What Are They Playing?
https://youtu.be/KNIZofPB8ZM
https://youtu.be/MxGEVIvSFeY
WithOutPaper
Wop is a pejorative slur for Italians or people of Italian descent. Contents. 1 Etymology ⌠One false etymology or backronym of wop is that it is an acronym for "without passport" or "without papers", implying that Italian immigrants entered the âŚ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wop
The Merriam-Webster dictionary states wop's first known use was in the United States in 1908, and that it originates from the Southern Italian dialectal term guappo, roughly meaning "dandy", "dude", "stud", "ruffian", or "swaggerer", derived from the Spanish term guapo, meaning "good-looking", "dandy", from Latin vappa for "sour wine", also "worthless fellow".[2][3][4]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/wop-doesnt-mean-what-andrew-cuomo-thinks-it-means/558659/
POLITICS
âWopâ Doesnât Mean What Andrew Cuomo Thinks It Means
The New York governor recently repeated a common, but dubious, explanation for the epithet.
BEN ZIMMER
APRIL 23, 2018
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently attracted criticism from immigration advocacy groups for describing himself as âundocumentedâ during a bill-signing ceremony in Albany. âYou want to deport an undocumented person, start with me, because Iâm an undocumented person,â he said.
What drew less attention was how he explained that provocative conclusion. âI came from poor Italian Americans who came here,â Cuomo said. âYou know what they called Italian Americans back in the day? They called them âwops.â You know what âwopâ stood for? âWithout papers.ââ
Cuomoâs attempt to express solidarity was a bit overheated, to say the least: He isnât really undocumented, of course, and as the son of a former governor, he wasnât exactly marginalized growing up. But his historical justification for the parallel is similarly dubious. While his Italian immigrant forebears may indeed have had the epithet wop slung at them, there is no evidence that the word originated as an acronym for âwithout papers.â
This misunderstanding of wopâs origins is fairly common, and it extends far beyond politics. But Cuomo isnât the only Italian American politician to make rhetorical hay out of the bogus etymology. In February, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made a marathon floor speech in support of the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, she told much the same story about wop:
[I]n my fatherâs generation and my grandfatherâs generation and my great-grandmotherâs generation ⌠there was a term. It was called âwop,â and people used that as a derogatory term to Italian Americans. Do you know what âwopâ means, Mr. Speaker? âWopâ means âwithout papers.â ⌠That is what these people were called, âwithout papers.â And that is all that these kids are, without papers. In every other way, strong participants in our society, in our community, and in our country.
Cuomo and Pelosi arenât alone in repeating the tale in a political context. As Jonah Goldberg noted in National Review last year, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who is descended from Irish immigrants, made the same specious connection between wop and âwithout papersâ in a 60 Minutes appearance.
Where did wop really come from? The best guess from etymologists is that the source is a southern Italian dialectal word, guappo or guappu, meaning âdandyâ or âswaggerer.â That, in turn, is likely from the Spanish word guapo meaning âhandsomeâ or âbold,â imported to Sicily when the island was occupied by Spain. Sicilian immigrants to the United States brought the swaggering word with them. It âconnoted arrogance, bluster, and maleficence entwined,â wrote the music journalist Nick Tosches in his 2001 book Where Dead Voices Gather, in a historical exploration of the Italian-flavored pop-music genre once known as âwop songs.â Here is how Tosches describes (with some literary embellishment) the way that guappo and its variants became wop on American shores:
It was these Sicilian words that were commonly used to describe the work-bosses who lured their greenhorn paesani into servitude in New York City in the early years of the twentieth century. In New York and other American seaports, the lowly labor of the Italian immigrantsâ servitudeâthe dockside toil and offal-hauling that others shunnedâcame to be called ⌠guappu work; and eventually the laborer himself, and not the boss, was known as guappu. The peasant immigrantsâ tendency to clip the final vowels from standard Italian and Sicilianâas in paesanâ for paesanoârendered guappu as guappâ, which was pronounced, more or less, as wop.
It was these Sicilian words that were commonly used to describe the work-bosses who lured their greenhorn paesani into servitude in New York City in the early years of the twentieth century. In New York and other American seaports, the lowly labor of the Italian immigrantsâ servitudeâthe dockside toil and offal-hauling that others shunnedâcame to be called ⌠guappu work; and eventually the laborer himself, and not the boss, was known as guappu. The peasant immigrantsâ tendency to clip the final vowels from standard Italian and Sicilianâas in paesanâ for paesanoârendered guappu as guappâ, which was pronounced, more or less, as wop.
While thereâs no hard evidence for the oral transformation of the word, the end result, wop, began making its appearance in written English in the early years of the 20th century. In 2010, on the American Dialect Society mailing list, word-researcher Douglas Wilson shared examples going back to 1906 in New York City newspapers. Hereâs one:
There was a time, not very long ago, when you couldnât find a Wopâthat means an Italian in the latest downtown dialectâin Dannyâs resort even by using a microscope. But to-day itâs different. The members of the Five Points gang, all dark skinned sons of Sicily, grew tired of flitting from place to place, with no set rendezvous for their nightly gatherings. A number of the Pointers used to frequent the place, and it wasnât long before the entire gang became regulars.
â The Sun, Nov. 18, 1906
The story of wop standing for âwithout papersâ is of much more recent vintage. It started showing up in print in the early 1970s, at a time when Italian American identity politics was on the rise. But it likely circulated orally before that. In a 1971 journal article titled âA Study of Ethnic Slurs,â the folklorist Alan Dundes wrote:
One folk etymology for the word âwop,â a common term of disparagement for Americans of Italian descent, is that in the early 1920s many Italians tried to enter the United States illegally. These would-be immigrants were rounded up by U.S. officials and sent back to Italy with documents labelled W.O.P. which supposedly stood for âWithout Papersâ referring to the papers needed for legal immigration.
Later that year, the âwithout papersâ story also appeared in the sports pages of the Tucson Daily Citizen, in a quote from Cleveland Indians manager Ken Aspromonte:
âIf anyone called me a âwopâ I was furious and wanted to slug the guy right then and there,â Aspromonte said, âbut then one day my grandfather explained the origin of the word. He told me that in the early 1900âs so many Italians were coming into the United States that many of them didnât bother to get visas. When theyâd arrive on Ellis Island and didnât have papers with them the inspector would holler out, âHereâs another one, without papers.â So somebody took the letters âW-O-Pâ for âwithout papersâ and thatâs how it got started,â Aspromonte said.
Also in 1971, the syndicated columnist Hy Gardner shared yet another folk etymology for wop. ââWopâ reverts to the turn of the century when millions of Calabrians and Sicilians came off their ships holding a slip of paper with the name of the foreman they had been assigned to,â Gardner wrote. âU.S. immigration officials rubberstamped the papers âW.O.P.ââmeaning âwithout passport.ââ
Whether the imagined derivation is âwithout papersâ or âwithout passport,â the wop story should set off alarm bells, since this kind of acronymic explanation is hardly ever historically correct. Acronyms only became popular in the mid-20th century (think radar, scuba, and laser), well after the time that wop and other words with supposed acronymic roots came into the language. Sad to say, cop doesnât stand for âconstable on patrolâ; golf isnât from âgentlemen only, ladies forbiddenâ; posh doesnât mean âport out starboard homeâ; and tip isnât from âto insure politenessâ (or âpromptnessâ). And please donât believe any of the made-up acronymic expansions for fuck. (âFor unlawful carnal knowledgeâ and âfornication under consent of the kingâ are the most popular.)
Still, these acronymic accounts often work as a kind of storytelling in the service of what Yale University linguist Laurence Horn has termed âetymythology.â Lawmakers like Cuomo and Pelosi are not so concerned with the actual origins of wop, because the âwithout papersâ story works so well for their rhetorical purposes. It helps them draw a handy parallel between undocumented immigrants of the past and present, in order to further their political goals. But etymologyâlike politicsâis in reality much messier, subverting such tidy explanations.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/03/05/fashion-notes-melania-trump-jet-sets-across-u-s-in-yellow-tartan-manolo-blahnik-stilettos/
Reminder: Correlation does not equal causation
https://doctorspin.org/science/psychology/survivorship-bias/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_WaldAbraham Wald (/wÉËld/; Hungarian: Wald ĂbrahĂĄm, Yiddish: ××ר×× ×××Öˇ××â; 31 October 1902 â 13 December 1950) was a Hungarian Jewish mathematician who contributed to decision theory, geometry, and econometrics, and founded the field of statistical sequential analysis.[1] One of the well known statistical works of his during World War 2 was how to minimize the damage to bomber aircraft taking into account the survivorship bias in his calculations.[2] He spent his researching years at Columbia University.
Wald and his wife died in 1950 when the Air India plane (VT-CFK, a DC-3 aircraft[9]) in which they were travelling crashed near the Rangaswamy Pillar in northern part of the Nilgiri Mountains, in southern India, while on an extensive lecture tour at the invitation of the Indian government.[1] He had visited the Indian Statistical Institute at Calcutta and was to attend the Indian Science Congress at Bangalore in January. Their two children were back at home in the United States.[10]