Snippets
Short quotes, odd bits, etc.
Fortune Tellers: Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut & Aldous Huxley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGuk9o8uZBc
Elliott Erwitt
Nikita Krushchev and Richard Nixon, Moscow, 1959.
Glassmakers of Herat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMYE83DJU4Q
http://blog.cmog.org/2013/04/17/the-glassmakers-of-herat/
Line drawing tattoos
Jimi Hendrix
On Voting
There's only one "i" in "voting".
National Anthem
Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Fay Cluff Brown
Fay Cluff Brown (1881-1968) was a physicist and inventor who created and supervised the development of educational exhibits, most notably in the Museum of Science and Industry at New York City’s Museums of the Peaceful Arts. Much of his scientific research focused on the element selenium. Early in his career, Brown invented a device using selenium, which translated printed text into sound.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_82/May_1913/Scholarship_and_the_State
Peter Struycken
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Struycken
copular deixis
copular deixis: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_case
AutoDraw
Autodraw is a web app that looks at what you are drawing and offers up clip-art style images that resemble your sketch.
http://boingboing.net/2017/04/12/this-web-app-guesses-what-you.html
Shining Shields
"Shining Shields" reported by Pliny the Elder
I Cannot Forgive
I Cannot forgive (AKA I Escaped from Auschwitz) by Rudolf Vrba
Wooley
"Commodore Woolsey was of middle height, sailor-built, and of a compact, athletic frame. His countenance was prepossessing, and had singularly the look of a gentleman. In his deportment, he was a pleasing mixture of gentleman-like refinement and seaman-like frankness. His long intimacy with frontier habits could not, and did not, destroy his early training, though it possibly impeded some of that advancement in his professional and general knowledge, which he had so successfully commenced in early life. He was an excellent seaman, and few officers had more correct notions of the rules of discipline. His familiar association with all the classes that mingle so freely together in border life, had produced a tendency, on his excellent disposition, to relax to much in his ordinary intercourse, perhaps, but his good sense prevented this weakness from proceeding very far. Woolsey rather wanted the grimace than the substance of authority. A better-hearted man never lived. All who sailed with him loved him, and he had sufficient native mind, and sufficinet acquired instruction, to command the respect of many of the strongest intellects of the service." — James Fennimore Cooper, Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancthon_Taylor_Woolsey
Cantor Parabola Meets
Hmmm. Oscar Barnack certainly. Lewis Carroll. Allan Turing. Jules Verne. And Georg Cantor of course.
Cassady on Graham
Neal Cassady summed up Bill Graham on sight: "He was out on the street checking tire treads to see if they’d picked up any nickels."
Blowing Mad: Neal Cassady and Music
Books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Konr%C3%A1d
Though Konrád has frequently portrayed his Berettyóúfalu childhood in his novels, and particularly in The Feast in the Garden, he attempted to present this period in a more precise documentary form in two more recent books, Departure and Return (2001) and Up on the Hill During a Solar Eclipse (2003). The first of these books treats a single year – 1944-45 – while the second covers fifty, after beginning with a reflection on the final years of the twentieth century, more precisely the morning solar eclipse of 1999, experienced from the peak of St. György Hill. These books were published separately in Europe, and together in New York as A Guest in My Own Country (2007).
Links
Nonsense
On This Day in History
Latin phrases
- Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. ("Kill them all. For the Lord knows those who are his."). Supposed statement by Abbot Arnaud Amalric before the massacre of Béziers during the Albigensian Crusade, recorded 30 years later, according to Caesarius of Heisterbach. cf. "Kill them all and let God sort them out."
Links to pursue
- Aimee Laurel
- Andrea Graham
- http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/760947/what-cubic-problems-did-tartaglia-and-fior-pose-to-each-other
Overheard (true quotes)
- "I vow to crush all of my children's dreams. That's my main goal in life." (Female co-worker in her mid-thirties.)
Etc.
- Trysting, trysting ... one, two ....
- Florin for your thoughts.
- I Gambol as I Grumble.
- Cards Longa, Vita Brevis.
- As far as I'm concerned, your out of control is under control.
- I'll take it under behoovement.
- Squanderosa: the dinner club for a gilded era.
Pynchon
Art Wars
- Abstract Impressionism (nonfiction)
- Harold Rosenberg (nonfiction)
- Manhattan Project (nonfiction)
- Manhattan Project
- Rock the Cradle (nonfiction)
- Diego Rivera (nonfiction)
- Diego Rivera Shakes His Fist
- Atomic Manhattan (drink)
- Soviet Union (nonfiction)
- Julius Rosenberg (nonfiction)
- Ethel Rosenberg (nonfiction)
- The Book of Daniel (novel) (nonfiction)
Games etc.
- Balloon Wars - speech balloons vs. thought balloons
- Origami Crane - Origami Crane game
- The Stepford Consumers
- Green Treacle 5
- The Bespokesman
- Carrie d'Auouei from Hawaii
- Egocluniac
- Too Early Gig ("Twirly Gig")
- Silk Tornado
- Ocean Front Properly
- Ocean Front Prosperity
- Leonyda, Leona, Lyonah
- Tarski's World
Egypta Commodificata
- Pharaoh Unlimited
- United Afterlife
- Necropolis Associates
- North-South Kingdoms Free Trade Association
- Greater North Kingdom Co-Prosperity Zone
Lords of the Phantom Zone
Mashups
Rodeo Clown MASH_UP Mystery Date
Moon in your perfume MASH_UP Shooting Star
Misc.
- Copper: the Shameless Metal
- Alba Zorba
- Straw dogs, plastics sturgeons -- whatever it takes.
Boat-builders
Boat-builders are a breed apart. What Texans are to land, boat-builders are to water.