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.”

Weird Universe » When Dogs Fly

Sunday 7 April 9:56:00 UTC 2024

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Weird Universe » Eclectric Oil

Sunday 7 April 9:45:49 UTC 2024

Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil was widely sold as a cure-all in the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. This was even though, as Wikipedia notes, it "mostly contained common ingredients such as turpentine and camphor oil."

Some of the things it supposedly cured included rheumatism, lame backs, sore throats, coughs and colds, throat and lung … [Link]

Futility Closet » Keep Away

Sunday 7 April 6:58:26 UTC 2024

Image: Wikimedia Commons A notable adaptation: The forewing tips of the Atlas moth, Attacus atlas, resemble the heads of snakes. When the moth encounters predators in its native Asian forests, the movement of its wings exaggerates the resemblance. [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons