OT: Bob's your uncle ?

Firstly:Apparently: ""Bob's your uncle" is a similar (but primarily British) way of saying "you're all set" or "you've got it made." It dates back to 1887, when British Prime Minister Robert Cecil decided to appoint Arthur Balfour to the prestigious post of Chief Secretary for Ireland. The British public, however, was well aware that Cecil was Arthur Balfour's uncle. In the resulting furor over an apparent act of blatant nepotism, "Bob's your uncle" became a popular sarcastic comment applied to any situation where the outcome was preordained by favoritism. (The Cecil-Balfour affair was literal nepotism to boot, as the root of "nepotism" is the Latin "nepot," nephew) As the Balfour scandal faded in public memory, the phrase lost a bit of its edge and became just a synonym for "you're all set." So if I were giving you directions to the Brooklyn Bridge, I might finish by saying "Then turn right at Cadman Plaza, and Bob's your uncle." Of course, in Brooklyn, "badda boom, badda bing" would probably be a better choice." From Word Detective.

Secondly: Going by this list's aversion to politicians, probably not. :-)

Tom

It's spelled Munro in case you're trying to google more info (there's quite a lot out there).

Helluva guy.

-Carl

I was actually disappointed by the movie -- to me, it seemed like hey were working so hard to paint him as an eccentric character (which he certainly was!) that they missed the technical achievement. It was good, but could have been much better.

Compare with Apollo 13, which did a terrific job combining the human drama and technical achievement.

Hardly a suitable comparison...

Why not? There are certainly huge obvious differences (big budget vs. indie, story involving huge technical organization vs. story involving one man accomplishing a huge technological feat single-handed), but in the particular comparison I was drawing -- "Indian" focussed so much on Munro's idiosyncrasies that it lost the scale of his technological accomplishment while "Apollo" did a much better job balancing them -- I think it was perfectly fair. Why do you not agree?

The film was about the individual first and foremost. "Lost the scale of his of his technological accomplishment."? I think you don't get the point of the film.

As for Apollo 13, please explain why NASA state that they can't replicate the Lunar landings until 2020? Has the scale of US technology taken such a backward step? If so, why? Surely Hollywood can provide the necessary?

This is just my opinion so that's all it's worth.

I blame Wally Schirra.

Not that he meant to screw the space program out of existence on purpose. No, More like an attitude accident.

He was a test pilot with a test pilot mentality.

Apollo 7 (first Apollo flight after the Apollo 1 fire) Wally was the commander - and had a head cold and was a bit cranky(?)

When Nasa wanted to accommodate the TV networks ny having some TV from the space craft, Wally vetoed it - rather harshly.

The TV networks wondered who the hell this guy thought he was and pulled the plug on NASA (pretty much until Apollo 13 looked like it was going to be a complete and total disaster).

They changed the focus of their reporting. Hey - they choose who and what gets aired. Not you or me.

I still remember the clip of the guy on the beach saying, "it's not worth it" and the black kid saying,"we have so many problems don here than need to be solved"...

And so the American public was told that space wasn't worth the risk, money, hassle, votes, etc. Horror of horrors - what if an astronaut died in space???

So the space money dried up and all those earthly problems are still with us (or worse).

AND - to my mind worst sin of all - the tooling for the Saturn V boosters was broken up. Not gonna build any more of those any more.

So that's why I blame Wally. (Sorry Wally!)

Richard

After a Computer crash and the demise of civilization, it was learned Tom wrote on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:24:16 +1200 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Hardware. "Fast, Powerful, Cheap. Pick two." Kind of difficult to crank out the myriad of parts involved in an Apollo shot when you can't get parts for the computers they were originally drawn on.

Not unless you're willing to throw money at what is still a huge engineering project, and ignore the environmentalist who will accuse you of consorting with demon's, witches and cats, not to mention altering the earths orbit, causing hurricanes, and turning John Cleese into a Newt (even if he did get better.)

-- pyotr filipivich "Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est. " Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD (A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands.)

LOL. Yeah right!

Buy Russian.

Thanks Tom,

Spot on

Jay

Tom wrote:

No, I think I got the point of the film. It's certainly true that it was about the individual -- but they skewed their presentation of that individual in a way that I think hurt both his reputation and the film. When you've got someone who is very focussed on a technological achievement, showing the scale of his accomplishment is important in presenting him.

Huh? I'm not quite sure how this relates to the movie -- even if the movie were fiction, my comments on it would be equally valid.

My take on NASA (a completely separate question, mind you) is that they have become much more bureaucratic and less focussed, and also wouldn't be willing to take the kinds of risks with the people that they did 40 years ago. Also, of course, we tend to date the start of the moon program to Kennedy's speech, but the project really started several years earlier than that. The booster that would become the Saturn V had been drawn up by von Braun by some time in the mid to late 1950s. So starting now for 2020 wouldn't be all that different from starting in 1956 for for 1969.

I hear it on British TV in the phrase, ".. and faster than you can say, "Bob's your uncle.""

It seems to have evolved in the same as the American "bada bing, bada boom."

Their big boosters are truly massive but lack the cryogenic upper stage power. (Lox and kerosene)

They can life the weight - just not terribly high.

You can't go to the moon on Lox and Kerosene....

Appollow pretty well proved that/

Richard

Bluntly, Burt advanced in 50 years yet the might and resources of NASA are now back in the 50s? What's NASA been doing these last 40 years? A Rip van Winkle?

Begging Congress for money...

The old saying that I remember form the 1940s was "faster than you can say Jack Robinson". No idea where it origionated though!

Steve R.

After a Computer crash and the demise of civilization, it was learned cavelamb himself wrote on Sun, 05 Aug 2007

But LOX and Kerosene can get you off the ground, for a less than the high priced methods NASA used. On of the "problems" of NASA was the technological savvy available. Having access to clever engineers and money, all sorts of neato cool choices were made, "because we can". The US "ball point pen made to write in zero G" vs the USSR's use of pencils. (Yes, I know, the pen was developed by a private company which used the fact that some of them were adopted for use in the Space Program as a selling point. Same goes for Tang, etc.)

-- pyotr filipivich "Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est. " Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD (A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands.)

If I recall correctly the Saturn V used LOX and Kerosene for the first stage.

Dan