Former BSA VP Confirmed as Tech Undersecretary

RedOregon writes "The Senate has confirmed Robert Cresanti as the Commerce Department's new undersecretary for technology. Who's that, you ask? He was the former vice president of public policy at the Business Software Alliance. Does this give anyone else the Heebie Jeebies??"

Comments

It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling

[drinkypoo]

The BSA was pretty impotent. They achieved only a tiny bit of what they could have, had they had half a clue. Personally I hope they hire more people from the BSA.

Re:What if it were all the undersecretaries?

[vertinox]

You're getting the heebie jeebies from an undersecretary?

That is fine and dandy, but one has to wonder if this goes on all the time.

Sure one undersecretary isn't that bad, but what if all positions like this were dealt in the same way.

Boil a frog, anyone?

Parallel World

[Un pobre guey]

A key role of Free and Open Source Software is to maintain a parallel world where we don't have to be the captive audience of greedy and inefficient industrialists. If the FOSS notion could be extended to a wide variety of physical devices, appliances, vehicles, and other everyday items, we could protect ourselves and our future even better.

Generic "robotic" hardware, computer-controlled devices that do useful work for their owners, seems to be a required next step to convert centralized mass production into distributed mass production. Still the stuff of sci fi, though.

I'll bite the troll

[LocalH]

Dear Word Detective: At a recent party, I had occasion to use the phrase "Heebee Jeebees" to refer to something that gave me a "creepy" feeling. I was flummoxed when half the crowd was nonplussed! (See, you do have an effect!) Actually, I was even more surprised when someone suggested that she thought the phrase was not in good taste because it was anti-Semitic! I am doubtful, but I'm PC enough to worry. -- Chris Kuhn, via the Internet.

Of course I have an effect; many effects, in fact, some of them rather alarming. Most people find me easiest to take with meals (you can always play with your peas and pretend not to know me), and it's generally wise not to go swimming within a half-hour after reading this column. If dizziness or skepticism develops, go ask William Safire.

I, too, am surprised that half the folks at that party didn't know what "heebie-jeebies" (the usual spelling) are. What are they teaching in school these days, anyway? Nothing useful, apparently. To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, the "heebie-jeebies" are "a feeling of discomfort, apprehension, or depression; the 'jitters'; delirium tremens; also, formerly, a type of dance." Just like the "wim-wams," I'd say, except the dancing part.

As to your worries about "heebie-jeebies" possibly being an anti-Semitic slur, the answer is a somewhat qualified "no." The phrase "heebie-jeebies" was invented by Billy De Beck, a famous American comic strip artist of the 1920's, in his popular "Barney Google" strip in 1923. De Beck, by the way, also invented "hotsy-totsy" (a term of approval) and the wonderful "horsefeathers" (meaning "utter nonsense") in his strip. "Heebie-jeebies" must have caught the popular imagination immediately, since the dance of that name appeared a scant three years later, in 1926.

The invention of "heebie-jeebies" by De Beck was, without doubt, innocent of any racial or ethnic animosity. The only possible anti-Semitic interpretation of "heebie-jeebies" comes from its unfortunate resemblance to the slang term "hebe" (a cropping of "Hebrew"), which is indeed an anti-Jewish epithet. Whether you want to risk possible misunderstandings when you use "heebie-jeebies" is up to you, of course, but the truth of its innocent origin is its best defense.