On 2/20/2012 11:52 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull<stephen@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.
In US politics, the first I remember was the Drug Czar about that time. It really came into currently during Clinton's admin. -- Terry Jan Reedy