Tuesday 27 January 2015

Trivia (should have been 9 November)

Immense Chewing Candy: 1904
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Immense Chewing Candy: 1904
The Jersey shore circa 1904
“Young’s Hotel and Boardwalk, Atlantic City”
Where strollers confront a plenitude of amusements, confections and refreshments
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.
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The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
via 3 Quarks Daily by Aatish Bhatia in Nautilus
On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Gender, blah, blah, blah
Serious, intellectual writing is overwhelmingly male. Why? Ask the serious, intellectual gatekeepers of serious, intellectual magazines… more

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Do you have a vulgar tongue?
via OUP Blog by Jonathan Green
Slang is in a constant state of reinvention. The evolution of language is a testament to our world’s vast and complex history; words and their meanings undergo transformations that reflect a changing environment such as urbanization. In The Vulgar Tongue: Green’s History of Slang, Jonathon Green extensively explores the history of English language slang from the early British beggar books and traces it through to modernity. He defends the importance of a versatile vocabulary and convinces us that there is dose of history in every syllable of slang and that it is a necessary part of contemporary English, no matter how explicit or offensive the content may be. Test your knowledge…how well do you know your history of slang?
Yes, it's yet another of them thar quizzes behind the link
However, unlike the ones you see all over social media, this one gives you your score and goes through the questions telling you the correct answers and why they are correct!!!
I liked that.

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Little-Known Punctuation Marks That Need To Make A Comeback
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair who got it from Mental Floss
You know the question mark, exclamation point, and period, but have you heard of the love point? How about the acclamation point? If you haven’t, the infographic below will introduce you to each one, and they’ll even tell you how to enter them on your computer.
You just might learn a new way to express yourself, even if no one else will understand what you are trying to say.
See the Infographic for yourself

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Life of Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald, born into a remarkable family, was remarkable herself, not least for her persistence. She published her first book just shy of 60… more

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“The Door to Hell” in Derweze, Turkmenistan
via Big Think by Robert Montenegro
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Back in 1971, a group of soviet scientists had the bright idea to light a massive natural gas fire in the middle of the Turkmeni desert. Forty-three years later, the blaze still burns.
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Heaven and Earth
via 3 Quarks Daily by Brooks Riley
Capybaras
Go on, admit it. You've always wanted to come back as a capybara.
Why not? There are worst entities for a come-back kid when its mortal coil is taken up again. As a capybara you would live in a small community of peaceful vegans, free to join the party or to wander off on your own without being ostracized.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Birth of pulp fiction
Mass-market paperbacks transformed the culture of reading, largely for the better. If no pulps, then no Philip Roth and Erica Jong… more

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Half the remains of slain Vikings in England are female
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

In Warriors and women: the sex ratio of Norse migrants to eastern England up to 900 AD, published in 2011 in Early Medieval Europe 19/3, Medievalists from the University of Western Australia survey the remains of fallen Vikings found in eastern England that had been assumed to be male, partly because some were buried with sword and shield.
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