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.
At first glance, we assumed this was a spirit double rising from a body, given the context. Illustration by C. B. Falls. From "Stranger Than Fiction" by Arthur Conan Doyle, in Collier's, 1915.
Either her reflection has escaped from the mirror or her light body is happier than she is. We, too, have smiled for a mirror but weren't actually feeling it. From Peace College's 1972 yearbook.
It's all too easy to cry "Fake!" We ran this through our custom Uncanny Detector app, and it is indeed a confluence of two universes in which a man meets a taller version of himself. From Washington College's 1976 yearbook.