Archive for September 2013
By any other name…
Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.
– Frank Capra
Can you figure out these movie titles?
These and other mathematical mysteries at Spiked Math‘s Movie Math Quiz. (For answers to the examples above, click on the clues… but do browse further.)
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As we wonder if this is what “transitive” means, we might send burnished birthday greetings to Maxwell Perkins; he was born on this date in 1884. Probably the most famous literary editor of all time, Perkins discovered, assisted, promoted, and/or otherwise mentored many of the most important American writers of the first half of the Twentieth Century including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Erskine Caldwell, Edmund Wilson, James Jones, Vance Bourjaily, and (especially) Thomas Wolfe.
Forgotten words…
From Studio Jubilee, a collection of forgotten words: Lexican… e.g.,
More nostalgic nouns, verbs, and modifiers at Lexican.
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As we appreciate history, we might recall that it was on this date in 1545 that François Rabelais received the permission of King François I to publish the Gargantua series– Gargantua and Pantagruel as we know it. In fact, Rabelais’ wild mix of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs had been circulating pseudonymously for years.
Rabelais wrote at a time of great ferment in the French language, and contributed mightily to it– both in coinage and in usage. But his influence was even broader (Tristram Shandy, e.g., is full of quotes from Rabelais) and continues to this day via writers including Milan Kundera, Robertson Davies, and Kenzaburō Ōe.
Picture this…
Just one of the entries at WTF Visualizations: “visualizations that make no sense.”
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As we recall that not all pictures signify, we might send well-worded birthday greetings to Samuel Johnson; he was born on this date in 1709. A poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer, Johnson’s best-known work was surely A Dictionary of the English Language, which he published in 1755, after nine years work– and which served as the standard for 150 years (until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary). But Dr. Johnson, as he was known, is probably best remembered as the subject of what Walter Jackson Bate noted is “the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature” : James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. A famous aphorist, Johnson was the very opposite of a man he described to Boswell in 1784: “He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.”
Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Dr. Johnson
For the record…
The story of 1996 Pinnacle Foil No. 289: “The Worst Baseball Card of All Time.”
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As we cull our collections, we might recall that it was on this date in 2007, at a Constitution Day speech by then-Senator John Kerry at the University of Florida, that the “Don’t tase me, Bro” bro got tased.
I feel the need, the need for speed….
So, how fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? Randall Munroe explains in his ever-illuminating companion to xkcd, What If?
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As we shift into overdrive, we might send receptive birthday greetings to Marvin P. Middlemark; he was born on this date in 1919. A prolific inventor, Middlemark created such consumer appliances as the water-powered potato peeler; but he is surely best remembered for having developed the dipole television antenna– AKA, “rabbit ears.” Obviating the need for roof-top receivers, rabbit ears made TV available to the mass market, and are considered by many to be the single most important force behind the 1950s-60s boom in television in the U.S.
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