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.
"You have to be able to laugh at anything and everything. The statues of the Buddha all smile, and not without reason, whilst the Christian saints are all bathed in tears. If people would smile more often, there would probably be fewer wars." —Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face
"In the psychological development of the child, there is a step-by-step progression from the primal smile to the smile of embarrassment, joyful laughter, laughter at a comic situation, laughter in a group, aggressive laughter at an outsider, and finally (a somewhat depressing climax) the laugher of Schadenfreude. ... [A]t each step laughter signifies an experience of relief (Entlastung), both physically and psychologically." —Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (1997)
The evolution of the smile and laugh, from Frans de Waal's "Darwin's Legacy and the Study of Primate Visual Communication" (PDF), via Cystalpunk.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.