Notable Uses
Some of the boys she knew from college were trying to dodge the draft by taking graduate courses, "underwater basketweaving and things like that," as Vonda contemptuously put it. —The phrase was used during the Vietnam War era to describe the sort of major that many young men who would otherwise not have entered college undertook to escape the draft. US Senator Gordon L. Allott referred in 1968 to "the situation that we were in after World War II where we had universities setting up courses in underwater basketweaving, and all this sort of thing". Senator Robert Byrd used the phrase in 1969 when questioning the use of funds to offer professional training to Cuban refugees. The University of Portsmouth, UK, has a joke syllabus for underwater basket weaving on the Technology faculty pages, and another joke syllabus proposal was posted by a University of Central Arkansas student magazine.
US Punk band NOFX referred to an underwater basket weaving course in their song Anarchy Camp.
Read more about this topic: Underwater Basket Weaving
Famous quotes containing the word notable:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“a notable prince that was called King John;
And he ruled England with main and with might,
For he did great wrong, and maintained little right.”
—Unknown. King John and the Abbot of Canterbury (l. 2–4)