[PW] my traditional New Year's questions

[Elliott, Tim]

For half a thanks I believe one of the terms was demonym.  The other was
Ethnosomething - perhaps ethnonym.
Tim 

-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On Behalf Of
Solomons1pal at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 3:04 PM
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Subject: [PW] my traditional New Year's questions

Colleagues,  

In keeping with a now-ancient tradition (at least five years  old), I
ask the 
questions that I always ask early each year:
 
1.  Some years ago, a Congressman's wife, making a campaign speech for
her 
husband, pleaded with the audience to re-elect him, saying "He doesn't
know  
how to do anything else!"  Who said this?
 
2.  During World War II, members of the USAAF sang a song of which the  
refrain goes, "Fly low and slow, said his mother"  Details of the song,
please.  
Addendum, 2008:  I've gone to several WW2 sites, and the line  in
question 
seems to have been used in many pilot-written songs, not just  one.  But
if you 
know of any song likely to have been the original, I'd  much appreciate
learning 
about it.
 
3.  Many years ago I read somewhere the dictum, "We learn not from  
experience, but from experiment."  Who wrote this?  (There are many
sayings that are 
somewhat similar, but I'm looking for the one that explicitly
downgrades 
"experience" and champions "experiment")
 
4.  Some writer on the Anglo-American criminal justice system said
somewhere 
that the trouble with it was that it was designed just to keep the
peace in 
a sleepy English village.  Who said it, etc.?  Addendum,  2008: I've
written 
to several of the leading criminologists in the U.S., and all  were kind
enough 
to respond, but none knew the dictum.
 
5.  I've read that there is a Spanish proverb that goes, "Take what  you
want 
-- and pay for it."  Is there really such a proverb? (even John  Dyson
hasn't 
been able to answer this one, which means it's really tough)
 
6.  A standard graphic cliche indicates that a person is insane by
depicting 
him in Napoleonic costume, with right hand tucked into his  tunic.  What
is 
the origin of this convention?  Does it have anything  to do with the
report 
that Henry James, when moribund, talked as if he thought  he was
Napoleon?
 
7.  Shortly after the dissolution of the USSR, a number of American  
academics took out a full-page ad in the New York Review of Books in
which they  
lamented that event, and thanked the Russian people "for trying".  Can
anyone cite 
the issue of NYRB in which that ad appeared, or, even better, fax me  a
copy 
of the ad?  (Addendum, 2008: I've asked the NYRB itself, and the
answering 
service at the Library of Congress, but gotten nothing useful.)
 
   Anyone correctly answering any of these gets a (small) box of  Godiva

chocolates.
 
                   Mark
 
P.S.  Here is another question, but this is not one of my tough
research 
queries, or "stumpers" as we used to call them, and no chocolates are
offered 
for an answer, just my thanks:  in the last couple of weeks someone
asked about 
names for people based on where they live or came from, as "New  Yorker"
is 
the name for people who live in New York, and in the answers two  terms
were 
offered for names so formed.  I meant to save those terms, but  failed
-- would 
someone be kind enough to remind me of them?  Since this is  just for
me, 
please reply to _markhalpern at iname.com_ (mailto:markhalpern at iname.com) .

 




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