WORK
Fifty Words Written After Learning the Arctic Bowhead Whale Can Live up to Two Hundred Years
There’s a whale, right now, who may have escaped a Nantucketer’s harpoon in 1850. And a Japanese whaler in 1950. Who once heard the distant songs of 50,000 of her kind. Then several thousand. Then hundreds. But who can hear 25,000 again, singing in the warming water.
—Nate DiMeo
—the memory palace (Episode 50)
WORD(S)
sarcastic interrogative. noun. Defined by folklorist Charles Clay Doyle as “stock questions with glaringly obvious yes or no answers. The function of each such question is to respond derisively to a prior query, itself calling for a yes or no answer so as to suggest that the answer to the original query is too obvious to be worth proffering seriously.” Perhaps the most famous example: “Is the Pope Catholic?” And perhaps the most canonical: “Can a duck swim?”
Some colorful examples (please share some of yours!):
- Is a frog’s arse watertight?
- Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?
- Does Howdy Doody have wooden balls?
- Does Barbie have a plastic fanny?
- Does a maurauding mackerel make a mullets muckhole munch?
- Do chickens have lips?
- Is a pig’s butt pork?
- Do fat babies fart?
- Does a snake have knees?
- Is the hole close to a donut?
WEB
-
The only thing better than maps are maps about words! → 25 maps that explain the English language
-
Enjoy the 1984 issue of the Post New York Post.
-
“The origin of the word ‘prosthesis’ meant ‘to add, put on to,’ so not to fix or replace, but to extend. The Third Thumb is inspired by this word origin, exploring human augmentation and aiming to reframe prosthetics as extensions of the body.”
-
Letterpress love! → Amos Kennedy Jr.: From Corporate Analyst To Modern-Day Artisan
-
If you’re going to fake historical documents you might want to choose a font a typeface that exists at the time… → A Font Is at the Heart of Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Legal Troubles
-
The Ultimate Latin Dictionary: After 122 Years, Still At Work On The Letter ‘N’
-
“Established to create books which aren’t, in the quotidian sense, books at all … Container creates objects which masquerade as parking meters, wallpaper, or crop seed sleeves.” Their first production is a diverse series of Rolodex Books by eight writers and artists. Next up, book objects made from vintage metal lunchboxes.
-
Vintage typewriters gain fans amid ‘digital burnout’ :: And who knows, you might get really lucky → ‘€100 typewriter’ found to be German code machine [Thanks, Reader C.]
-
The ultimate tattoo? → Scientists Upload a Galloping Horse GIF into Bacteria :: And serendipitously, via Reader B., the science behind this CRISPR encoding.
-
Today in 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., the first atomic bomb is successfully tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The successful Trinity Test was he fruit of the Manhattan Project, which in the usual government fashion saw the initial $6000 estimated cost end up running to more than $2-billion. Kenneth Bainbride, the director of the Manhattan Project, turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist, and said, “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Bainbridge would later describe the explosion as a “foul and awesome display.” The United States wasted no time, putting the new weapon to use just three weeks later, (perhaps needlessly) bombing Hiroshima, Japan, ending World War II.
WATCH/WITNESS
Salvador Dali takes a turn on the television game show “What’s My Line?” Hint: there are scores of great clips from “What’s My Line” on YouTube. You’re welcome.
WHAT!?
From vintage everyday, an amazing collection of vintage anti-suffragette postcards.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
-
Reader V.: “Pandiculation might be my new favorite word. But am I the only one that yawns every time I think of it?”
-
Reader M.: “The history of privacy as we know it may be brief, but I mourn its passing as I would an infant taken too early.”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.
And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.