CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
"The world has always been dangerous; all the triumphs of civilization have been snatched from disaster, and optimism has always had its heroic as well as its foolish side." —Lyman Bryson, The Drive Toward Reason
Reblog if you wish your own childhood textbooks had featured the pony named Dark that takes us into the unconscious. From the Elson-Runkel Primer, 1914.
You've heard of a well-dressed person looking "like a million bucks." It traces back to when money itself used to be more presentable. From Lustige Blätter, 1917.