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Raspberry Spy

A project log for Obsidian

Hacking MorningStar

morningstarMorning.Star 05/19/2019 at 10:001 Comment

As British as Bond...

From Wikipedia

Blowing a raspberry, strawberry or making a Bronx cheer, is to make a noise that may signify derision, real or feigned. It may also be used in childhood phonemic play either solely by the child or by adults towards a child to encourage imitation to the delight of both parties. It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing to produce a sound similar to flatulence. In the terminology of phonetics, this sound has been described as a voiceless linguolabial trill, and as a buccal interdental trill.

A raspberry is never used in human language phonemically (that is, as a building block of words), but it is widely used across human cultures.

Etymology

The nomenclature varies by country. In most anglophone countries, it is known as a raspberry, which is attested from at least 1890, and which in the United States came to be abbreviated as razz by 1919. In the United States it has also been called a Bronx cheer since at least 1929.

Blowing a "raspberry" derives from the Cockney rhyming slang "raspberry tart" for "fart". Rhyming slang was particularly used in British comedy to refer to things that would be unacceptable to a polite audience. "Raspberry" was also given the pronunciation spelling "razzberry" in the US, of which "razz" is an abbreviation.

and...

The V Sign, Forks or Two-Fingered Salute...

The first contemporary evidence of the use of the insulting V sign in the United Kingdom dates to 1901, when a worker outside Parkgate ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture (captured on the film) to indicate that he did not like being filmed.Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren that the much-older thumbing of the nose (cocking a snook) had been replaced by the V sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.

Between 1975 and 1977 a group of anthropologists including Desmond Morris studied the history and spread of European gestures and found the rude version of the V-sign to be basically unknown outside the British Isles. In his Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, published in 1979, Morris discussed various possible origins of this sign but came to no definite conclusion:

because of the strong taboo associated with the gesture (its public use has often been heavily penalised). As a result, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing it in detail. It is "known to be dirty" and is passed on from generation to generation by people who simply accept it as a recognised obscenity without bothering to analyse it... Several of the rival claims are equally appealing. The truth is that we will probably never know...

So, I've written to the Law Society, who regulate the solicitors who are our advocates in our legal system.

Seeing as the government wishes to make me pay for advocacy to obtain money stolen from me by local authority and absolutely will not negotiate on this, I have no choice but to litigate by any means necessary.

Discussions

Dr. Cockroach wrote 05/19/2019 at 10:40 point

Wow, good for you :-)

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