policeman here NZ once. He was only in his late 30s, but had left the force after nearly ten years with the dog unit. He said that the rate of attrition from that unit was higher than normal frontline policing because the handlers had to follow their dogs, in police-issue footwear, which took a high physical toll on the bipedal component of the team.
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in space, all spaceships go vroom
You mean [trembling lip emoticon] they don't?
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I'm sorry, padre. I didn;t mean to have to be the one who told you. Penance?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
in space, all spaceships go vroom
You mean [trembling lip emoticon] they don't?
Alien: In space, no one can hear you scream.
Elian: On a raft no one can hear you scream.
TEd
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I'm sorry, padre. I didn;t mean to have to be the one who told you. Penance?
I am very pleased to have, in my modest collection of DVDs, a disk on which three of the Buck Rogers serials from the late 1930s have been edited together to form lengthy movies. In these, space ships are depicted. When in flight, smoke and sparks come out of the rocket end of the ships ... and the smoke goes out and up, while the sparks go out and down.
Next thing you know, zmjezhd is gonna be telling me that this is not how space ships work in real space, either. Is nothing sacred?
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Is nothing sacred?
I hope, for your job security, that that's not true.
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Google Images using this phrase yields lots of selcouth and eldritch results; but this is certainly one of them.
Last edited by tsuwm; 12/06/2005 4:27 AM.
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I'm a bit worried what those figures on their knees are doing, given the 'Christian porno' headline... I am not clicking through to find out though!
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What do you call a word that describes itself?
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When in flight, smoke and sparks come out of the rocket end of the ships ... and the smoke goes out and up, while the sparks go out and down.
I still have fond memories of these buck-rogerian ships with their sparklers for atomic motors. Another convention, observed to this very day in the movies, is to have all space ships oriented in space so that up is in a single direction. In fact, there must be a Galactic Standard Office whose business it is to chose one of the infinite points and vectors in space and say "this is up, dammit!"
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Hence the "fleet" in Battlestar Gallactica where all of the little toy rocket ships were all oriented so that there was only one "up" shared by the bunch.
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Quote:
In fact, there must be a Galactic Standard Office whose business it is to chose one of the infinite points and vectors in space and say "this is up, dammit!"
And why not? Plenty of Northern Hemisphere dwellers are under the illusion that they are "up" and we Southerners are "down".
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Quote:
Plenty of Northern Hemisphere dwellers are under the illusion that they are "up" and we Southerners are "down".
We got ya outvoted.
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Not sure if I ever mentioned on this board that I once bought a map of the world, from a shop in Korea, which map was printed in China. In contrast to the layout with which most USns are familiar, China was located smack dab in the middle. It is all about perspective, eh?
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Most maps of western europe, (from france) include a large portion of the atlantic ocean( so that france is dead center.
Every country (or so it seems) makes it self the center of maps.
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Quote:
In contrast to the layout with which most USns are familiar, China was located smack dab in the middle. It is all about perspective, eh?
Not in this particular case, surely. How many countries actually call themselves "The Middle Kingdom"?
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we have a world map at school that has south at the top. I'm not sure which country is in the middle. I'll look today.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Quote:
Most maps of western europe, (from france) include a large portion of the atlantic ocean( so that france is dead center.
Wouldn't that be because Spain and Portugal have to kind of fit in the bottom left-hand corner? That leaves an awful lot of Atlantic ocean to occupy the top left-hand corner... 
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I bought one of these when I was in Oz (gosh) almost 20 years ago. I kept it on a wall in my office until I retired, then it disappeared while I was cleaning out my locker. I suspect someone appropriated it. http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/I should get another one. I really liked it. Edit: OOOH. Thre's a lot more to that site. There's a list of how modern and ancient civilizations orient their maps. Que serendip!
Last edited by TEd Remington; 12/07/2005 11:59 AM.
TEd
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Those are cool, Ted! Thanks for posting the link. Odd, to have to recognize the U.S. by Alaska and not Florida!
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Cool, indeed!
How come there is overlap, that is, marginal redundancy, east and west, but not north and south? Why do I have to find the bottom of Canada at the top of Antartica, while I can have Alaska twice for for the same price?
Of course it's a flippin' typo! Man!
Last edited by inselpeter; 12/07/2005 6:19 PM.
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Thanks for the link, TEd. Very interesting! I'd only ever seen the "upside-down" one (my boss at the wire service was from Oz and had that map prominently displayed. He may have known his geography, but he wasn't so good with grammar. That's all I have to say on that, mate.  )
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tres  I had one of these as my background at work -- now I can have one again. >Why do I have to find the bottom of Canada at the top of Antartica.. a couple of those maps don't have Antartica at all!?
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Quote:
a couple of those maps don't have Antartica at all!?
Antarctica?
That's just a figment of mapmakers' imaginations. Do YOU know anyone who's ever been to or seen Antarctica? See. Proves it's mythical.
Actually, the reason you see the maps as they are is because it's impossible to accurately show the surface of a globe in only two dimensions. Something has to give somewhere. Many maps show Greenland as appearing bigger than Australia actually is. Perhaps the best overall 2D view is what's called the Mercator projection, which looks sort of like an orange peel flattened out at the "top and bottom." In actuality there exists no such thing other than as a convention, and as you have seen the convention is not universal.
I assume most of you have seen Google Earth; if not, go do the free download and look at it. It's amazing. You can zoom right in to any point on earth, some with more resolution than others, but fascinating nonetheless.
In some of them you can actually pick out (and recognize) automobiles. If you look at 536 S Memphis Way, 80017, the white car parked in front of the house is now parked in back of my house here in 28752.
TEd
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GAH! That's Antarctica, as in ant-ARK-ti-ka. Even though it might have been just a typo, I can "hear" the word antartica in my head, and it just sets my teeth on edge, sorry. [/rant]
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I think that's what M meant by not having Antartica at allatall!
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I hereby declare you're all dryasdust! ... nah, I'm just practicing. 
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>>Do YOU know anyone who's ever been to or seen Antarctica?<<
Two, in fact.
But the projection issue isn't the problem, there. All they have to do is shift the whole thing south a couple of centimeters, far as I can tell.
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Quote:
Quote:
Most maps of western europe, (from france) include a large portion of the atlantic ocean( so that france is dead center.
That makes a lot more sense than the idea that all of Western Europe (much of of which is at least unFrancophilic, when not actually Francophobic) all share France's quaint notion that it is the universe.
Wouldn't that be because Spain and Portugal have to kind of fit in the bottom left-hand corner? That leaves an awful lot of Atlantic ocean to occupy the top left-hand corner...
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Some alleged friends of mine once sent me a globe which denied my very existence. Rampant hemispherism at its ugliest. 
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Quote:
Some alleged friends of mine once sent me a globe which denied my very existence. Rampant hemispherism at its ugliest.
Did it happen to be a very small globe, by any chance, Max? 
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