Signs from the Streets

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Trivia Tuesday

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In the context of being taken to task by Byter Nicolas for an apocryphal story about Napoleon, I asked whether anybody could translate for me Nic's concluding comment “Merci encore pour mon pain quotidien.”

I received the following response from Sue:

Ah Otto, I will echo his French: 

"Thank you again for my daily bread" 

But you can translate most languages for free here:
http://translation.babylon.com/french/to-english/

or here: 

https://translate.google.com/

Merci

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Whilst on the topic of apocryphal French stories, here is one posted some time ago but too good not to repeat. 

The story may or may not be urban myth. It has been examined by snopes.com, which states that whilst it has the hallmarks of an urban legend (unsourced, multiple versions and non-specific), it cannot establish one way or another whether it is true.

Nonetheless, some quotes are just too good to let pass, even if there is a question mark hanging over it... 

At the end of a long and probably very boring meal at a formal dinner, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan turned to Madame de Gaulle and asked politely what she was looking forward to in her retirement. Quick as a flash the elderly lady replied: "A penis." Macmillan had been trained all his life never to appear shocked, but even he was a bit taken aback. After drawling out a series of polite platitudes, - "Well, I can see your point of view, don't have much time for that sort of thing nowadays" - it gradually dawned on him to his intense relief that what she was trying to say, under a heavy French accent, was “happiness.”

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Another bit of French trivia:

I mentioned to some people last week, as we entered a mediation room, that back in 1968 when there were peace talks in Paris to seek an end to the Vietnam War, the two sides spent months arguing over the shape of the mediation table. As soldiers and civilians alike kept dying, the arguments over the table design stalled.  Ultimately the table design was resolved but the peace talks would go on for another three and a half years, both publicly and secretly. Washington wanted all troops out of South Vietnam; Hanoi refused any provisional South Vietnamese government that involved leader Van Thieu. A peace accord was finally signed on 27 January, 1973.

As regards the table design:

The Paris Peace talks, which opened on May 10, continue to be plagued by procedural questions that impeded any meaningful progress. South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky refused to consent to any permanent seating plan that would place the National Liberation Front (NLF) on an equal footing with Saigon. North Vietnam and the NLF likewise balked at any arrangement that would effectively recognize the Saigon as the legitimate government of South Vietnam. Prolonged discussions over the shape of the negotiating table was finally resolved by the placement of two square tables separated by a round table. Chief U.S. negotiator Averell Harriman proposed this arrangement so that NLF representatives could join the North Vietnamese team without having to be acknowledged by Saigon's delegates; similarly, South Vietnamese negotiators could sit with their American allies without having to be acknowledged by the North Vietnamese and the NLF representatives. Such seemingly insignificant matters became fodder for many arguments between the delegations at the negotiations. 

- History Channel

This Day in History, 12 Dec 1968

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/procedural-questions-cause-difficulty-at-the-peace-talks 

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The name "Paris" is derived from its early inhabitants, the Celtic tribe known as the Parissii. The city was called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii"), during the Roman era of the 1st to the 4th century AD, but during the reign of Julian the Apostate (360–3), the city was renamed Paris. It is believed that the name of the Parisii tribe comes from the Celtic Gallic word parisio, meaning "the working people" or "the craftsmen".

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Monday Miscellany: Some Odds, Ends and Personals . . .

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An email from Nick:

Dear Otto,

Thanks for another interesting and entertaining Bytes. I have to admit, though, I doubted the Napoleon story when I read it. Apparently Snopes does too.

Merci encore pour mon pain quotidien.

N

Some comments:

Nick’s response was in respect of a trivia item:

Napoleon killed over a thousand people with a cough. In 1799 he was deciding whether to release 1,200 Turkish prisoners of war when he coughed and said, "Ma sacré toux!" (my darned cough) which sounded to officers like "Massacrez tous!" (Kill them all!). So they did.

Snopes.com is an authoritative site on internet myths, furphies and urban legends and if that says that the above tale is not correct, then I accept it.

http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/toux.asp

Snopes also points out that whereas the above tale is untrue, Napoleon did order the execution of thousands of prisoners, the captured defenders and occupiers of the city of Jaffa. 

According to Etienne-Louis Malus, a doctor who had accompanied the army of Napoleon, soldiers cut the throats of men and women, the old and the young, Christians and Turks. Women were raped, bodies and houses were looted and corpses were defiled. Over a 3 day period, 3,000 prisoners were slaughtered. Sir Walter Scott, in his biography of Napoleon, says that this “bloody deed must always remain a deep stain on the character of Napoleon.”

The painting Napoleon visiting the plague victims of Jaffa by Antoine-Jean Gros shows the aftermath of the battle, with no indication of the horror to follow.

By the way, can anyone translate Nick’s French comment? Is it something to do with thanks, give us our daily bread?

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From David in respect of the comments on whether e e cummings wanted his name written without capitals:

Re: Your MM on e e cummings.

I find this cartoon rather amusing:

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The Art of Max Zorn:

I have previously posted items about different materials used for art, some of them unique and others bizarre.

I recently became aware of the art of Dutch artist Max Zorn, which I found fascinating not only because of his chosen artistic medium – packing tape – but also because of the beauty of his moody, comic book style, 1930’s-feel images.

Zorn applies the packing tape to glass, applying more layers to achieve darker tones and removing layers with a blade to lighten. A light source behind the glass brings the works to life.

They are reminiscent of the art of Frank Miller in Sin City, the first image below being of a Sin City scene (remember the opening scenes of the first Sin City film?)  Other works are scenes from other films.

Zorn says the idea to use packing tape began with his street art:

“There’s a lot of great street art by day, but it disappears after dark. I wanted to come up with urban art that uses night time as a setting, and there was nothing more inviting than the street lamps in Amsterdam. In the beginning I used packing tape to fill in larger sections of my marker drawings. Once I hung them on street lamps, the light’s effect opened up new ideas with ditching markers and just using tape.” 

Max Zorn’s website is at:

http://www.maxzorn.com/buy/

Here is a link to a video showing the creative process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggoseOLlkrc

Some of Max Zorn’s works, available for purchase from his website (more works later):

Daylight Saving Time

Today marks the beginning of the annual daylight savings period, the day when we move our clocks forward one hour, from 2.00am to 3.00am. As a result, where it used to get dark at 5.15pm, that will now be 6.15pm. As the days lengthen, the period of daylight will be further increased. Correspondingly, it will become light later in the morning.

Here are some facts and trivia about daylight saving . . .

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Daylight Saving Time will finish in New South Wales on 5 April 2015, when the clocks are adjusted at 3.00am to become 2.00am.

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Although seasons are reversed in the northern hemisphere and we here in Oz don’t refer to autumn as “fall”, the following is a convenient way to remember how to adjust the clocks:

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From 2am on Sunday, Australia will officially have five different time zones. Residents from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory will turn their clock forward one hour. However Qld, the Northern Territory and Western Australia are not followers of daylight saving. Residents of Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Canberra will now be half an hour ahead of Adelaide, one hour ahead of Brisbane, one and a half hours ahead of Darwin and three hours ahead of Perth. The differing time zones are due to the size of our land mass. Australia is usually divided up into three separate time zones, however with daylight saving this becomes five.

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Ancient civilizations are known to have engaged in a practice similar to modern DST where they would adjust their daily schedules in accordance to the Sun. For example, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year.

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Benjamin Franklin is often credited with being the inventor of DST. In his 1784 essay “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” he proposed to economise the use of candles by rising earlier in the morning to make use of the morning sunlight. His was, however, light hearted comic suggestion.

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New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson was the person who actually suggested changing the clocks for daylight saving. In 1895, Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through.

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Germany was the first country to implement DST. Clocks there were first turned forward at 11:00 p.m. (23:00) on April 30, 1916. The rationale was to minimize the use of artificial lighting in order to save fuel for the war effort during World War I. The idea was quickly followed by Britain and many other countries, including the United States. Many countries reverted back to standard time post-World War I. It wasn’t until the next World War that DST made its return in many countries in order to save vital energy resources for the war.

Cartoon from Punch magazine during WW 1. It is entitled Wake up, England! and shows the sun bursting through a man's bedroom window during WW1. The sun says to householder "Now, why waste your daylight? Save it and give it to the country." Further comment reads: [If only for the sake of economy in artificial light during war-time, the daylight-saving scheme should have the support of all patriots.] 

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time” during World War II from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. The law was enforced 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and during this time, the U.S. time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”.

Britain applied “Double Summer Time” during World War II by moving the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter.

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All States and Territories used daylight saving Time during World Wars 1 and 2.

Daylight saving was first introduced thereafter to Tasmania in 1968 and to the Australian mainland in 1971. After a short trial period, the more temperate southern states of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia continued to change their clocks each October and March; however, tropical Queensland and the hot desert states of Western Australia and the Northern Territory chose to keep standard time all year round.

Since that time, Queensland has come under continued pressure to 'join' daylight saving in order to be in sync with the rest of the eastern seaboard. This pressure, which is overwhelmingly driven by the south-east business sector and metropolitan media, still divides and disrupts the state.

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The following daylight saving mistake earned the 1999 Darwin Award:

http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html

This is the Darwin Award citation:

In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Saving Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year. 

Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time." Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time. 

At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions. 

The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.

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Through 2006, Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. ended a few days before Halloween (October 31). Children’s pedestrian deaths are four times higher on Halloween than on any other night of the year. A new law to extend DST to the first Sunday in November took effect in 2007, with the purpose of providing trick-or-treaters more light and therefore more safety from traffic accidents. For decades, candy manufacturers lobbied for a Daylight Saving Time extension to Halloween, as many of the young trick-or-treaters gathering candy are not allowed out after dark, and thus an added hour of light means a big holiday treat for the candy industry. Anecdotally, the 2007 switch may not have had much effect, as it appeared that children simply waited until dark to go trick-or-treating.

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Widespread confusion was created during the 1950s and 1960s when each U.S. locality could start and end Daylight Saving Time as it desired. One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. For exactly five weeks each year, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were not on the same time as Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Baltimore--but Chicago was. And, on one Ohio to West Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles! The situation led to millions of dollars in costs to several industries, especially those involving transportation and communications. Extra railroad timetables alone cost the today's equivalent of over $12 million per year.

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Amish communities in the United States and Canada are divided about whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time. Although the Amish are generally known for leading simple lives without modern conveniences, practices vary from community to community. Likewise, some Amish communities observe DST, while others do not. In one county in Ohio, approximately 10 of the 90 Amish church districts opt out of DST (known as “fast time” or “English time,” preferring to observe what they term “slow time.”

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