Posts Tagged ‘Mark Twain’
Totally random, man!…
Edward Lorenz, a pioneer of Chaos Theory, famously observed in a 1963 paper that the flap of a butterfly’s wings could ultimately determine the weather thousands of miles away and days later.
Now, thanks for the ever-extraordinary Exploratorium, readers can simulate their own butterflies, and watch them interact with “strange attractors.”
Try it here.
As we sidle up to the stochastic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1873 that Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) received a U.S. patent (No. 140,245) for a self-pasting scrapbook– which was popular enough ultimately to sell 25,000 copies. Two years earlier the innovative author had received his first patent– for “An Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Garment Straps” (No.121,992– used for shirts, underpants, and women’s corsets). Later (in 1885) he patented a history trivia game.
The Self-Pasting Scrapbook (source)
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”…
Mark Twain’s quip has found an altogether modern kind of expression on the web, where entrepreneurs and enthusiasts have expanded from the how-to space (c.f. Instructables, …for Dummies, et al.) to arenas that were until recently the undisputed province of the traditional educational establishment. Two of your correspondent’s favorites:
Khan Academy is–literally– the brainchild of Salmon Khan, a 33 year-old who has no PhD and has never taught. Khan quit his job as a financial analyst and began to produce short simple videos on the sorts of topics covered in advanced high school and college classes. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, Khan has posted over 1400 videos on YouTube, covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance.
Squashed Philosophy is the work of Glyn Hughes: “The books which defined the way we think now.
Their own ideas, in their own words, neatly honed into little half-hour or so reads”… and so they marvelously are.
(TotH to reader PR for the CHE reference.)
As we resolve to improve ourselves, we might recall that today is the birthday of scholar and critic Adrien Baillet; he was born on this date in 1649. While Baillet was on the faculty at the college of Beauvais, served as librarian to François-Chrétien de Lamoignon, and was advocate-general to the Parlement de Paris, he is best remembered as the biographer of René Descartes.
It takes one to know one…
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….
– George Bernard Shaw
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
– Noel Coward
A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
– William Faulkner, on Mark Twain
The gifted can be so… ungenerous to each other: from Examiner.com, “The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time.”
As we consider that this may in any case be better than log-rolling, we might recall that it was on this date in 1982 that a member of the Hollywood nobility– two-time Oscar-winning actress, model, and anti-war activist Jane Fonda– released her first exercise tape.
Building on the success of her workout book, published the prior year, the tape helped Fonda popularize workouts for women, workouts in groups, workout videos, and indeed aerobics in general (a family of trends on which Richard Simmons, Judi “Jazzercise” Missett and many others have ridden). Fonda invested the proceeds of what became a fitness empire into the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an advocacy group founded by her then-husband Tom Hayden (of Chicago Eight renown). Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1989, and Fonda retired from the spotlight (though, of course, she has returned to the movie screen in the last few years).
The worst of the best…
“Mary and Holly” (Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner) are librarians at “a medium-sized public library in Michigan,” who have worked together for over ten years. They’ve developed a long suit in culling library collections– those of their own institution and those of libraries to which they consult.
In the course of that selective work, Mary and Holly face choices that are tough… and some that are not so tough. By way of celebrating that latter group– books that are “odd, outdated or maybe should be reconsidered under a current interpretation of collection policies”– they created Awful Library Books, showcasing such (currently-in-a-public-library-collection) gems as…
Published in 1971: Usually the lingo and references are so dated, I can’t believe this would work for any school report for kids. Interestingly, this book also mentions nutmeg and a few cleaning fluids as sources of a nice high. So I guess this is more a “how to” type of book…
“I can be obsolete”
Published in 1985: there are a lot of public libraries out there that own it. However, this is the first computer book we have posted that doesn’t seem to have an abundance of mullet hairstyles.
Browse the shelves at Awful Library Books.
As we head for the reference desk, we might spare a celebratory thought for an author who has had his own share of troubles with libraries (though, I’m quite confident, never with Mary and Holly): writer and aphorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens– Mark Twain– who was born on this date in 1835. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is consistently cited as a (if not indeed the) Great American Novel, at the same time that it is equally consistently the target of censors who would ban it from school and public libraries.
Come back to the raft agin, Huck honey…
from Sloshspot, Mark Twain Motivational Posters!
As we thank the Lord for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, we might recall that it was on this date in 1897 that Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith shot “The Burglar on the Roof ,” the first fiction film from the newly-formed Vitagraph motion picture company. Based in Flatbush in Brooklyn, Vitagraph flourished in the silent film era, introducing such stars as Rudolph Valentino and Norma Talmadge, and establishing the model for the studio system, before it was sold to Warner Bros. in 1925.
Vitagraph Studios, c. 1920 (source: Editors Guild)
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