Whittle It a Little, It’ll Fit

Odds and sods I look at regularly, just because they amuse me. I hope they do the same for you. Incidentally, I found this page’s title on Greg Ross’s Futility Closet (it’s somewhere on this page) in a mini-article which also includes the delightful sentence in Icelandic: Barbara Ara bar Ara araba bara rabbabara. Ross points out that this, “besides being fun to say, is spelled with only three letters. It means “Barbara, daughter of Ari, brought only rhubarb to Ari the Arab.”

Futility Closet » Telephone

Friday 29 March 19:21:06 UTC 2024

In The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), Paul Fussell calculates that the trenches on the Western Front in World War I totaled about 25,000 miles, “equal to a trench sufficient to circle the earth.” Stanley Casson wrote in 1935, “I used to wonder how long it would take for me to walk from the beaches of the North Sea … [Link]

Weird Universe » A brief history of mass-production shaving machines

Friday 29 March 14:17:35 UTC 2024

Around 1780: "An anonymous British printmaker, perhaps from Birmingham, issued a satire of mechanization and factories occuring during the Industrial Revolution, in the form of an imaginery 'New Shaving Machine, whereby a number of persons may be done at the same time with expedition, ease, and safety.'" (text from historyofinformation.com)

Around 1825: "British illustrator and caricaturist Robert Seymour… issued Shaving … [Link]

Weird Universe » Huey Smith and the Clowns, “Popeye”

Friday 29 March 13:17:25 UTC 2024

The musician's Wikipedia page.

[Link]

Futility Closet » Turns of Phrase

Friday 29 March 7:28:14 UTC 2024

Erasmus’ 1512 rhetoric textbook Copia lists 195 variations on the sentence “Your letter delighted me greatly”: Your brief note refreshed my spirits in no small measure.
I was in no small measure refreshed in spirit by your grace’s hand.
From your affectionate letter I received unbelievable pleasure.
Your pages engendered in me an unfamiliar delight.
I conceived a wonderful delight … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons