Mocks Albert Burneko at Deadspin.
Didn't we all agree back in 2006 that the word "spaz" isn't acceptable? That was when Tiger Woods called himself "a spaz," and the British press reacted very negatively. Here's what Language Log wrote at the time:
So how did the word spaz become innocuous playground slang in the U.S. but a grave insult in the U.K.? There's no question that spaz is a shortened and altered form of spastic, a term historically used to describe people with spastic paralysis, a condition... now commonly known as cerebral palsy.......And then in 2014, Weird Al Yankovic had to apologize for this song lyric:
Here is the earliest cite [for the derogatory use] in the OED, from film critic Pauline Kael in 1965, along with another cite I found from that year in a New York Times column by Russell Baker:
1965 P. KAEL I lost it at Movies III. 259The term that American teen-agers now use as the opposite of 'tough' is 'spaz'. A spaz is a person who is courteous to teachers, plans for a career..and believes in official values. A spaz is something like what adults still call a square.So by the time Kael and Baker noticed teenagers using spaz, the sense had already shifted to 'uncool person,' without reference to lack of motor coordination.... [T]he clumsy or inept meaning of spaz remained mostly on the playground until the late 1970s, when it began seeping into American popular culture. In 1978, Saturday Night Live started running occasional sketches starring "The Nerds," with... Steve Martin... playing the character Charles Knerlman, or "Chaz the Spaz"...
"Observer: America's New Class System," New York Times, Apr. 11, 1965, p. E14 Your teen-age daughter asks what you think of her "shades," which you are canny enough to know are her sunglasses, and you say, "Cool," and she says, "Oh, Dad, what a spaz!" (Translation: "You're strictly from 23-skidoo.")
For someone like Tiger Woods who came of age in the '80s... the American usage of spaz had long lost any resonance it might have had with the epithet spastic. This is not the case in Great Britain, however, where both spastic and spaz evidently remain in active usage as derogatory terms for people with cerebral palsy or other disabilities affecting motor coordination. A BBC survey ranked spastic as the second-most offensive term for disabled people, just below retard....
Saw your blog postAnyway, I wouldn't use "spaz." It makes an insult out of comparing somebody to a disabled person. You shouldn't want to cause that collateral damage.
It's really fantastic
That was sarcastic
'Cause you write like a spastic
That said, Musk's Tesla tunnel is absurd.
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You can't say wanker on TV in the UK either. Wankers.
The most important thing about Tesla is making sure rich white progressives get a tax break when they purchase one.
***I see more Teslas in rich White Hillary-Polis leftiwng Boulder than I can count.
...and hey Musk is a visionary genius. What an amazing concept- subterranian roadways! A true innovator!!!!
rehajm said... What an amazing concept- sub(terranian road)ways! A true innovator!!!!
My question about Musk is; Is he SO STONED, that he actually believes any of the crap he puts out?
{obviously, a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT of america is stoned enough to believe him}
The Boring Company is actually pioneering underground tunneling techniques and uses for its eventual work on Mars. The current use cases are just practice.
Not a spaz. Maybe a nerd. You want subterranean roadways--the Holland Tunnel beat him to the punch.
I always thought it was short for spasmodic.
As in, brief, short, seemingly without controlled direction, fitful, subject to spasms…
Nope. I think spaz works just fine.
A difference is that in the UK, "spastic" was used first as a noun to describe people with CP. I recall a billboard outside London for a "Foundation for Spastics." The term was then applied to uncoordinated or awkward people as an epithet. In other words, it was a label for people with CP turned into an term that would be offensive in relation to CP in the UK. In the US, the word spastic was not commonly applied to people with CP, and when it jumped into popular culture , wasn't likely to offend over here, and didn't become problematic until our connected global world made it possible to offend people internationally.
Eventually Musk can run trains through the tunnels. What a visionary!
Remember that spazzed-out guy Trump made fun of?
I’m impressed by the segregation of the tag “political correctness” front the tag “era if that’s not funny.”
Spaz was a colloquialism when I was “coming of age in the 80s” for kids who talked fast and were sorta hyper. It wasn’t synonymous with “clutter” or “clumsy.”
Elon Musk fits my 80s usage of spas to a t. The guy bounces off the walls a bit.
This is the entitled professional woman arrogance that making new basic infrastructure shit is a snap.
As is seen,the newage neutereds who identify as male suffering from same diva doubt.
Musk thinks big. There is much to admire in that, but his primary businesses seem to require massive government subsidies of one kind or another, and there is nothing to admire in that.
Only idiots and morons still use "spaz."
I choose "doofus".
This might be triggering for those who don't like the word Spaz. Especially if they fear Germans, since this one comes with German sub-titles, including the repetitive "Spaz, Spaz . . ." chant. I guess there is no German word for that.
Would embed if I knew how. From the movie "Meatballs."
https://youtu.be/gG98X8NsMKs
Musk is PT Barnum.
I'll applaud him when he develops a battery which can be used at your home and will power all of my home's electricity needs for 3 months or so. That would be a breakthrough and eliminate the need for all the electrical poles and wires on our streets.
I have no idea about Musk, but anybody complaining about the use of the word "spaz" is a fucking retard.
I guess you can't use "cretin" either.
I wonder if the UK uses "short bus". Then for the really idiotic they can use double-decker short bus.
My brain always thinks Telsa for some reason. I see one about once a year here in NC, but I drive much less than I used to.
If high speed rail won't ever pay for itself outside ACELA, how can underground high speed rail at many times the cost?
He's won a contract with Chicago to provide transit between the loop and O'Hare airport, using Boring Co. tunneling to make tracks for autonomous mini-busses to drive on. The mini-busses (skates in Boring co. lingo) are to be built on the chassis of the Tesla SUV.
No cost to the government, as he thinks fares and ads will be enough to repay the cost of the infrastructure.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-ohare-high-speed-transit-elon-musk-boring-company-20180613-story.html
The above is actually the first recent article about a new transit project that I've read and thought it might make economic sense. The article we're discussing OTOH seems to use a lot of straw-manning.
I'm not generally a Musk fan, as much of his business ventures seem to be subsidy farming as much as futuristic cutting edge products -- but that doesn't make them any less futuristic cutting edge products, and the Tesla owners I know are really happy with their cars.
That said, Musk's Tesla tunnel is absurd.
For a different perspective:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a25627693/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-hawthorne/
He's disrupted the Chunnel. Awesome!
John Tuffnell's youth
How to Link Link
I stopped reading Deadspin a long time ago because it was all thoughtless snark all the time.
" and the Tesla owners I know are really happy with their cars" at least, the ones that don't catch on fire multiple times.
The Musk chasm spasm.
Boring Gaia a vagina.
Oh, some snarky internet journalist wrote an article mocking a futuristic proof of concept demo? Hot stuff. That's so original.
Musk is alright. Sure he's a little whacky, a little impulsive, even a little Trumpian at times with regards to what he says. But by and large his products aren't bad (Space X and Telsa) so I'm willing to give him some benefit of the doubt.
Emotionally spastic, unable to deal cooly with epithets.
I'm reading alot of extremely negative commentary on this tunnel completely devoid of what their expectations were when they were invited.
When you read the background on this, it appears Tesla built a test tunnel in a very reasonable timeframe for a very low budget and with the ability to run a variety of modular vehicles in it with simple wheel attachments. They spent ~$10 million and it's a pre-cursor to asking for huge sums of money to build either much bigger test tunnels OR asking for probably billions to begin work on a single city/municipality.
Consider that Boston's "big dig" took >25 years and was estimated to cost $22 billion.
Now ask yourself how potentially relevant it is that Tesla built a usable tunnel very quickly and for a very modest budget, and how fucking shortsighted all the media are who are reviewing this prototype because "it's not what was shown in the marketing materials of the eventual finished product deployed in an urban environment"
Talk about right for disruption - our media and reporting.
It's gotten so that if you want to insult somebody, you're at a loss for words.
Fucking retard is insensitive to the impotent.
All real world work is boring a vagina. Every woman wants details except causational reasons
Rhhardin for the win.
Someone linked it above, but Boring has a contract for producing just such a tunnel in Chicago from downtown to the airport. Now, the details I remember were vague, but it was alleged that Boring would finance the cost by itself for portion of the revenue generated. I found that hard to believe, though, and I suspect Chicago is expected somewhere in the fine print to finance this one way or another. However, if Boring really can produce this tunnel for less than the reported cost of $1 billion dollars- that would be something remarkable.
I have never understood all of the Musk hate.
1) Every government subsidy he has received was created by legislators to encourage people to do something, and Musk then decided to do it. He didn't create the subsidies, he took advantage of them, and in so doing made the world a better place.
2) At one point Musk had literally every dime he owned invested in Tesla and SpaceX...he literally put his money where his mouth is.
3) Musk's work with PayPal revolutionized the internet. His work with SpaceX revolutionized rocketry. His work with Tesla is revolutionizing cars. His work with solar panels, if he pulls it off, will revolutionize roof top solar power generation. His Nevada factory has doubled the world's production of lithium batteries. If his underground highway system works, it will immensely improve life in urban areas. Future generations will take about this man like we talk about Edison.
If Musk gets piece of action and covers boring costs, it's essentially a subsurface land grab. He inventing a whole new dimension to real estate
I am reading a book titled Hamlet's Dresser, written by Bob Smith. I am a voracious reader, and this book is one of the best I ever have read. The Amazon webpage reports that 78% of readers gave the book five stars and 16% gave it four stars.
The book is a memoir. Smith grew up during the 1950s. His younger sister was very severely mentally handicapped. She learned to speak only six words, one of which was unintelligible. She never was toilet-trained. When she was a teenager, she spent several years -- every minute, all day and all night, for years -- standing next to the kitchen refrigerator and gently kicking it. The she began to suffer from seizures.
Nevertheless, he loved his sister and was heart-broken when the family put her into an institution.
This situation ruined the entire family in many ways. The mother broke down mentally.
Bob Smith became socially isolated and lonely. He had to spend much of his free time baby-sitting his sister. He (not the mother) usually had to clean up her messes because she was not toilet-trained. He also cleaned up her menstrual messes. All of his school-mates shunned him. He would confine himself to his bedroom for weeks.
Although he was quite smart, he stopped studying his school lessons and turned in blank tests.
When he was about ten years old, a librarian happened to put Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice on the desk where he was reading. He opened the play and began to read it. From then on, he developed an obsession with reading Shakespeare and memorizing and privately reciting dialogues.
Between his junior and senior years of high school he got a summer job helping to manage the costumes for a summer festival of Shakespeare plays. (Thus be became "Hamlet's dresser".) In this job he had the opportunity to watch rehearsals and performances of Shakespeare plays hundreds of time during a summer.
He was befriended by the actors and backstage staff, and these drama people became his first good friends during his life.
During these summers he slept at the theater. However, on off-days he would walk five miles home in order to spend time in the kitchen with his spastic sister, as she stood constantly by the refrigerator.
I'm about two-thirds of my way through the book. Since his story moved back-and-forth in time, though, I know that he eventually became a drama teacher.
He never married or had any children.
After he retired, he was asked to give a lecture about Shakespeare to senior citizens in a community center. The senior citizens loved the lecture, and soon he found himself giving lectures and conducting discussion classes about Shakespeare at community centers throughout New York City. This service to senior citizens became an unpaid but full-time job for him.
Much of the book is about his interactions with his senior citizens, many of whom were lonely, decrepit and dying. The highlight of their week was the day when Smith came to their senior center to help them read, understand and discuss a Shakespeare play. When they ultimately were confined to hospices, they wanted him to come visit them and help try to finish reading the Shakespeare play they were reading.
This book is extraordinary and intelligent. He includes many Shakespeare passages that he relates to his story's events.
One very thought-provoking aspect is the comparison between the suffering and social isolation with his sister in his childhood home and the suffering and social isolation that he deals with with the senior citizens in the community centers.
"Every government subsidy he has received was created by legislators to encourage people to do something, and Musk then decided to do it."
In California, that's apparently the definition of a good citizen. One who receives government subsidies, the larger the better. No wonder they want to import the population of Mexico. It will take a generation to train that many good citizens in the public schools, but they're available right now from Mexico.
Anyway, I wouldn't use "spaz." It makes an insult out of comparing somebody to a disabled person.
Exploring that statement we find that an insult is a deliberate comparison to what the insulter knows to bad actions or behaviors or character.
From that we get our moral betters on the left, ripping away with Colbert's calling President Trump Putin's cock holster, and Mika's labeling SoS Pompeo, a Butt Boy to the Saudi's. Those two know what they think is behavior slimy enough to label someone they want to insult.
Spasticus Autisticus, banned by the BBC...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isXNVdguI8
They would be better off if they stopped trying to ban the word. If the word becomes a general purpose insult, it stops being a particular insult and loses its power.
Then again, the basic problem is people feel necessary to insult certain people. This is not fixed by banning a word, and it can never be done so by banning a word, and you pretty much have to be quite naïve to think this plan of action would ever succeed. If the word gets banned, it just gets replaced with another word that means the same thing, as described quite well by the Euphemism Treadmill theory.
I find Elon amusing and am not too upset about the subsidies because at least he can shoot stuff into space cheaper than the gubbmit.
However, comparing a fully engineered 80x80 tunnel at $1B/mile with a 15x15 "test" tunnel at $10M/mile is faulty. A finished subway tunnel has lights, ventilation, hatches, wiring, etc, etc. It's also built to be much much safer, and as it is 4x the diameter that's not so easy to do.
Not saying that this isn't a neat engineering demonstration, but the construction industry is littered with people who had a better mousetrap.
As is the cell phone industry, which makes what Apple did so amazing.
-XC
There is a simple--but iron clad rule--for any proposed light rail or similar infrastructure projects. It will cost twice as much to build it as the original projected cost. It will take twice as long to build it as the original projected timetable. Ridership on the completed project will be half, or less than the projected figure. Which of course means that ticket revenue will not pay for the project. That formula represents the positive 'upside" of every mass transit infrastructure proposal since the early 1960's Bay Area Rapid Transit project. Most of such projects have had worse results.
Musk's idea is a little bit different. Instead of choo choos or locomotives he'll run individual pod cars through his tunnels. For an analog you can look at the people movers between terminals at Las Vegas or down at one of the Florida airports.
As for tunneling? I don't think Musk is claiming that his "digger" is any better or more efficien tthatn existing tunneling machines. Certainly the current generation of such machines has been used on the Los Angeles light rail system and in Seattle.
But if Musk thinks his idea will work without massive government subsidy farming, then he has spent too much time around wacky tabacky.
You get blowback proportional to your prominence, usually. The exceptions are the recent "go viral" incidents.
In 1988 I took a photo of "The Spastic Society" in Brighton. My local friend told me it was sort of like a Goodwill store. I asked her if it was still there and she said, "Gosh no".
The staff parking lot behind our neighborhood hospital looks like a Tesla dealership.
SNL - November 4, 1978 – Steve Martin / Van Morrison (S4 E4)
NERDS / HOSPITAL
Charles "Chaz the Spazz" Knerlman & Todd fight over Lisa while visiting her in hospital
— The sketch begins with Garrett looking like he’s playing his character from the Nerds Science Fair sketch.
— Yep, it’s a Nerds sketch. Interesting setting for them tonight, in a hospital room.
— Mrs. Loopner: “Introduce me to your nice young negro friend.”
— Good to see the return of Steve as “Chaz the Spazz”.
— Funny fight between Todd and Chaz.
— Garrett in drag TWICE tonight??? Good lord, SNL writers…
— Hey, wait a minute! We saw Garrett earlier in this same sketch playing a male character! How’d he get changed so fast into a woman?
— Sweet ending with Gilda’s Lisa bringing out her teddy bear for comfort.
"British press reacted very negatively"
Brits are also not fond of the word "wanker" -- apparently it's their fourth most offensive word. I think it's a great word.
Mighty Musk has done more good for humanity than Albert Burneko could do in a thousand lifetimes.
Addition to my remark at 12:41 PM about the book Hamlet's Dresser
The sister's diagnosis was imbecile.
Tunnel vision.
"Didn't we all agree back in 2006 that the word "spaz" isn't acceptable?"
I for one do not remember even being asked?
Can't comment now, I'm having a spaz attack.
" It makes an insult out of comparing somebody to a disabled person."
That's why they call it "disabled". You can't insult someone by comparing them to a perfectly normal person.
"What's wrong with you? Why are you so normal?"
Expat(ish) said... A finished subway tunnel has lights, ventilation, hatches, wiring, etc, etc. It's also built to be much much safer,
but! Muskie says HIS won't need lights, 'cause the cars will have headlights, and it won't need ventilation 'cause (unlike a subway train : ) the cars are electric; and it won't need hatches, wiring, etc or be built safe 'cause it's going to be SO COOL! that Nothing will Ever go wrong, and government won't have problems with that, 'cause Muskie is SO COOL!
Which makes me say: put down the pipe Muskie!!
He Also says that ANY car with an 'autopilot' could use the tunnel: no training no inspection no nothing. Ignoring the ease of terrorism; what happens when someone's private car fails in the ONE LANE tunnel. Think of the backup behind that would have to be cleared out b4 the wrecker could clear the broken car?
1876: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." — William Preece, British Post Office.
1876: "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — William Orton, President of Western Union.
1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison
1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.
1921: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?”
1946: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." — Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox.
1961: "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States." — T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner.
1966: "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.” — Time Magazine.
1981: “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.
1995: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.
2005: "There's just not that many videos I want to watch." — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.
2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.
It makes an insult out of comparing somebody to a disabled person. You shouldn't want to cause that collateral damage.
Agreed. Also, back in the 1960s I lived in a U of Illinois dorm located near the Rehabilitation Center whose first floor was given over to disabled students. Some of them suffered from forms of palsy, and they made their half mile or longer trek to classes on the main part of campus each day, taking whole minutes to walk twenty feet. The allegedly "woke" may enjoy using "spaz" as a put-down, but I think none of them would display a tenth the courage that those palsy-sufferers displayed daily. So laugh if you want, but I'm not laughing with you. I don't make fun of people who have to display extraordinary courage just to get through a normal day.
"That said, Musk's Tesla tunnel is absurd." Unbelievable. This is a _great_ idea. Find a way to make tunnels very cheap, then you can easily make enough tunnels to completely change the traffic dynamic of major cities. There is often a lot of room under the ground, as long as you have enough bedrock. Till this idea, we were mostly stuck with the space on the ground. One tunnel took twenty years and a billion dollars.
People look at the first iteration of an idea, and think small.
It's a boring issue.
Oh yeah, let's by all means not offend a person who is spastic! Or make them feel unsafe! Althouse, you are pathetic. You give give the continuously offended your blessing to look for transgressors. Your liberalism sucks.
@Doug, kiss my sweet ass. No, go read my comment at 3:23 and then kiss my sweet ass.
And I am NOT a liberal.
O. and W. Wright's aircraft (called Flyer) was mocked as foolishness by those whose imagination was barely up to the task of planning dinner that night. Musk's companies have an incredible synergy to them. When it all comes together, and it will, remarkable things will arrive.
Musk and Steve Jobs are historic figures. They make the world a better place for humanity. All this negativity is just jealousy by people who know little and have done even less.
Jovan bottled the flop-sweat of that spaz-cadet
I'm expecting exponential growth in technology and a linear decline in journalism quality.
Big Mike, your courage, wisdom and compassion are an example for us all. Well written, Spaz-o.
That said, Musk's Tesla tunnel is absurd.
Posted by Ann Althouse
So Musk's Boring Company is absurdly unprofitable and boring!
So Musk's Boring Company is absurdly unprofitable and boring!
I thought Althouse likes boring.
Her problem is that she doesn't appreciate or respect anything she doesn't understand, which is a lot. If Musk had the tunnel bedecked in orange drapes by Christo, or hung jars of tritium-painted crosses in urine along the walls for illumination, it would be 24/7 tonguebaths for EM and TBC at...what's Althouse's home address again, Chuck? Because we know that you know, and we know that you love to let everyone know that you know. (what's the rule on use of "that?")
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