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.
Accordion phobia or the "anti-squeezebox stance" (Alan Lomax) speaks to "the power struggles between social classes as well as to the makings, politics, and aesthetics of popular music" (The Accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More). The caption here reads, "Would you mind moving further along? There is a sick lady in the house opposite." From Pearson's, 1911.
From the Technique yearbook of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1895. (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)