[HN Gopher] Shave and a Haircut
___________________________________________________________________
Shave and a Haircut
Author : bschne
Score : 136 points
Date : 2024-02-29 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| dustincoates wrote:
| > "Two bits" is a term in the United States and Canada for 25
| cents
|
| I don't know about Canada, but the "is" should be a "was" unless
| there are contexts I don't know about.
|
| It did lead me down a little deeper the Wikipedia rabbit hole,
| and apparently:
|
| > The New York Stock Exchange continued to list stock prices in
| $1/8 until June 24, 1997, at which time it started listing in
| $1/16. It did not fully implement decimal listing until January
| 29, 2001.
|
| That's crazy to imagine we're less than 25 years away from the
| decimalization of the NYSE.
| krallja wrote:
| Eight bits in a (modern) byte, eight bits in a buck. I wonder
| if there was a conscious or subconscious correction by the team
| designing the IBM 360 to align with the existing "standard."
| bschne wrote:
| seems hard to pin down exactly, but in this Computerphile
| interview the gist seems to be "if you get to the point where
| you want a distinct code for upper- and lowercase characters,
| digits, and a few punctuation symbols, you land a little
| north of six bits, an odd number of bits would be annoying to
| implement in hardware, so let's go for eight."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuScajG_FuI&t=184s
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder when a bit of memory crossed over a bit of money.
| Pretty early I guess.
| mc32 wrote:
| In other tunes it was bay rum instead of two bits.
| neom wrote:
| 2 bit is still used in Canada as an indicator of something less
| than good, otherwise unused.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I've definitely heard expressions that go something like,
| "Why you no-good, two-bit etc etc!", and never connected that
| to this until now.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Me neither! I always tentatively assumed it's about
| computer bits, where two bits would be "not much", and that
| somehow it entered into normie vernacular.
|
| So, TIL that this is _another_ case of society and culture
| in the 19th and 20th century US evolving primarily around
| the stock exchange :o.
| bregma wrote:
| TIL Yosemite Sam was the rootinest, tootinest computer
| geek this side of the Pecos.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| And of course bytes are divided into eight bits - but
| that's just a coincidence, because bits came first and
| byte sizes weren't standardized until the 1970s.
| samatman wrote:
| I suspect that "bit" for binary digit and "bit" as in
| "two bits" is a deliberate convergence more than pure
| coincidence. Tukey coined the term right after the war,
| which is a cultural high water mark for the term two
| bits. It doesn't hurt that "a bit" also means the least
| of something one might reasonably consider, this is where
| the bit as a sliver of the Spanish Dollar comes from in
| the first place, eight pieces being about as small as it
| was feasible to divide the coin into. Hence two bits for
| the quarter.
| al_borland wrote:
| I grew up on the US hearing this usage, but it was primarily
| in Looney Tunes.
| dustincoates wrote:
| Same in the US, but I can't imagine anyone would be able to
| accurately pinpoint its etymology.
| neom wrote:
| Surprised to hear that, I would have guessed folks over 40
| would be accustomed to "2-bit wh*re" - my dad used to
| scream that all the time about his personal banker "god
| damn that man he's a f'ing 2 bit wh..." - pretty sure my
| grandpa used it regularly also. Maybe my family are not the
| most refined of people. ;)
| bitwize wrote:
| Back in the 90s, the anti-Microsoft movement had a slogan
| that went something like: "Windows: a 32-bit layer on top
| of a 16-bit operating system originally for an 8-bit CPU
| derived from a 4-bit microcontroller, by a 2-bit company
| that can't stand 1 bit of competition."
| beezle wrote:
| Likewise, high school football cheerleaders '2 bits, 4
| bits, 6 bits a dollar all for XXXXX stand up and holler"
| harimau777 wrote:
| In the US it would still be fairly common for someone to know
| that "two bits" can mean a quarter, but it's not used much in
| common conversation.
|
| I don't know if this is just me, but I particularly associate
| it with a purposely colloquial or "old timey" register of
| speech. In my head I can envision a carny with a Foghorn
| Leghorn accent selling me a ticket to the Ferris wheel,
| "That'll be two bits, son".
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I'm nearly 40 and spent most of my life in the northern
| midwest. Never heard "two bits" before.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Fun fact: The quarter being worth two bits is part of the same
| "split a dollar up into eights" system that resulted in Spanish
| dollars being called a "pieces of eight".
|
| A Spanish dollar was worth eight Spanish reals. So a quarter of
| a dollar would be worth two Spanish reals; hence two bits.
| Presumably the terminology stuck around even after the switch
| to US dollars.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| regarding "bits" as a monetary term: it took me a solid decade to
| get the joke in "Making Money" regarding why Reacher Gilt taught
| his parrot to say "12.5%"
| messe wrote:
| For those who don't get it, it's a reference to Robert Louis
| Stevenson's _Treasure Island_ which features a parrot that
| repeats "Pieces of Eight" (also known as a bit).
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| If your bird repeats "Pieces of Seven" you should check its
| settings; it might have a parroty error.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://wiki.lspace.org/Main_Page Is a great resource for this;
| so many of the books have deep or obscure British jokes that
| even Native English (simplified) ((American)) don't get.
| miniatureape wrote:
| A made a little "secret knock" authentication demo.
|
| Shave and a haircut is obviously the secret knock used in the
| demo
|
| https://miniatureape.github.io/prohibition/
|
| (Nb: I'm sure this doesn't work great on some devices)
| jodacola wrote:
| Fun! Over a decade ago, my boss and I added a secret knock
| using Shave and a Haircut just like this to our wayfinder
| product, a large touchscreen app used on trade show floors.
|
| It's how we got into our admin to maintenance them at the shows
| and was useful if something was wrong with the onscreen
| keyboard (or we didn't have our own keyboard to attach).
| mattbee wrote:
| I used it for a silly credits screen in football trivia game
| - summer 2002 I could knock on the screen of a many pub
| trivia machine to make it show my name :)
| toxik wrote:
| It just always says scram no matter what I do, I can record a
| single knock and it will still say "scram". Latest Safari on
| latest macOS.
| mkmk wrote:
| > The former prisoner of war and U.S. Navy seaman Doug Hegdahl
| reports fellow U.S. captives in the Vietnam War would
| authenticate a new prisoner's U.S. identity by using "Shave and a
| Haircut" as a shibboleth, tapping the first five notes against a
| cell wall and waiting for the appropriate response.
|
| With the mass export of western culture, I wonder if there are
| any songs, tunes, or patterns like this that would still reliably
| work as a shibboleth.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I imagine they would have to be hyper-local at this point. You
| could authenticate someone from a major metropolis, maybe, but
| not likely the whole of the US.
| mchaver wrote:
| The whole of the US would be hard since national level news
| and culture is what is getting exported, but local knowledge
| by state/region is a possible source. Like pronunciation of
| location names pronunciation (like pronunciation of Tilamuk
| Oregon, Miami Oklahoma, etc.), songs and chants for
| university sports teams, and jingles and phrases from local
| commercials.
|
| Rock Chalk...
| buildsjets wrote:
| I enjoy watching recent Seattle arrivals attempt to
| pronounce Mukilteo, Sequim, and Sekiu.
|
| I grew up in Long Island, New York, and there used to be a
| radio commercial for a local insurance company that bagged
| on national competitors for not being able to pronounce
| Ronkonkoma. Other local place names that were difficult for
| some to pronounce, mostly indigenous language derived, were
| Quogue, Patchogue, Cutchogue, Yaphank, Massapequa,
| Secatogue. If you can rattle those off in 1 or 2 seconds,
| and still throw in a four letter epithet, you can pass as a
| local. F'n Quogue.
| bitwize wrote:
| Louisiana has a long list of place names like this. New
| Orleans street names alone have standard pronunciations,
| many of which are not obvious especially if you've seen
| the name in other contexts. Then there are the city names
| like Plaquemines, Natchitoches, and even New Orleans
| itself (if you say "new or-LEENZ" like Chuck Berry you
| will be immediately flagged as an outsider).
|
| I reminded my wife of Natchitoches every time she
| complained about pronouncing Massachusetts place names
| like Leominster when we lived up north.
| munificent wrote:
| I grew up in New Orleans and now live in Seattle, and all
| of my intuition for pronunciation is just totally broken.
|
| In many places, if you see a "weird" (as in non-English-
| seeming) place name, a reasonable pronunciation guess is
| to just assume it's from a Romance language and pronounce
| it vaguely Spanish/French-ish. This works because so many
| foreign names that are common in the US that aren't
| obviously Anglo/Germanic are from Spanish, French, or
| Italian immigrants.
|
| New Orleans screws that all up, though, because it has
| such a complex intertwined cultural history. In New
| Orleans, place names often have a pronunciation that is
| explicitly weirder and sort of the opposite of phonetic.
| You mentioned "Natchitoches", which is pronounced locally
| like "Nackodish". There is _no_ reasonable algorithm that
| would take as input the spelling of a place name in New
| Orleans and output its pronunciation.
|
| So my usual algorithm for pronouncing an unfamiliar name
| is, "Guess that it's like a Romance language and if not
| assume it's completely weird and unrelated to the
| spelling."
|
| But Native American-derived names in the Pacific
| Northwest often confound that. They don't have Romance
| vowels or emphasis at all (for obvious reasons). And the
| pronunciation often _is_ very close to the spelling. (I
| assume that 's because the spelling came along so much
| more recently here in the PNW than on the East and Gulf
| Coast, and hasn't had as much time to drift.)
|
| My dumb algorithm for pronouncing PNW placenames is
| "Imagine an American who's never even heard of a European
| country much less visited one, and have them pronounce
| the name phonetically." And it works surprisingly well!
|
| For example, "Mukilteo". If you try to throw some Romance
| flair onto it, you'd get "Muh-KILL-tey-o", which isn't
| right (but does sound charmingly exotic). It's anybody's
| guess how that would be pronounced if it were a street in
| New Orleans. Maybe "Mill-toe".
|
| But if you imagine some hopelessly bored midwestern kid
| forced to read it out loud in school and not even trying
| to get it right and they'd go, "Muh-kill-TEE-oh" and...
| that's it.
|
| Likewise, I kept wanting "Anacortez" to sound like some
| Spanish explorer "Anna CorTEZ". But, no, it's just "Anna-
| CORE-tiss". "Humptulips" is literally "hump tulips".
| "Chimacum" is "chim-uh-cum". "Snoqualmie" is "snow-quall-
| me". They all have the most vanilla-sounding
| pronunciation.
|
| I admit that Sequim ("skwim") and Puyallup ("pyoo-A-lup")
| are weird.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Worcester, which will have the advantage of letting us find
| any secret British.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The pronunciation of Chili, NY is an immediate way to ID
| anyone from the Rochester area.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| ...of course it's pronounced "Chye-lie".
|
| I can't talk, though, I come from Ohio where we have a
| city named "Versailles" that's pronounced "vur-SAYLES".
| kcorbitt wrote:
| I once interviewed a candidate for an engineering position in
| Seattle. It quickly turned out that he had fabricated his
| entire work history and education. My first clue was that he
| claimed two years of work experience at Costco HQ in
| Issaquah, Washington but he pronounced it as "Is-ACK" (the
| local pronounciation is "IS-uh-kwah"). No one who spent two
| years in Issaquah would ever pronounce it that way,
| regardless of the accent you're coming from. His story just
| got weirder from there.
|
| [1]: To this day I'm not sure why -- he actually performed
| quite well on the tech part of the interview and might have
| gotten an offer if he hadn't turned out to be so
| untrustworthy!
| floren wrote:
| I'd say the Washington shibboleth should be "Puyallup"
| havblue wrote:
| I heard it in a jpop song, happy summer wedding by morning
| musume, about 20 years ago. They actually worked it into the
| melody of the song. I think they're well aware of it now in the
| East.
| chasd00 wrote:
| ive also heard using the question "who was mickey's old
| girlfriend?" referring to Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
| tdeck wrote:
| Maybe 800-588-2-300?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't know that one. Safari seems to have rendered it as a
| phone number, though. Which makes me wonder, you could
| probably use as a challenge: 867-5...
| doomrobo wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwJQQux0TF0
| eigen wrote:
| it is a phone number, Empire Carpets
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwJQQux0TF0
| pictureofabear wrote:
| Nice try ISIS.
| dan_mctree wrote:
| The Pledge of Allegiance?
| samatman wrote:
| For the US, "where does the shortstop play" is a pretty good
| one. Some people might get through K-12 without learning that,
| but surely not many.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I don't give a damn!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F#Sketch
| humanistbot wrote:
| I'm an American and the best I could answer for that is "on
| the baseball field." I know it is a baseball position. Many
| other countries play baseball too. (Looked it up, oh I
| remember now, but wouldn't have been able to answer on
| demand.)
|
| Wikipedia tells me "baseball is considered the most popular
| sport in parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean,
| and East Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and
| Taiwan. "
|
| I don't think there is such a shibboleth with both good
| precision and recall. American culture is exported around the
| world, but also is no longer a monoculture with only 3
| broadcast networks. Any shibboleth that is ubiquitous enough
| in the US will be exported globally. Any part of US culture
| that is not global probably isn't as universal in the US.
|
| Even basic US civics (which would be known by more educated
| people globally) is far from universal: Only 77% of Americans
| can link the first amendment to freedom of speech and only
| 83% can name even one of the three branches of the federal
| government. And that's of the population of Americans who
| agree to take a university run political knowledge survey
| (https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/political-
| commun...)
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Maybe some TV ad jingle. I bet you could do just the rhythm of
| "give me a BREAK, GIVE me a break, BREAK me off a piece of
| that" and get three even knocks back as a response.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| There's a tune that's very similar to "Shave and a Haircut", but
| in a minor key, replacing the two eights with a triplet and a
| chromatic part. (Notes are: G D Db D Eb D; F# G) Does anyone know
| what its called?
| amelius wrote:
| If you scroll down to the section "Uses in other countries",
| there's the same tune that seems to be in minor.
| emi2k01 wrote:
| Wow, this is very interesting. In Mexico, it's used to insult
| another person. I always thought it was a Mexico-thing.
| amelius wrote:
| For those wondering, this is explained in the section "Uses in
| other countries".
| higgins wrote:
| This always trips me up when I enthusiastically knock on my
| friends door to this tune. Oops
| croes wrote:
| Thought it's about the Maya plugin
|
| https://www.joealter.com/
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Likewise, and HN downvoting your comment related to computer
| graphics is 100% on-brand.
|
| Incidentally Joe Alter was at Maxon for a time recently, that
| was kind of interesting.
| jh3 wrote:
| Wow, so "two bits" is what Roger says in response to Judge Doom
| in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I can hear it now, but I never
| actually knew what was said.
| arp242 wrote:
| I never understood that either. It only took me about 30 years
| to get the joke.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| This is the funniest scene in the entire movie IMHO.
|
| Roger's compulsive, uncontrollable need to respond with "Two
| Bits" kills me every time.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I've seen dozens of memes using the same gag but with a
| popular song or catch phrase.
| MBCook wrote:
| Right. As a toon Roger can't _not_ respond. It's how Doom
| forces him to reveal himself.
| schneems wrote:
| If you do the ending pattern 8 times it becomes "shave and a
| haircut, two bytes"
| nateburke wrote:
| Are there other rhythms that can convey the same or more
| information in fewer knocks?
| mondobe wrote:
| I would argue that three knocks at regular (quick) intervals is
| the minimum to convey "there's someone at the door" rather than
| "something fell down in the other room".
| weinzierl wrote:
| Related: _" na-na na-na na-na"_
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/na-na_na-na_na-na
|
| I always wondered if anyone else noticed, how the Jackson 5
| smuggled it into ABC.
|
| https://youtu.be/ho7796-au8U?t=01m24s
| aeortiz wrote:
| Have you heard it in Queen's "We are the champions"?
|
| "No time for losers, for we are the Champions" ... etc
| bee_rider wrote:
| Queen has to be one of the winners in terms of shortness of
| the message required, you can probably get by with just a
| STOMP-STOMP
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I'm glad I'm not the only one. I noticed that and asked a
| friend, and they didn't see it. To me, when you consider both
| how it sounds and the theme of the song, it has to be
| intentional.
| Biganon wrote:
| In French it's "na-na na-na nere"
| probably_satan wrote:
| I always thought it was "match in a gas-tank...to bits!"
| rsaz wrote:
| Wow, so this is the where Nardwuar's "Doot doola doot do..."
| comes from! I always wondered how it was so ubiquitous that even
| people unfamiliar with his interviews knew how to respond. Very
| interesting.
| kome wrote:
| I was thinking the same!
| xxr wrote:
| I'm interested in learning where you're from--I'd assume
| outside of North America/Western Europe? I take familiarity
| with it so much for granted that it's fascinating that
| someone's familiarity with it comes from Narduwar.
| rsaz wrote:
| I am from North America actually, I'm curious where your
| association with it comes from. I just spend a lot of time on
| youtube/listening to hip hop so have heard Nardwuar do it
| many times. I'm vaguely familiar with it otherwise too, but
| wouldn't be able to place it anywhere.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm American.
|
| It was in the movie Roger Rabbit, which came out when I was
| 5 (40 now). And I know I knew it then.
|
| I assume I learned it from looney tunes or some other
| cartoon. But it was ubiquitous enough _everyone_ knew it.
| To me it feels a little bit like asking how you know who
| Superman is. It's just too engrained.
| harimau777 wrote:
| When I was in high school jazz band, there was a similar lick
| that came at the end of a lot of songs "what makes your big head
| so hard".
|
| Presumably it originally came from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldonia. However, I'm having
| trouble finding references to it's use as a riff/lick. So maybe
| it was something that was specific to our band?
|
| Edit: An example of this lick would be the end of the Beatle's "I
| want to hold your hand": https://youtu.be/v1HDt1tknTc?t=137
| eikaramba wrote:
| i have a little IOT device[0] which has a starting animation with
| LEDS when you reset it. i used that tune for the LED animation
| (without sound) just the timings. funny enough i never knew where
| it came from just that it was in my head and always associated
| with looney tunes. Finally i know its origin :)
|
| [0] https://notific.at
| remarkEon wrote:
| In the survival/extraction/horror game _Escape From Tarkov_ ,
| this rhythm is used to signal "friendly" when there's no other
| means of communication.
| plasticsoprano wrote:
| The Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps ended many of their segments
| in the 80s with "Watch out for that tree" rhythm from the George
| of the Jungle theme. Seen here[1] around 10:20 to 10:22.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlYOBu9CzNI&t=618s
| smugma wrote:
| ... two bits!
| curiousfab wrote:
| Interestingly Wikipedia says the Morse version of it is
| Morse code "dah-di-di-dah-di, dah-dit" ( -**-* -* )
|
| IMHO more common is to send "ESE" (. ... .) - and the other
| station replies "EE" (. .)
|
| https://lcwo.net/ext/player?z=MjR%2BfjIwfn42MDB%2BfkVTRSBFRQ...
|
| "ESE" is a popular Amateur radio call-sign suffix among Morse
| enthusiasts for that reason.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| It's used unironically/noncomedically as a final banjo lick in
| many bluegrass picking songs (the article does mention this). I
| heard it first there and I've always assumed it originated from
| American folk music. Interesting that it's quite a bit older/more
| general.
| huytersd wrote:
| Sounds like it comes from a minstrel show so it's definitely
| American folk.
| scelerat wrote:
| I like the variation where the note for "hair" is played a half
| step flat.
|
| In the example on the wikipedia page, the implied chords for
| "shave and a hair- cut" would be
|
| (original) G / . C G
| shave and a hair cut
|
| (variation) G / . Eb7 D7
| shave and a hair cut
| esafak wrote:
| Principal Ed Rooney gives the finger and two bits in Ferris
| Bueller's Day Off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li_jp3mYXLA
| unethical_ban wrote:
| When I knock on a door, I either use this tune, or the first 7
| notes of Super Mario Bros.
|
| Weird to know some US peeps don't know it!
| WalterBright wrote:
| Two bits meaning 25 cents came from an early practice of cutting
| a Spanish silver dollar into 8 pieces with four cuts.
|
| That's also where "piece of eight" as a reference to the Spanish
| dollar comes from.
| amelius wrote:
| How many catchy tunes would fit that exact pattern?
| User23 wrote:
| [delayed]
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(page generated 2024-02-29 23:00 UTC)