~feeds_feedburner_com | Bookmarks (195)

“Rules for the direction of the mind,” from an unfinished treatise by René Descartes: The aim of our studies must be the direction of our mind so that it may form solid and true judgments on whatever matters arise. We must occupy ourselves only with those objects that our intellectual powers appear competent to know certainly and indubitably. As regards any subject we propose...

It is time to bury the nonsense of the ‘incomplete animal.’ As Julian Huxley, the eminent British biologist, once observed concerning human toughness, man is the only creature that can walk twenty miles, run two miles, swim a river, and then climb a tree. Physiologically, he has one of the toughest bodies known; no other species could survive weeks of exposure on the open...

Vatican City has 2.27 popes per square kilometer. Skylab was fined for littering. Five-syllable rhyming words in English: vocabulary, constabulary 8767122 + 3287682 = 876712328768 “We die only once, and for such a long time!” — Molière Above is the only known film footage of Mark Twain, shot at Twain’s Connecticut home in 1909. The women are thought to be his daughters Clara and...

German scientist Gaspar Schott’s 1657 Magia universalis naturæ et artis includes a description of “the music of donkeys”: “the trick, according to Schott, lay in using male donkeys of particular natural pitches and stimulating them to bray with the urine of a female donkey, which will induce the males to make ‘most contented’ noises that the generous might construe as a kind of music.”...

rarissima n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton identifies five types of “persons who meddle with books”: “A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.” “A bibliographe is a describer of books...

Proposed cabinet of Dizzy Gillespie, who ran for president in 1964: Secretary of State: Duke Ellington Director of the CIA: Miles Davis Secretary of Defense: Max Roach Secretary of Peace: Charles Mingus Librarian of Congress: Ray Charles Secretary of Agriculture: Louis Armstrong Ambassador to the Vatican: Mary Lou Williams Travelling Ambassador: Thelonious Monk Attorney General: Malcolm X He said his running mate would be...

These circles display an odd property — the three are linked, but no two are linked. A.G. Smith exhibited this curious variant in Eureka in 1967: “I leave it to the reader the problem of finding whether Knotung is knotted, and if so, whether it is equivalent to the Borromean Rings, with which it shares the property that cutting any one loop releases the...

In 1975 British biologist Peter Scott proposed dubbing the Loch Ness Monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx after a blurry underwater photograph seemed to show one of the creature’s fins. He’d intended the name to mean “monster of Ness with diamond-shaped fin,” but the Daily Telegraph pointed out that its letters could be rearranged to spell “Monster hoax by Sir Peter S.” American lawyer Robert Rines, who...

Dion is a person, a whole man. Theon is that part of Dion that does not include the left foot. Theon is a “proper part” of Dion — he’s part of Dion but not identical with him. Now suppose we remove Dion’s left foot. What has happened? Do we now have two numerically different objects composed of the same matter and occupying the same...

Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language defines lizard as “an animal resembling a serpent, with legs added to it.”

“Three blokes walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.” — Bill Bailey

The Scientific Monthly reported a startling discovery in October 1952: the Schuss-yucca, a rare desert plant whose stalk could grow 10 feet in 2 minutes. Readers’ letters generally joined in the spirit of the hoax — including one that mentioned a boxer who “stopped hiking long enough to inspect a yucca at just the wrong time.” The plant shot up 16 feet at that...

In It’s About Time (1935), Gerald Lynton Kaufman tells the fanciful story of sailor Timothy J. McCloskey, who was born on Leap Day 1876 and thus had celebrated only five birthdays when he went to sea in 1896. No leap year was observed in 1900, and he awoke after the night of February 28, 1904, to find that his ship had crossed the international...

Sign on an English industrial computer, October 1968: ACHTUNG ALLES LOOKENPEEPERS Das computermachine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitssparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bei das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets — relaxen und watch das blinkenlights. (Via Eureka.)

Little-used words: anopisthograph adj. having writing on one side only antapology n. a reply to an apology antephialtic n. something that prevents nightmares centesimate v. to select one person in every hundred for a punishment citramontane adj. relating to this side of the mountains demonachize v. to remove monks from frounce n. a canker in the mouth of a hawk hendecad n. a period...

I recollect a nurse call’d Ann Who carried me about the grass, And one fine day a fine young man Came up, and kiss’d the pretty lass: She did not make the least objection! Thinks I, “Aha! When I can talk I’ll tell Mamma.” — And that’s my earliest recollection. — Frederick Locker-Lampson

Two thousand years ago, a Roman man pressed his hand into a brick that had been set out to dry before firing. The brick is now held at the Archaeological Museum of Cherchell in Algeria. From Reddit’s ArtefactPorn.

Aphorisms of Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875): The business of the head is to form a good heart, and not merely to rule an evil one, as is generally imagined. There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius. The world will find out that part of your character which concerns it; that which...

William Browne’s 17th-century poem “Behold, O God!” forms a sort of symbolic acrostic. The text can be read conventionally, scanning each line from left to right, but the letters shown here in bold also spell out three verses from the New Testament: Luke 23:42: “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” Matthew 27:46: “O God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”...

A puzzle by National Security Agency mathematician Katrina J., from the agency’s September 2017 Puzzle Periodical: Problem: Arabella the Spider is saving food for the long winter. Arabella wants to store the bugs she caught on 26 fallen leaves, so she can find them later. But, Arabella doesn’t want to waste time by going through any leaves more than once. In Arabella’s original web,...

On the evening of June 18, 1875, a fire broke out near a bonded storehouse on Ardee Street in Dublin, and by 9:30 some 5,000 hogsheads of whiskey had begun to explode in the heat. “Within an hour,” reported the Irish Examiner, “the surrounding streets resembled canals of flame.” The “blazing stream … turned into Ardee-street, passed Watkins’ Brewery without damage, but catching the...

After his Connecticut home was burgled in September 1908, Mark Twain posted a sign on the front door: NOTICE To the Next Burglar There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth. You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens. If you want the basket put the kittens in...