Reporters saying "TARMAC" how stupid!!

If teachers taught, why
didn't preachers praught?

Yup, English is difficult even for those who mock it. The foregoing
should really be "If teachers taught, why =haven't= preachers
praught?" (It's not really necessary to say "If teachers have
taught...", but the original is definately wrong)

Jose
--
Money: What you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

My favorite is in Michael Herr's "Dispatches", where he speaks of the
helicopters picking up the "tarmac" when the Marines pulled out of Khe
Sahn (however spelled).

At first I had an image of the choppers with bags of broken-up
asphalt, but eventually I realized he was talking about the
pierced-steel planking.

Evidently tarmac has become shorthand for "runways and stuff". I look
forward to the day when we read that a certain airport has a grass
tarmac.

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:44:24 -0500, "Gary Drescher"
wrote:

Dunno, but it's a perfectly good English word (in lower case--it's not an
acronym), so why shouldn't reporters use it?

Tarmac is short for "tar macadam" and refers to the system used for
laying down roads with alternating layers of sand and hot tar. In
these yere parts, it was called "tar vee", as in: "He was out drag
racing all night on the tar vee."

I haven't seen tar macadam put down for many a year, but it used to
make driving hell in the summertime. They usually tarred the road the
day after you brought your new car home.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:26:24 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

To "throttle" means to choke.

Actually, it means "the throat". Therefore, by logical extension, it
came to mean a valve for controlling fuel or steam, in much the same
way that the throat controls the ingestion of food. And by further
extension, the lever or rod that controlles the throttle.

The verb is different. "To throttle" does indeed mean to stop the
engine, or anyhow to bring it to an idle.

Now, you really want a fun word, try cockpit!

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 16:07:50 -0600, "tscottme"
wrote:

I fully expect to see some silly CBS reporter describing a lorry crash near
Denver or a shortage of water closets for new homes.

I have heard both these terms (well, lorry, not lorry crash) from
American friends who spent their working lives in Cambridge MA.

(Though "loo" is actually more common than water closet. Come to think
of it, I have even heard my wife say "loo," and she never worked in
Cambridge!)

What do they use now? Sure smells like tar.

Asphalt is a pre-mix that can be applied and rolled in one
application, and has the great virtue of drying quickly so we don't
have to worry about getting the tar flecks off our cars.

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:44:24 -0500, "Gary Drescher"
wrote:

Dunno, but it's a perfectly good English word (in lower case--it's not an
acronym), so why shouldn't reporters use it?

Tarmac is short for "tar macadam" and refers to the system used for
laying down roads with alternating layers of sand and hot tar.

Yup. Further, the Merriam-Webster dictionary distinguishes "Tarmac", a
trademark, from "tarmac", a generic term.

--Gary

"Gig Giacona" wrote in message
...

THough I am ashamed to admit it I was once a reporter for a lo-cal TV
station. Our news director made it very clear one day after a young
reporter-ette used the term "War Zone" to describe the aftermath of a
tornado that if anyone used it again there had better be some pictures of
tanks and soldiers to go along with the story.

Slow fade to latter that very same day. There was one of those little
inserts the networks feed to the locals to insert in the 5 o'clock news
about upcoming stories the network will have that night. A network
reporter
was describing the aftermath of some battle somewhere and acctually said,
"...It looks like a war zone here..." The news director who was also the
local anchor could not even begin to stop laughing before he was back on
the
air.


That's a good story. I still shake my head when they dispatch some schmuck
to stand on the shoulder of an overpass and broadcast live what it was like
7 hours ago when there was a fatal car wreck "not far from where I'm
standing." Or the ever present real or fake stand up shot outside City Hall
so they can tell us they are considering this or that. God forbid we learn
of these considerations from a reporter in a studio, how can we trust them
if they aren't standing in front of the building where this future decision
will be announced?

I'm as big a news junkie as ever there was, but I've discovered that I can
learn more by watching less. Despite the incessant complaining that they
only have 22 minutes to broadcats news, they seem to fill 8 minutes of it
with the latest bogus "medical research" discovered by some grad student
that eating Twinkies doubles your chances of contracting dropsey or
interviewing the receptionist for the drive-in wedding chapel where Brittney
Spear's hairstylist got htiched.


--

Scott

Like the archers of Agincourt, John O'Neill and the 254 Swiftboat Veterans
took down their own haughty Frenchman. - Ann Coulter

"tscottme" wrote in message
...
"Gig Giacona" wrote in message
...

THough I am ashamed to admit it I was once a reporter for a lo-cal TV
station. Our news director made it very clear one day after a young
reporter-ette used the term "War Zone" to describe the aftermath of a
tornado that if anyone used it again there had better be some pictures of
tanks and soldiers to go along with the story.

Slow fade to latter that very same day. There was one of those little
inserts the networks feed to the locals to insert in the 5 o'clock news
about upcoming stories the network will have that night. A network
reporter
was describing the aftermath of some battle somewhere and acctually said,
"...It looks like a war zone here..." The news director who was also the
local anchor could not even begin to stop laughing before he was back on
the
air.


That's a good story. I still shake my head when they dispatch some
schmuck
to stand on the shoulder of an overpass and broadcast live what it was
like
7 hours ago when there was a fatal car wreck "not far from where I'm
standing." Or the ever present real or fake stand up shot outside City
Hall
so they can tell us they are considering this or that. God forbid we
learn
of these considerations from a reporter in a studio, how can we trust them
if they aren't standing in front of the building where this future
decision
will be announced?

I'm as big a news junkie as ever there was, but I've discovered that I can
learn more by watching less. Despite the incessant complaining that they
only have 22 minutes to broadcats news, they seem to fill 8 minutes of it
with the latest bogus "medical research" discovered by some grad student
that eating Twinkies doubles your chances of contracting dropsey or
interviewing the receptionist for the drive-in wedding chapel where
Brittney
Spear's hairstylist got htiched.



Oh no, you got me started now. I too am a news junkie but I refuse to watch
lo-cal news. It is without a doubt the worst possible way to get information
on anything. Large market or small market it doesn't matter. You would be
better of walking outside your house and listening for news to happen.

One of the reasons for this is the very nature of the 22 minute newscast.
Because 22 minutes doesn't mean 22 minutes for news you give up at least 10
to sports and weather of which at least 3 was our much loved weather person
telling people who live here what the weather had already done and was doing
at that very moment.

During the summer when ad time was at its low point, NEWS had at most 12
minutes to fill. During an election season when there was actually some
local news to cover we might be down as low as 8.

Since it came down from on high that our audience didn't have an attention
span we were maxed at a maximum of 3 minutes on a story unless we had video
of the world ending. In that case we would have gotten an extra 30 seconds
but 15 of those seconds would have been used in extra anchor toss where the
anchor would have to ask me a question that I wrote and specifically left
out of the story in the first place.

Those same powers that be also decided that the one thing short of the end
of the world that could go over 3:30 was features that weren't news at all
but fluff.

I hate lo-cal TV news. Can you tell?

"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 16:07:50 -0600, "tscottme"
wrote:

I fully expect to see some silly CBS reporter describing a lorry crash
near
Denver or a shortage of water closets for new homes.

I have heard both these terms (well, lorry, not lorry crash) from
American friends who spent their working lives in Cambridge MA.

More so than other cities Boston seems to pick up a decent amount of
British/Irish usage, but I've been here ten years and never heard "lorry"
used by a native American... I mean someone born in America, not a casino
operator. It might just be an affectation, as New Englanders are definitely
of the "European = More Sophisticated" school of thought.

-cwk.