Can I Call It "De-partnering"?

The company now known as Colgate-Palmolive was once known as Colgate-Palmolive-Pete (or maybe it was Peet). I wonder what happened to poor Mr. Pete.

The initials of the company now called GSK stand for Glaxo Smith Klein, which was formed by a merger of the UK firm Glaxo with the American Smith, Klein and French. Again--what happened to Mr, French?

There is a company that I hear of because they are listed as a contributor or supporter of a Public Television program that's called BDO. I suspect that here, too, the name of one of the partners has been dropped. My brother-in-law, who was an accountant, once--years and years ago--told me that one of the big accounting firms was Batten, Barton, Durstein and Osborne. That would be BBDO, and if one of the b's has been dropped, as in those two other cases above, that would give us today's BDO.

Maybe this de-partnering is a phenomenon well known and even common in the business world. I'd welcome it if anyone can tell me more about this.

Added 12/17/24

This can work the other way, too: One or more names could be added, for euphony or just to fill out the corporate name, according to some ill-expressed criterion. The best example is the big movie studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (M-G-M). There were a Samuel Goldwyn and a Louis B. Mayer. I don't think there was ever anyone named Metro.

At one point I worked for the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. There were Challengers--in fact lots of them, big and small, running about the place--but I saw nary a Gray nor a Christmas and don't believe there ever were any such.

People Who Voted for Trump

 A recent news story--post-election analysis--said that many young Black and Latino men voted for Trump because they see him as improving jobs and other financial/economic matters.

As  to those Latino folks: After January 20 they are likely to see their friends and relatives being deported. Plus, no one  has said a word about the cost to the US--us taxpayers--for flying these immigrants back to their countries of origin. (Not even touching on the fact that today, the news showed Trump's about-to-be "immigration czar" replying to a question about families being separated by these deportations; his reply was, to paraphrase a bit, no, we won't need to separate families, just deport (US-born) children along with their parents.

And--to another group of voters who voted for Trump because they are unhappy with the rising prices the country has been experiencing: Again, wait until after January 20. Trump has pledged to raise tariffs on imported goods. Those voters who have been buying cheap Chinese goods at Walmart are going to see those items hugely increase in their prices to US consumers after Trump's tariffs are added.

If Trump makes good on his promise (threat) to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, U. S. car manufacturers are going to be unhappy, and car buyers are going to see car prices go up. This is because car makers are making engines and transmissions in Canada and Mexico, for the sake of--can you guess?--cheaper labor. This was facilitated--maybe encouraged--by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by Bill Clinton in 1989 (and replaced and superseded by another agreement, of which I do not know the terms) during Trump's first term.

Before You Contribute to That Good Cause. . .

If you watch TV at all, you've probably seen those commercials--the broadcasters call them PSA's, public service announcements, but they're commercials to me--for various charitable causes: wounded veterans, hungry children, rescued dogs and cats. Usually, for some reason I can't fathom, they ask you and me to commit to contributing $19 a month.

TV commercials are expensive to produce, not even counting the cost of air time to broadcast them. So you have to consider that a significant portion of the money you send them goes to fundraising expenses like that very commercial. (In many cases you can go to a site such as Charity Navigator to get a report on what percentage of a charity's revenue is spent on fundraising.)

As for me, before I con tribute, I am looking to see a little notice on the screen that says something like "All talent and other labor to produce this announcement was donated, and the air time to broadcast it was donated by this TV station."

Somehow, I don't really expect to see that.

 

The Very Sad Killing of Sonya Massey

Last month, a woman named Sonya Massey was fatally shot in her kitchen by a Sangamon County (IL) deputy sheriff.

The sheriff's defense, classically, was that he felt his life was threatened. This is the only possible defense a law-enforcement officer can offer for shooting a suspect (not that Ms. Massey was a suspect in any crime).

What had Ms. Massey done? She said, "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ." Now, quite possibly that is not a truly reasonable thing to say under the circumstances. Quite possibly the officer did not understand that (I am not a Christian of the same stripe as Ms. Massey so I am not certain I fully grasp what that was supposed to mean, at that time and place).

But--what exactly was the officer--I believe his name is Grayson--being threatened with? A pot of hot water.

Now, I am not certain what the statistics, if there are in fact any, show as to what percentage of the time an attack by hot water is fatal. I suspect it seldom is.

Add into the recipe that Ms. Massey was black. Sadly--infuriatingly--the majority of cases of this sort seem to involve a victim who was black. The inescapable inference in these horrible cases is that the officer who killed the person bore some degree of racism in his heart. (Latest news on this story is that he may also bear hostility to women..)

I have given only a very sketchy outline of this story; and far more has come to light via different media Any reader should feel free to add, via a comment, anything they consider worth including.

 

Bit of Nonsensical (i.e. Fictional) Natural History

The Tennessee water cricket is not found in Tennessee but rather in a few spots along the Calabash River in Sardinia, N.S.W.

The correct name of the horse is hortsh, and they are all named Horace--at least in Lower Slobovia.

The fitchin is a fish--at least in Japan, where everything is a fish, except rice and a few vegetables that grow around Shinto shrines.

Sorry, folks, just being silly. I have always believed the world needs more silliness.

The Pharmaceutical Industry Discovers the Letter "Q"

The pharmaceutical industry uses computers to generate possible or suggested names for new drugs, and has been doing so for a long time.

The computers are programmed with algorithms so as to respect some of the laws or constraints of English--for example, permitted sequences of letters.

For a long time, it seems, the computers were not allowed to use the letter q in any proposed drug names. In English, the letter q is almost always followed by u (the exceptions are merely a couple of words which come from other languages).

Now, however, that seems to have changed, and we are seeing drug names with q in them:

Rinvoq. Here that final q evidently could be a k or ck.

Cibinqo. Here, although no u follows the q, evidently the pronunciation is just as if the word in fact ended in quo.

Kisqali. Same comment as above.

Qulipta. Evidently this is to be pronounced with the initial syllable being "kew".

Qutenza, Same as above.

Uqora. Here, as with the previous two drug names, we evidently need to pretend that there's a qu rather than just q. Virtually no English words are spelled with a q without a u following. Plus, this seems to be another example of using a vowel for its name rather than its phonetic value (as in ibuprofen, Xfinity).     

It's anybody's guess why the pharmaceutical industry has started using such weird names. Maybe all the good ones have been used already.

Copyright © 2023.

Some Thoughts (Humorous) on American Sports: Team Names, etc.

I was thinking about the names of sports teams. You know, they usually are connected in some way to the city where the team is resident, e.g., Detroit Pistons (referring to the auto industry, with its cars which have--or at least always had--piston engines), the Houston Oilers (there is a lot of oil around Houston). Here are a few new ones that I'm suggesting.

Flushing (Queens, NY) Toilets

Barking (Surrey, U.K.) Dogs

Alaska Glaciers

Maine Lobsters 

Los Vegas Roulette Wheels 

Charleston Chews 

Boston Baked Beans

Seattle Airliners

Wisconsin Dairymen (There is a Wisconsin team known as the Green Bay Packers. I have no idea--and my excuse is that I am not a native of this part of the world--whether there is or ever was any packing going on in Green Bay.)

Some other thoughts related to sports:

I like to say--jokingly, of course--that (Chicago) Cubs grow up to be (Chicago) Bears.

If the (Chicago) White Sox got mixed up in the laundry with the (Boston) Red Sox, you'd get the Pink Sox.

Polo is played on horseback, right? Then I guess sea horses are used for water polo.

There was a basketball player called Meadowlark Lemon. There is a baseball player named Darryl Strawberry. So--although they were on different teams and even different sports--we've had a strawberry and a lemon. Makes me wonder what other fruits[*] there might be…….

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* I strongly want it understood that the use of the word "fruit," though acknowledged as a slang term for a gay person, is in no way meant here to imply any derogatory comment on LGBTQ people.

Copyright (c) 2023

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