From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Nov 8 10:53: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp05.primenet.com (smtp05.primenet.com [206.165.6.135]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 119FC37B479; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 10:53:05 -0800 (PST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp05.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id LAA16217; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 11:53:32 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr08.primenet.com(206.165.6.208) via SMTP by smtp05.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAkqaOuF; Wed Nov 8 11:53:07 2000 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr08.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA21953; Wed, 8 Nov 2000 11:52:29 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200011081852.LAA21953@usr08.primenet.com> Subject: Re: fortune candidate from #FreeBSD on EFNet To: des@ofug.org (Dag-Erling Smorgrav) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:52:29 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard), bright@wintelcom.net (Alfred Perlstein), chat@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "Dag-Erling Smorgrav" at Nov 08, 2000 07:12:06 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > The basis of the joke required people to complete an _English_ > > phrase in their mind to make the association. I maintain that > > the joke is anglocentric. > > This is absolute, complete, utter, first-rate US-centric bullshit. > "The Lord works in mysterious ways" (independently of the rest of your > quote) is a colloquial expression in France and Norway, and probably > in other european countries as well. I don't know why you have it in for me for the past couple of days, but I have to say that the rabid ad hominim attacks getting tiring. The _precise_ quote Alfred posted from IRC was: | 09:26 #freebsd mcmc> god works in mysterious ways | 09:26 #freebsd mcmc> freebsd on the other hand, has man pages I think even you will have to agree that the text quoted above was written in English. > Jordan is hardly a statistically representative cross-section of > the FreeBSD community. Perhaps it was merely an example of his "fairings" humor, in which he was pretending to be "mystified". I rather suspect that his posting was made tongue in cheek; I only made mine because, while his posting had a high probability of being a joke, there were, IMO, people who would not have gotten the original joke, and I liked it enough to want them to get it. > I'm tempted to theorise that the phrase did not originate with the > book you quoted, but rather that its author used an expression his > readers were already familiar with. Feel free; if you can find a reference which predates 1687, in any language, I'll be happy to reference it instead. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message