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.
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The Right Word

May 30, 2007 (permalink)

Nameless characters, anathema to critics, lend some fun irony when they get tagged from the get-go:

"When a nameless man (Siffredi) prevents a nameless woman (Casar) from committing suicide, she pays him to visit her at her deserted house and watch her 'where she's unwatchable.'" [source]

"Romantic rumblings start when a nameless man (Aaron Eckhart) meets a nameless woman (Bonham Carter) at his sister's wedding." [source]

"After his wife dies, the rough-cut and intentionally nameless 'man' (Jozsef Madaras) eventually coerces the 'woman' (Julianna Nyako) into doing his housework for a small remuneration." [source]

"We follow a nameless man (Nayef Fahoum Daher), content with his coffee and cigarettes, who tries to keep order in a rancorous neighborhood." [source]

"A nameless man (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from the city deep into the Mexican countryside, looking for a place to die." [source]

"One evening she meets a nameless man (Sam Neill) who, after coming back to her place, takes her hostage on his yacht." [source]

"A nameless woman (Kim Novak) plays a Madeleine Elster possessed by her ancestor." [source]

"This time, the action – well, inaction: our hero is at his most animated when rolling cigarettes – centres on a nameless man (Markku Peltola) who, having been beaten senseless, wakes up and finds himself among the homeless in Helsinki harbour." [source]

"Fight Club starts out, interestingly enough, about a nameless man (the Narrator, played by Edward Norton) who is a relatively successful employee of 'a major automobile manufacturer.'" [source]

"The film's opening credits flash with a frantic, dramatic score, and we are introduced to a nameless woman (Vanessa Redgrave) unable to sleep in a dingy third-world hotel." [source]

"This nameless man is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud." [source]

"Hope (Nadja Brand) and her young daughter are abducted and brought to a remote, terrifying forest by a mysterious and nameless man (Eric Colvin)." [source]

"So Laure lets a nameless man (Vincent Lindon) into her car to give him a lift." [source]

When an actor's name is unavailable, it's tempting to fill in the blank with a famous name ...

"At the door is a guy who shall remain nameless, so I will call him KEITH RICHARDS for the sake of naming him something other than 'nameless man.'" [source]

... or a deliberately mundane one:

"The Narrator is a nameless man in the story (so let’s call him Jack)" [source]

Even when a nameless character is named "Nameless," naming him is still irresistible:

"The movie begins with a nameless man (named Nameless — played by Jet Li) being delivered to a meeting with the king who is going to reward our hero for successfully killing the three people in his land who have been trying to assassinate the king for the length of his reign." [source]

Sometimes, even a scriptwriter can't resist naming a nameless character:

"Tuco and the nameless man, who is called 'Blondie' throughout the film, are two con artists in cahoots." [source]

___________

Jonathan wrote:

This brings to mind that hard-cussing French film star, Nom de Nom.
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A third award for One-Letter Words: A Dictionary

Along with the award is my favorite description to date:

STEP INSIDE DESIGN MAGAZINE, Annual 2007 issue:

by Taylor Stapleton

Author Craig Conley has a literary mind and a designer's reverence for individual letters, a secular devotion made manifest in Mucca Design's work for his One Letter Words: A Dictionary. The pristine white volume has the proportions and gold foil embellishment of a child's first Bible, while its uncoated jacket paper offers the tactile richness of leather.

Where Conley has unearthed the letters' literary meanings, art director Matteo Bologna's Decora and Infidelity typefaces showcase their forms with all the sensual flourish of an illuminated manuscript. The latter typeface's name suggests sinful indulgence, and indeed the book's design is not as pure as its sacred allusions suggest. Conley opens with the notion of "an entire alphabet of scarlet letters," and Mucca's color scheme is accordingly flush with the rosy hues of flesh. Designer Cristina Ottolini claims she simply set out to create "a handsome volume that would appeal to bibliophiles, the sort of person interested in the rarefied topic of one-letter words." The result is sure to please even the most zealous lover of language.
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May 28, 2007 (permalink)

"Gobbledygook" in recent news:

Chinese translation systems (New Yorker)
Self-conscious dialog (Riverfront Times)
Radical leftist ideology (Human Events)
The "foreign" language of mathematics (MarketWatch)
Conspiracy theories about the Illuminati secret society in "Tomb Raider" (Ottowa Citizen)
Baby talk (Science Now)
The Bible as seen by secularists (Post Chronicle)
Pseudo-science (Blogger News Network)
Postmodernism (Town Hall)
"The Gobbledygook Manifesto" viral marketing campaign (eMediaWire)
Lawyer mumbo jumbo (MarketWatch)
Impenetrable Congressional legislation (Small Gov Times)
Alan Greenspan rhetoric (MarketWatch)
Federal programs loaded with bureaucratic jargon (Gwinnett Daily Post)
Marxist-Leninist lingo (Journal of Turkish Weekly)
Phony mysticism (Malaysia Star)
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May 7, 2007 (permalink)


Andy Warhol portrait by André Koehne, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Andy Warhol famously predicted that in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes.  Now that the future is already here, there are those who beg to differ with Andy, and for a fascinating variety of reasons!

In his novel Rant (2007), Chuck Palahniuk suggests that "Andy Warhol was wrong.  In the future, people won't be famous for fifteen minutes.  No, in the future, everyone will sit next to someone famous for at least fifteen minutes."

Movie critic Frank Schneck posits that the word should be film, not fame: "Andy Warhol was wrong.  It's not just that everyone is going to have 15 minutes of fame.  In the not-so-distant future, every person on the planet is going to have a film made about him or her" (Hollywood Reporter, 2000).  Others seem to agree, in a roundabout way:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Today it seems that anyone can parlay their 15 minutes of fame into 15 cable episodes, with an option for a second season."
—"It's Unreal How Easily Reality Shows Pop Up," Rocky Mountain Daily News, July 20, 2002

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Everyone's not going to be famous for 15 minutes; instead, we will all have our own talk shows."
—"Ex-Dancer, Ex-First Son Tries a New Career: Talk Show Host," Buffalo News, Aug. 16, 1991

Then there are those who argue that the 15 minutes are recurring:

"The couple who wrote and performed the theme to the 1970s TV series "Happy Days" are on a media blitz in Colorado Springs this weekend, proving that Andy Warhol was wrong. Not only will everyone in the world get 15 minutes of fame, they'll get another 15 minutes when the nostalgia factor kicks in a couple of decades later." 
—"These Days Are Happy for Couple," The Gazette, March 6, 1997

"Andy Warhol was wrong ... People don't want 15 minutes of fame in their lifetime. They want it every night."
—"Pseudo's Josh Harris," BusinessWeek, Jan. 26, 2000

"Andy Warhol was wrong. With the release of the film, Factory Girl, he and his 'superstars' are about to get another 15 minutes of fame."
—"Straight to the Point," Daily Mail, Sept. 27, 2006

"As it turns out, Andy Warhol was wrong: not everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. But with bad prospects and a good agent, those who once were can now extend the clock thanks to unprecedented TV demands for the vaguely familiar." 
—Vinay Menon, "More Dancing with Quasi-Celebs," Toronto Star, March 19, 2007

Not fame, but Hitler:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes."
—"Originality is the First Casualty of War," Austin American-Statesman, April 1, 1999

"Andy Warhol got it wrong. It's not fame everyone will have in the future; It's a chance to scream at someone else on TV."
—"Clinton Vs. Dole About Ratings, Not Discourse," Witicha Eagle, March 11, 2003

Not fame, but privacy:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. The wild-eyed artist boldly proclaimed that in the future everyone would have 15 minutes of fame.  Warhol's fortune-telling skills were nowhere as visionary as his art. Warhol should have predicted with the explosion of reality television that in the future everyone will have 15 minutes of privacy."
—"One Day, We'll Beg for Privacy," Fresno Bee, Aug. 3, 2000

Not fame, but Colorado citizenship:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. It turned out we were all from Colorado."
—Barry Fagin, "Montel Williams and Me," Independence Institute, Nov. 1, 2000

Fame, yes, but in the past, not in the future:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Everybody already has been famous––some time last week. It just depends on who’s telling it and who’s listening."
—"The Remembering Game," Depot Town Rag, Sept. 1990

Fame, yes, but not 15 minutes exactly:

"The culture-shock doctor explained that science had discovered that Andy Warhol was wrong about fame; He had the right idea, but his figures were off."
—"The Sting of Cable Backlash," Miami Herald, Oct. 9, 1983

"'Andy Warhol was wrong,' Neal Gabler said. 'He was right when he said everyone will be famous, but wrong about the 15 minutes.'"
—Marjorie Kaufman, "Seeking the Roots of a Celebrity Society," New York Times, Dec. 11, 1994

"Andy Warhol got it wrong by 12 minutes. People have three minutes of fame; long enough to walk down a catwalk and back."
—Guardian, July 7, 2002

"Warhol was wrong ... cos he was 10 minutes off; it's really five minutes now."
—"Meat Loaf Criticises Academic 'Laziness,'" TVNZ, March 9, 2010

Fame, yes, but for more like 15 seconds:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Everyone can be famous these days, all right, but the renown lasts more like 15 seconds, not minutes."
—"Smile! You're Part of a Video Society," Greensboro News and Record, May 20, 1990

"Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that everyone would have 15 minutes of fame; extras can look forward to having only seconds of movie glory."
—"12 Hours' Extra Work for a Brief Moment of Glory," Derby Evening Telegraph, Nov. 9, 2006

"[A cuckoo clock bird speaking:] Andy Warhol was wrong; I only get 15 seconds of fame."
—Mike Peters, "Mother Goose and Grimm," July 27, 2005

"Andy Warhol was wrong. In my case, at least, fame clocked in at only 6:42 minutes, and that was before the final cut."
—Wilborn Hampton Lead, "Confessions of a Soap Opera Extra," New York Times, Dec. 31, 1989

"Andy Warhol was wrong when he said that everyone will enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame. The time frame he referred to might one day be measured in seconds."
—Warren Adler, "The Dividing Line," Aug. 10, 2009

Fame, yes, but for more than 15 minutes:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. You can be famous for a lot longer than 15 minutes, if you're clever enough."
—"Oliver's Brand of Revitalisation," Marketing Week, April 7, 2005

"'We were sure that Andy Warhol was wrong, that it would last more than 15 minutes,' says Hilary Jay.'"
—"Maximal Art and Its Rise from the Ashes," Philadelphia Inquirer, July 25, 1993

"When it comes to the Super Bowl, Andy Warhol was wrong. Its cast of characters has been famous for 25 years, and will be 25 years from now."
—"Simply the Best," Denver Post, Jan. 27, 1991

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Long after the buzzer sounded on Mark Fuhrman's 15 minutes of fame, he just won't go away."
—"Fuhrman Overstaying His Welcome," June 10, 2001

"Andy Warhol was wrong: sometimes you do get more than 15 minutes of fame, even if you're not Greg Louganis."
National Review, Dec. 10, 2004

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Not everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Many people get more than that. Like Dr. Bernie Dahl."
The Nashua Telegraph, Dec. 3, 2000

"Andy Warhol was wrong. In the Ultimate universe we’ve got more than 15 minutes."
—"Hack Meets Hacker," Aspen Magazine, Midsummer 1996

"Andy Warhol was wrong … you can have 45 minutes of fame, not just 15!"
—"Invitation to Present at the OTM SIG Conference in June 2009," Dec. 22, 2008

"Andy Warhol was wrong in my case; my fifteen minutes of fame have been more like three hours."
—Ken Eichele, My Best Day in Golf: Celebrity Stories of the Game They Love, 2003

"Andy Warhol was wrong; I was a hero for at least fifteen hours." 
—Gene GeRue, "Tomato Madness," Dec. 17, 2006

"Andy Warhol was wrong.  People aren't famous for fifteen minutes; they're famous forever."
—Arthur Black, Black & White and Read All Over, 2004

Fame, yes, but "in" 15 minutes, not "for" 15 minutes:

"Andy Warhol was wrong, when he predicted that in the future, people would become famous for 15 minutes. This is the future. Now people become famous in 15 minutes. Take Duran Duran."
—Ethlie Ann Vare, "New Echoes of Duran Duran," New York Times, Nov. 24, 1985

Fame, yes, but without measure:

"Andy Warhol was wrong. In the future, everyone will not be famous for 15 minutes. Everyone will just be famous."
—"Cooking Up Celebrity Storm," Boston Globe, Jan. 21, 2000

"Andy Warhol was wrong. No one Is famous for just 15 minutes. These days you get to be famous whenever you feel like it.  Just like everyone else."
—"Now, Everyone is Famous! Who Knew?" Associated Press, July 16, 1999

"'Andy Warhol was wrong,' says Newman, who completed his trek in 1987. 'If I wanted to be boring, I could live on this for the rest of my life."
—"Book Lists Sometime-Dubious Firsts," Dallas Morning News, July 31, 1988

"Andy Warhol was wrong about one thing: His own 'fifteen minutes of fame' have never ended."
—Barnes & Noble, review of Andy Warhol Treasures, 2009

"In the internet age, bad headlines no longer go away and Andy Warhol was wrong about his fifteen minutes of fame. If you are infamous now, you are infamous forever."
—Peter Walsh, "Curtis Warren: the Celebrity Drug Baron," Telegraph, Oct. 7, 2009

The opposite of fame:

"Milwaukee futurist David Zach says Andy Warhol was wrong: We aren't going to get that 15 minutes of fame after all. 'It's just the opposite,' Zach says."
—Tim Nelson, "The Skinny," St. Paul Pioneer Press, Aug. 27, 1998

"I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes."
—Shepard Fairey, Swindle #8, 2006

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Most of us will never come close to being famous—even for 15 minutes."
—"Stepping into the Spotlight," Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 1999

Fifteen, yes, but not minutes:

"Andy Warhol was wrong: not everyone deserves 15 minutes of fame. Some people deserve 160 words of recognition ..."
—"Unsung Heroes," What Magazine, Jan. 1, 2004

"Andy Warhol was wrong: for 15 minutes, everybody gets to be a starting quarterback for The Saints."
—"Tyson Still Has Issues," Atlanta Journal, Oct. 16, 1998

"Andy Warhol was wrong: in the future, everyone won't be famous for 15 minutes, but everyone will have their own Web site."
—"Book Review: The Non-Designer's Web Book," Information Management Journal, July 1, 1999

"Andy Warhol was wrong. We've all had our 15 minutes, now we all want a mini-series!"
—"Boy First Believed On Runaway Balloon Found After Frantic Search," New York Post, Oct. 16, 2009

"Andy Warhol was wrong. Everyone won't just have 15 minutes of fame. One day—soon, I suspect—we all will have our very own talk shows."
—Linda L.S. Schulte, "Word's Worth," Baltimore Sun, Jan. 31, 1996

Fame, yes, but perhaps 30 minutes:

"There are times in life when you just hope that Andy Warhol was wrong and that a merciful God will grant you a second 15 minutes of fame."
—"Confessions of an Embarrassed Viagra Expert," University Wire, Sept. 24, 1998

Just plain wrong:

"The endless parade of disposable rock bands, special-effects movies, potboiler thriller novels and TV sitcoms makes me think that Andy Warhol was wrong."
—"Longtime Newsweek Art Critic Peter Plagens is Also a Painter," Newsweek, April 25, 2002

"A TV producer played by Joe Mantegna muses that Andy Warhol was wrong about everybody being famous for 15 minutes."
—"Allen's 'Celebrity' Witty, Wicked But Shallow," Wichita Eagle, Dec. 9, 1998

"Andy Warhol was wrong - everyone does NOT have their 15 minutes of fame and the overwhelming majority of You're a Star hopefuls would have told him that."
—"The Fame Game's Just Not Worth It," The Mirror, Aug. 25, 2006

"Andy Warhol was wrong. When you’re a Vanderbilt running back, you’re not famous for 15 minutes."
—Anthony Lane, Nashville City Paper, Nov. 5, 2004

"My main conclusion: Andy Warhol was wrong—we won't all get 15 minutes of fame."
—"Using the Internet to Examine Patterns of Foreign Coverage," Nieman Reports, Sept. 22, 2004

"Warhol was wrong! He neglected to factor in the 15 minutes of one's own alter-egos."
—"Warhol was Wrong," GenderFun.com, May 29, 2009

"Warhol was wrong. The message is clear: we do not want your 15 minutes of fame, you can shove it."
—Alix Sharkey, "Saturday Night: The Techno Ice-Cream Van is on its Way," The Independent, June 26, 1993
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May 5, 2007 (permalink)

"Incredible and yet inevitable."  When I looked up these lyrics from a song, Google returned zero results.  In addition to feeling disappointed that the song lyrics weren't available online, I'm also feeling somewhat sad that nothing out there is considered "incredible and yet inevitable."  (Once Google spiders this webpage, it will finally return one result for "incredible and yet inevitable."  But that won't count.)
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April 25, 2007 (permalink)


Can you guess this cartoon's caption?  Highlight this black bar to reveal answer: A tough nut to crack..
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April 19, 2007 (permalink)

In a universe defined by a spreadsheet, intangibles don’t exist.
—Tongaroa, Re-Imagineering blog

The Voynich Manuscript is "a mysterious illustrated book with incomprehensible contents.  It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520 by an unknown author in an unidentified script and unintelligible language" (Wikipedia).  Every few years, another scientist holds a press conference to declare the book a "hoax."

The book (see high-resolution scans on flickr) is undoubtably an historical document, an artwork, and an insight into psychology (as the creator's brainstorm).  To call it a "hoax" seems so dismissive.  Indeed, it's like missing the forest for the trees.  Whether or not the document encodes specific meaning, it exists and has significance.  One is reminded of ancient petroglyphs, which could be a form of writing, or merely whimsical doodles/graffiti, but certainly "meaningful" and worthy of study (or at least appreciation).  I'm all for computer scientists and cryptographers, but these so-called explanations of the Voynich Manuscript tell more about the tunnel vision of those fields than they do about the manuscript itself.  And I thought only statisticians still cited statistical probabilities with a straight face, everyone else in the world having realized that statistics are, unfortunately, as useless as tomorrow's weather forecast!
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April 17, 2007 (permalink)

Here's an excerpt from an article about how "the last semicolon gets the last laugh":

Written language captures things that spoken language never could. Does anyone know, for example, what a semicolon sounds like?

Consider the sentence "Order your furniture on Monday, take it home on Tuesday." With a comma, it means that if you order your furniture on Monday, you can take it home on Tuesday. "Order your furniture on Monday; take it home on Tuesday" is different, however; it is a double command. But sometimes you can't tell the difference between the two sentences simply by hearing them read aloud. You need to see their punctuation to detect the difference.

If you look carefully, Mr. [Geoff] Nunberg said, the world of punctuation has its own rules of power politics. Commas are the weakest, semicolons are middleweight powers and colons are superpowers. Look more carefully and there is even a ranking among semicolons.

The Middleweight of Punctuation Politics
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April 15, 2007 (permalink)

I came across a reference to the film "I Escaped from the Gestapo" (1943), but I somehow misread the last word as "Geppetto" and thought the film was about Pinocchio running away from home.
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April 2, 2007 (permalink)


Barry Foy has created a pioneering culinary reference work consisting entirely
of lies.  He explains:

The market for food books appears, at last, to have begun devouring itself.  Nearly every topic worth writing about has been written about, and the well of reliable, interesting information on food, once thought inexhaustible, is beginning to run dry.

In circumstances such as these, author Barry Foy believes that an honorable writer has nowhere to go but sideways, into the realm of lies, misleading claims, and baseless speculation. With its hundreds of entries on subjects ranging from ingredients to utensils to techniques, plus its you-are-there historical coverage of everything from the little-known Icelandic roots of cheese to the strange case of Emil the Talking Black-Eyed Pea, The Devil's Food Dictionary promises much-needed relief to the foodish reader who finds him/herself sagging under the burden of informativeness and credibility.

Here's an hilarious sample from Foy's book:

smorgasbord  also smörgasbord; smorgäsbord; smorgasbörd; smörgasbörd; smörgäsbord; smorgäsbörd; smörgäsbörd; smörgäsbörrd: A lavish Swedish buffet traditionally consisting of four courses plus dessert. The first course is always herring, the undisputed king of Scandinavian foods. This can include pickled, smoked, and/or fried herring, as well as pickled smoked herring, pickled fried herring, and fried smoked herring. The second course moves on to other types of seafood, such as salmon in herring sauce, herring-smoked eels, and jellied sprats (a relative of the herring). Third come meats such as veal and beef in various delectable forms, but the unpopularity of those dishes--owing to their lack of herring--usually results in their being donated to Somali refugee centers. The fourth course features traditional hot dishes, such as sprat gratin (herring can be substituted), baked onions stuffed with herring paste, and/or meatballs molded in the shape of a herring (or a sprat). The dessert lineup is enshrined in tradition and unfailingly includes herringberry coffee cake, creamy cheesecake from which all herring (or sprat) bones have been painstakingly removed, and s'mores, the chocolate-marshmallow-graham cracker confection after which the smorgasbord is named.
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March 31, 2007 (permalink)


The Farkleberries website is located here.
The nifty Farkleberries "Chicago Style Culture Warbloggery" site (with its marvelous Aztec Ouroboros logo) had this to say about my all-vowel and no-vowel dictionaries:

When you've got to have the right word - even if vowels are verboten and consonants are compulsory, or vice versa - these online Strange Dictionaries are just the ticket.
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March 12, 2007 (permalink)

Last weekend I reorganized my bookcase according to spine color.  The colors move in a zig-zag pattern, from top left (brown) to top right (red), then right to left (red to orange and yellow), and so on.  My friend Ken cautioned me not to "judge a book by its color."


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February 21, 2007 (permalink)


Literary Lettuce Leaves

I stumbled across someone described as "a literary lettuce-leaf."  It is a withering put down, presumably; a "literary artichoke" wouldn't sound so limp and would offer a more substantial heart within.  And yet, perhaps enchanted by the alliteration, I find myself intrigued by the idea of a literary lettuce leaf.

Here's a lovely Lebanese folk song concerning a lettuce leaf:

The roses are full, full
The roses are always on my mind.
I love the roses only
And, O my soul, the lettuce leaf.

In a poem by Ricardo Sternberg, a lettuce leaf becomes the shroud of an expired mouse.

In Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito, mayonnaise cloaks a lettuce leaf like a magician's handkerchief, restoring the leaf's capacity to delight:

Yellow as summer sunlight, soft as young thighs, smooth as a Baptist preacher's rant, falsely innocent as a magician's handkerchief, mayonnaise will cloak a lettuce leaf, some shreds of cabbage, a few hunks of cold potato in the simplest splendor, recycling their dull character, making them lively and attractive again, granting them the capacity to delight the gullet if not the heart.

Fun fact: "In medieval belief, there were many ways a demon could enter the body, sometimes via so seemingly innocuous a vehicle as an unblessed lettuce leaf eaten by a careless nun." —Hilaire Kallendorf, Exorcism and Its Texts
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February 16, 2007 (permalink)


Letters in the Sky

In 1933, a German ship cruising in the Baltic sea projected letters onto the clouds in the night sky using a giant searchlight.  Here is a dramatic photo.

The same year, airplanes in the USA were equipped with "player piano" rolls which controlled lights to form huge letters across the wings.

Speaking of letters in the sky, I love this quotation from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, by the way):

The only live, bright things were the stars.  Their constellations looked to Drawlight like gigantic, glittering letters—letters in an unknown alphabet.  For all he knew the magician had formed the stars into these letters and used them to write a spell against him.
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February 11, 2007 (permalink)


Give an Inch, Take a Mile

At Inch Beach (on the Dingle peninsula), the water recedes a mile at low tide.

"In what way are an inch and a mile alike?" is a question in a neuropsychological test (from this compendium).

In poetry, an inch of verse can traverse miles.  Praising T.S. Eliot, Robert Francis wrote:

He moved from the Mississippi to the Thames
and we moved with him a few miles or inches.

Speaking of the Thames, the scale of this map of London from 1786 is one inch to a mile.

It has been said that at "Mile Zero" of the Oregon Coast, nearly every inch is scenic (Portland Hikes by Art Bernstein and Andrew Jackman).

"Victory is not won in miles but in inches.  Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more." —Louis L'Amour

Similarly, "Battle is a matter of inches, not miles.  The inches that separate a man from his enemy." —Bernard Cornwell, Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur

The immortal inchworm vs. the infinitely stretchy rubber band:

An inchworm is at one end of an infinitely stretchy mile-long rubber band. He
walks an inch. The rubber band is then stretched to two miles. It stretches
evenly along its entire length, so the inchworm has gotten a one-inch free ride,
and is now two inches from the end. He walks another inch, and is now three
inches from the end. The rubber band stretches another mile, to three miles
long. He gets a 1 1/2 inch free ride out of this stretch. The pattern of walking
an inch and stretching a mile repeats itself indefinitely.

(a) Will the inchworm ever reach the other end? Prove your answer. Hint:
Use the asymptotic bounds on harmonic series.

(b) Will the inchworm ever reach the other end if, instead of increasing by a
mile, the rubber band doubles in length at each step? Prove your answer.

—via this test (.pdf) from an Analysis of Algorithms class.

However, "a mile wide and an inch deep" involves a different sort of math.

Ultimately, "The very idea that space is separated by inches, miles, light-years, and parsecs is but an illusion, as ephemeral as ephemeral as the shadows in Plato's cave." —Win Wenger, The Einstein Factor
#inchworm
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February 8, 2007 (permalink)

A councilman in New York City has asked for a "symbolic moratorium on the use of the n-word."  Columnist Charles Lee is skeptical of legislating language.  He says, "After the n-word, politicians could eradicate the infamous f-word and mark a plethora of other 'one-letter' words on their linguistic hit lists."  He concludes, "The n-word is not the only offensive word.  Perhaps we can attribute this to the fact that language is, to a certain extent, untamable.  Yet surely we can attribute it to the illimitable freedom of speech upon which this country was established."
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February 3, 2007 (permalink)

Ann Althouse says: "I'm fascinated by the almost legible.  Have you ever imagined there were words somewhere that you could almost read?"  She offers this intriguing illustration.

This sign has more distinct letters but is equally illegible.


"A sky full of stars arranged itself in an unreadable tombstone motto."
—Fred Chappell, I Am One of You Forever

Speaking of epitaphs in the sky, the Orion Correlation Theory proposes a relationship between the Egyptian pyramids of Giza and the alignment of stars in the Orion constellation.  Here's a big graphic depicting the correlation.

More mundane but equally mysterious, here's an unreadable funeral marker inside a rock-lined grave in Texas.


"In places the ink was faded, the script unreadable.  It appeared to be a poem."
—Kelly Jones, The Seventh Unicorn

Here's an unreadable 18-line poem, scrawled by Mark W.


"He was writing tiny, illegible doodles on big sheets of paper years before anyone else."
—Edmund White, My Lives

Here's an unreadable page of doodles, with text from an off-world language.


"Concrete poems are often close to graphic art and may be unreadable in a conventional way."
—Stephen Matterson and Darryl Jones, Studying Poetry

Here's unreadable text art, by a program that encodes text as binary and represents the resulting code visually.
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January 22, 2007 (permalink)

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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January 17, 2007 (permalink)


"I knew that the network had determined that my program was going over the heads of Middle America, and, as I waited alone in the Vice President's office, I pondered my inevitable cancellation.  Finally, I heard the door creak open with an ominous 'peorrrrrrrria.'"
—Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

(Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0.  Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.)

#jonathan caws-elwitt
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January 11, 2007 (permalink)

Wilfred Funk once collected a list of "the most beautiful words in English." The list includes such words as dawn, tranquil, hush, golden, halcyon, camellia, myrrh, jonquil, lullaby, and melody. Pictured below are four more words from Funk's list. Can you guess them?

The answer: Top left: TENDRIL. Top right: ANEMONE. Bottom left: FAWN. Bottom right: CHALICE. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

There are lots more lists of beautiful (and not so beautiful) English words at A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia.

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