On 2/21/12 4:52 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull<step...@xemacs.org> wrote:
Steven D'Aprano writes:
> Also, "Czar" is commonly used in US politics as an informal term for the
top
> official responsible for an area.
I think here the most important connotation is that in US parlance a
"czar" does not report to a committee, and with the exception of a
case where Sybil is appointed czar, cannot bikeshed. Decisions get
made (what a concept!)
I'm curious how old that usage is. I first encountered it around '88
when I interned for a summer at DEC SRC (long since subsumed into HP
Labs); the person in charge of deciding a particular aspect of their
software or organization was called a czar, e.g. the documentation
czar.
From the Wikipedia article Steven cited:
"""
The earliest known use of the term for a U.S. government official was in the
administration of Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945), during which eleven unique
positions (or twelve if one were to count "Economic Czar" and "Economic Czar of
World War II" as separate) were so described. The term was revived, mostly by
the press, to describe officials in the Nixon and Ford administrations and
continues today.
"""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_%27czars%27
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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