Bob’s Your Uncle!

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[Q] From Florence C Goold: “What is the origin and actual meaning of bob’s your uncle?”

[A] This is a catchphrase which seemed to arise out of nowhere and yet has had a long period of fashion and is still going strong. It’s known mainly in Britain and Commonwealth countries, and is really a kind of interjection. It’s used to show how simple it is to do something: “You put the plug in here, press that switch, and Bob’s your uncle!”.

from World Wide Words

I am officially starting a movement for the United States to join the rest of the civilized English speaking world and start shouting, “Bob’s Your Uncle!” This is a nice blog by Michael Quinion about English in England and the U.S., and he offers a detailed explanation of the phrase. Another related blog, “Separated by a Common Language” by a writer known only as “lynneguist” has an interesting post about Barack Obama’s apparently ambiguous racial standing.

It seems Debra J. Dickerson has claimed (in Salon) that Obama isn’t black because he isn’t a descendant of U.S. slaves. In rebuttal, Gary Kamiya writes (in Salon) that Obama “is black — he just isn’t “black.”” That settles it for me. Of course, lynnequist’s site is named after George Bernard Shaw’s famous quip that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” He also said that “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” Bob’s your Uncle!

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Writing

That’s Two Trillion, with a T

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Back in the days of shock and awe
We came to liberate them all
History was the cruel judge of overconfidence
Back in the days of shock and awe

Back in the days of “mission accomplished”
Our chief was landing on the deck
The sun was setting on a golden photo op
Back in the days of “mission accomplished”

Thousands of bodies in the ground
Brought home in boxes to a trumpet’s sound
No one sees them coming home that way
Thousands buried in the ground

Neil Young, Shock and Awe

When America invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would turn a profit, paying for itself with increased oil revenues. So far, though, Congress has spent more than $350 billion on the conflict, including the $50 billion appropriated for 2007.

But according to one of the world’s leading economists, that is just a fraction of what Iraq will actually wind up costing American taxpayers. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government’s past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion).

from Rollingstone.com, December 15, 2006

I thought this was an interesting and important counter-point to the post I wrote about the cost of the Iraq war. Or, at least, what might be called its formal cost, the amount of money that the U.S. Congress has allocated. As the Head Shrub prepares to force his violent surge on the Iraqis, U.S. soldiers, the U.S., and the world, that is an important number to remember. But it is also important to remember that this formal number is really only the tip of an iceberg, and that the real costs, both in lives ruined and lost and in money, are much higher. Neil Young has it right.

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Posted in: Economics, Miscellaneous, War