Ramblings & ephemera
From Wade Davis’ “Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife” (Boing Boing: 26 September 2008):
The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 2):
TALBOT:
If we be English deer, be then in blood;
Not rascal-like, to fall down with a pinch,
But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags,
Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel
And make the cowards stand aloof at bay:
moody-mad: furious with anger
Related posts
1 Henry VI: Talbot’s deer metaphor
Talbot describes his [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 2):
TALBOT:
He fables not; I hear the enemy:
Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.
O, negligent and heedless discipline!
How are we park’d and bounded in a pale,
A little herd of England’s timorous deer,
Mazed with a yelping kennel of French curs!
If we be English deer, be then in blood;
Not [...]
Posted on January 16th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature | Comments Off
From the email archives:
On Sunday 30 May 2004 11:32 pm, Jerry Hubbard wrote:
> How is everyone? Hope the storms did not harm anyone.
My basement flooded twice, my tenant’s kitchen had water streaming in through the window frame, our backyard fence was blown down, the umbrella on our deck was blown off the deck into the [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories | Comments Off
From “Fuzzy maths” (The Economist: 11 May 2006):
Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees - so that rivals know where it is.
Related posts
The strictest of teachers
The most volatile compound known to man
The military’s 8 P’s
The final moment of tragedy
The differences between language in art & politics
Posted on June 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Technology, business | Comments Off
From Damn Interesting’s “Let Slip the Dogs of War“:
Nary does a modern movie depict the way the Romans used mastiffs with razored collars in battle, nor the fully armored Death Hounds … that the medieval knights would loose on a field to snap at the legs of opponents and dispatch the wounded that littered the [...]
Posted on April 15th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history, security | Comments Off
From “Happiness: The Chinese zombie ships of West Africa“:
We’re in the big African Queen inflatable, cruising alongside an anchored trawler. It’s more rust than metal - the ship is rotting away. The foredeck is covered in broken machinery. The fish deck is littered with frayed cables, and the mast lies horizontally, hanging over the starboard [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Writing Ideas, business, weird | Comments Off
From Computerworld’s “Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert“:
What’s the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC?
The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a [...]
Posted on February 15th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Fiction, Technology | Comments Off
From New Scientist’s “Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive“:
A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects’ proteins reveal.
The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm [...]
Posted on January 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science, weird | Comments Off
From The Honolulu Advertiser:
Health experts are not sure what is causing Mantis Shrimp found in the muck of the Ala Wai Canal to grow larger than their normal size, but one thing is clear, they say: You shouldn’t eat anything out of the canal.
State Department of Health signs posted along the canal warn people [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: weird | Comments Off
From CNN:
Customs officials opened his suitcase and a bird of paradise flew out but that was nothing compared to what they found in his pants — a pair of pygmy monkeys.
Californian Robert Cusack has been sentenced to 57 days in jail for trying to smuggle the monkeys, a total of four exotic birds and [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, True Stories, weird | Comments Off
From Tom Van Vleck:
In “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” Borges describes “a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,” the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:
1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing | Comments Off