~feeds_feedburner_com | Bookmarks (190)
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A Twist - Futility Closet
Here’s a surprise: The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, a 1206 manuscript by the...
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In a Word - Futility Closet
tracasserie n. a state of disturbance or annoyance infamation n. reproach alienigenate adj. born in a...
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Full Service - Futility Closet
In his 1967 book Beyond Language, Dmitri Borgmann points out that every permutation of the three...
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Footwork - Futility Closet
Albert Einstein used to say that he went to his office at the Institute for Advanced...
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"Moral Thermometers" - Futility Closet
Utopian socialist Robert Owen opposed corporal punishment, so when he took over the textile mill at...
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Reinvention - Futility Closet
Above: Antonio Cicognara, Saint George and the Princess, tempera on panel, 1475. Below: Lewis Carroll, Saint...
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Anatomy - Futility Closet
A limerick’s cleverly versed — The second line rhymes with the first; The third one is...
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Jukebox Groceries - Futility Closet
The first automated grocery store in the United States appeared in 1937. At Keedoozle, each customer...
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Maxim - Futility Closet
Recently I was on the northern Queensland coast of Australia, in an Aboriginal reserve. In the...
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Hjelmslev's Theorem - Futility Closet
On each of these two black lines is a trio of red points marked by the...
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Unquote - Futility Closet
“I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.” —...
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Headlong - Futility Closet
There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes...
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Misc - Futility Closet
Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland, married Jack Haley Jr., son of the Tin Man. The...
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Melodic Puns - Futility Closet
In Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, in which the phrase “me and my soul” is sung repeatedly, the...
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Day Tripper - Futility Closet
A letter from Lewis Carroll to Nature, March 31, 1887: Having hit upon the following method...
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Pith - Futility Closet
“One thing you must always remember about Roosevelt is that he is about seven years old.”...
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Simple Enough - Futility Closet
“It often happens that the easiest dissection puzzles are the prettiest,” wrote Henry Dudeney in 1914....
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Oh - Futility Closet
This is a floodlight photographed at night. What are the segmented stalks that seem to surround...
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Concise - Futility Closet
Two hundred kilometers west of Pretoria is a farm called Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. The name, the longest place...
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Line of Thought - Futility Closet
At Mr Currie’s table I met several ingenious persons, who entertained me with curious and interesting...
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Pep Talk - Futility Closet
Glenn Gould composed this piece for the Canadian TV program The Anatomy of Fugue in 1963.
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Object Lesson - Futility Closet
When alchemist Georg Honauer (1572-1597) claimed he could convert iron into gold, Duke Friedrich I of...