February 2010
1 post
Miniaturist
a painter of miniatures or an illuminator of manuscripts
January 2010
7 posts
The Checkered Game of Life
In 1860, Mr. Milton Bradley was a successful lithographer whose major product was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. When Mr. Lincoln grew his trademark beard, Bradley’s clean-shaven portrait was no longer popular. Out of desperation, Mr. Bradley printed up several copies of a game he’d invented called The Checkered Game of Life. Its immediate popularity put Milton Bradley in the game...
Wizard
Wizard is an example of a alphabetically symmetrical word
A b c D e f g h I j k l m n o p q R s t u v W x y Z
W = fourth letter from the end I = ninth letter from the beginning Z = last letter A = first letter R = ninth letter from the end D = fourth letter from the beginning
Imagination Walk
Information Painting
Architectural Portrait
Information Landscape
Materialism Ritual
Architectural Portraits
Separation of Type & State
Invisible Ideas
December 2009
5 posts
Pygmachophobia
fear of boxes
“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also...”
– Donald Rumsfeld was a businessman and politician serving as secretary of defense. He is both the youngest (43 years old) and the oldest (74 years old) person to have served as Secretary of Defense, as well as the only person to have served in the position for two non-consecutive terms.
He recited...
Historical Miss(ion)
November 2009
15 posts
Gurn
A gurn or chuck is a distorted facial expression, and a verb to describe the action. A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip.
Check out the google images for gurning
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
– Ernest Hemingway
An example of Flash fiction
Ernest Hemingway made a bet for $10 with someone back in the 1920s, where he stated that he could write a complete story in six words. He won the bet with the above words. Never have six words been more thought provoking, or conveyed such strength of...
“Me, we.”
– Muhammad Ali
The shortest quote. As delivered during a Harvard graduation.
“Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”
– Longest word in English, which means: a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs.
World Toilet Day
Today, November 19th, is World Toilet Day
A day to celebrate the importance of sanitation and raise awareness for the 2.5 billion people (nearly half of the world’s population) who don’t have access to toilets and proper sanitation.
Support the squat!
Early Newspaper Jargon
“Fingernails” — printers’ slang for parentheses. “Hell box” — place in which lead type was dumped to be remelted before the days of computers and offset printing. “HTK” — means “hed to kum,” or, in more proper English, “headline to follow.” “Type lice” — hot metal-era term for marks on a page caused by stray lead...
Philately
the study of stamps
from the French word “philatélie”, coined by Georges Herpin in 1864. Greek root word phil or philo, meaning an attraction or affinity for something and ateleia, meaning “exempt from duties and taxes
Traditional philately is the study of the technical aspects of stamp production and stamp identification, including:
The initial stamp design process. The paper...
Indicia
distinguishing mark
in publishing: usually contains the official name of the publication, its publication date, information regarding editorial governance of the publication, and a disclaimer regarding disposition of unsolicited submissions
in postal: pre-printed designs where a stamp would normally be and that indicate the pre-payment of postage
~
~ the tilde or swung dash (⁓) is used to indicate the omission of a word. It is also used in “online chat situations” to denote sarcasm. ~
“What did one shark say to the other while eating a clownfish?”
– This tastes funny.
Eastern/Western Laziness
There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives...
Two campers see a bear, and one immediately puts on his running shoes.
“You can’t outrun the bear,” the other says.
“I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you,” responds the other.
The Law of Exclamation
First recorded in an article by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org in 2008, this states: “The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters.”
It is reminiscent of the claim in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels that the more exclamation marks someone uses in writing, the more likely they are to be...
Dream job:
continental breakfast chef
October 2009
7 posts
Datalantic →
Datalantic was responsible for typesetting the original 58,159 names on the Vietnam Veterans wall.
An advanced software for 1982 was a [whopping] 80MB. The process of the software system included reconstructing data to the specifications, adding typesetting commands making all the names cap size and sorting by date of casualty within a line and alphabetizing at the same time.
Typeset in Optima
Chartjunk
useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays
chartjunk
Back to black/ Black to white/ White to back/ Back to back
“Strenuously Superlative”
“Just justify your justice.”
“Innocuously normalized.”
June 2009
2 posts
A baby eel is called an elver,
a baby oyster is called a spat.
Quarter-life Crisis →
I’ll be 25- a quarter of a century- this Thursday June 4, 2009.
May 2009
2 posts
Traveling Americans →
A nice lady just called. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:20am and got into Chicago at 8:33am. I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of llinois, but she could not understand the concept of time zones. Finally I told her the plane went very fast, and she bought that!
A woman called and...
Someone who grinds their teeth is a bruxomaniac.
A person suffering from polythelia has 3 nipples.
Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
The study of stupidity is called ‘monology’.
A parthenophobic has a fear of virgins.
February 2009
2 posts
Kitty Litter
Kitty Litter was invented by Minnesotan Edward Lowe in 1947
Piggly Wiggly
The Piggly Wiggly was the first cash and carry store in MN
Name came from Clarence Saunders who supposedly named it the way it is because he saw pigs wiggle under a fence.