Ramblings & ephemera
Scott: Pronounce this word: A - G - I - N - C - O - U - R - T.
Robin: Why?
Scott: I just want to hear you pronounce it.
Robin: Welllll … I would pronounce it the way it’s spelled: Again-kort.
Scott: (starts laughing & snickering) Haha!
Robin: I *knew* that would send you into proxyisms of [...]
Posted on June 8th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, overheard | No Comments »
From Larry Page’s “How to Motivate Your Staff” (Business 2.0: December 2003: 90):
We wrote a program that asks every engineer what they did every week. It sends them e-mail on Monday, and concatenates the e-mails together in a document that everyone can read. And it then sends that out to everyone and shames those who [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Technology, business | No Comments »
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I was reminded of a blind woman, a contemporary of Mozart and a most remarkable pianist, who, it is said, could no longer play after she regained some sight.
Related posts
After a stroke, he can write, but can’t read
Our eye seeks the [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, security, weird | No Comments »
From Charles Glass’ “The New Piracy: Charles Glass on the High Seas” (London Review of Books: 18 December 2003):
Ninety-five per cent of the world’s cargo travels by sea. Without the merchant marine, the free market would collapse and take Wall Street’s dream of a global economy with it. Yet no one, apart from ship owners, their [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, security | No Comments »
From George Pendle’s “New Foundlands” (Cabinet: Summer 2005):
Call them micro-nations, model countries, ephemeral states, or new country projects, the world is surprisingly full of entities that display all the trappings of established independent states, yet garner none of the respect. The Republic of Counani, Furstentum Castellania, Palmyra, the Hutt River Province, and the Empire of [...]
Posted on April 13th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, law, politics, weird | No Comments »
From Atul Gawande’s “Final Cut: Medical arrogance and the decline of the autopsy” (The New Yorker: 19 March 2001):
… in the nineteenth century … [some doctors] waited until burial and then robbed the graves, either personally or through accomplices, an activity that continued into the twentieth century. To deter such autopsies, some families would post [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history, science, security | No Comments »
From Atul Gawande’s “Final Cut: Medical arrogance and the decline of the autopsy” (The New Yorker: 19 March 2001):
The Roman physician Antistius performed one of the earliest forensic examinations on record, in 44 B.C., on Julius Caesar, documenting twenty-three stab wounds, including a final, fatal stab to the chest.
Related posts
The last remaining Stone Age tribesmen
Did [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history, science | No Comments »
From Jim Windolf’s “American Idol” (Vanity Fair: 20 December 2006):
A vestige of the franchise’s 1940s roots remains in the form of Jughead’s hat. In those days, explains Archie Comics managing editor Victor Gorelick, kids would take their fathers’ discarded fedoras, cut off the brims, and scissor them into jagged beanies. Archie artists have recently tried [...]
Posted on March 31st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, weird | No Comments »
From Charles C. Mann’s “The Coming Death Shortage” (The Atlantic: 1 May 2005):
The twentieth-century jump in life expectancy transformed society. Fifty years ago senior citizens were not a force in electoral politics. Now the AARP is widely said to be the most powerful organization in Washington. Medicare, Social Security, retirement, Alzheimer’s, snowbird economies, the population [...]
Posted on March 31st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Non-Fiction, history, politics | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (IV: 7):
LUCY:
But where’s the great Alcides of the field,
Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,
Created, for his rare success in arms,
Great Earl of Washford, Waterford and Valence;
Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,
Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton,
Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,
The thrice-victorious Lord of [...]
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 (III: 4):
Scene: Paris - The Palace
BASSET:
Villain, thou know’st the law of arms is such
That whoso draws a sword, ’tis present death,
Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.
Blackstone in his Commentaries (IV. 124): “By the ancient law … fighting in the king’s palace … was punished with [...]
Posted on January 15th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, law | Comments Off
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (I: 6):
CHARLES:
‘Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won;
For which I will divide my crown with her,
And all the priests and friars in my realm
Shall in procession sing her endless [...]
Posted on January 13th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
From Timothy Noah’s “Bush’s Fart-Joke Legacy” (Slate: 2 October 2006):
Legend has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, once farted in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I, whereupon he went into exile for seven years. On his return, the queen reputedly greeted, “My lord, we had quite forgot the fart.”
Related posts
Ulysses Grant [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, politics | Comments Off
From Mary A. Dempsey’s “Fordlandia” (Michigan History: July/August 1994):
Screens were just one of the Yankee customs transported to Fordlandia and Belterra. Detroit physician L. S. Fallis, Sr., the first doctor sent from Henry Ford Hospital to run the Fordlandia medical center, attempted to eradicate malaria and hookworm among Brazilian seringueiros (rubber gatherers) by distributing [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, history, politics | Comments Off
From Alan Bellows’s “The Ruins of Fordlândia” (Damn Interesting: 3 August 2006):
On Villares’ advice, [Henry] Ford purchased a 25,000 square kilometer tract of land along the Amazon river, and immediately began to develop the area. …
Scores of Ford employees were relocated to the site, and over the first few months an American-as-apple-pie community sprung up [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, history, politics, weird | 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
Vidi et Scio (”I saw and I know”)
Related posts
1 Henry VI: Lucy lists Talbot’s titles
1 Henry VI: an urn … rich-jewel’d of Darius
Word of the day: Froschmäusekrieg
Word of the day: cunctative
Wearing the wrong color to a battle
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature | Comments Off
From James Surowiecki’s “The Tastemakers” (The New Yorker [13 January 2003]: 31):
… it’s one thing to foist a fad on people, and another to have a deep and enduring impact on their everyday customs and habits. In the late eighteen-eighties, when George Eastman invented the Kodak - the first point-and-shoot camera - photography was the [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, art, business, history | Comments Off
From Louis Menard’s “From the Ashes: A new history of Europe since 1945″ (The New Yorker [28 November 2005]: 168):
[Tony Judt, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945] notes that France, a country with a population of some forty million, was administered by fifteen hundred Nazis, plus six thousand Germen policemen. A skeleton [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, history, law, politics | Comments Off
From Tom Reiss’s “Imagining the Worst: How a literary genre anticipated the modern world” (The New Yorker [28 November 2005]: 112):
The [British] army was given responsibility for domestic intelligence, which became MI5; the Navy was put in charge of a new foreign espionage service, which became MI6.
Related posts
NSA spying: Project Shamrock & Echelon
Colonialism at its [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
Stayed up late finished Charlie Huston's vampire noir Half the Blood of Brooklyn. Highly recommended ... but not for the kiddies.
Yep - The Dark Knight is as good as everyone says it is. Easily the best comic book movie I've ever seen. And Ledger is Oscar material.
Drum solo. Hopefully he won't explode, a la Spinal Tap. Dave Grohl is funny, a good guitar player, & quite the rock 'n roll screamer.
Arrghh! Does anyone know if the Windows desktop client of Google Talk interops with any other IM networks? Besides Jabber? Tks!
Bookmarked 3 links
At a party where we really only know 2 people. Been doing crosswords on my iPhone. Time to go!
Bookmarked 3 links
I think I found the house I'm going to buy. 125 years old in downtown St. Louis, but very modern on the inside. Wish me luck!
Added 2 products to their wishlist:
