No newsletter next week, but I welcome suggestions for what is bound to be an awesome issue two weeks from now!
My venerable and much thumbed copy of Black’s Medical Dictionary, by the estimable and ever unflappable William A. R. Thomson, M.D.—Adam & Charles Black, London, thirtieth edition, with 441 black-and-white, or grey-and-greyer, illustrations and four colour plates which never fail to freeze the cockles of my heart—informs me that rosacea, a nice name for an unpleasant complaint, is due to a chronic congestion of the flush areas of the face and forehead, leading to the formation of red papules; the resultant erythema, the name we medical men give to redness of the skin, tends to wax and wane but ultimately becomes permanent, and may, the candid Doctor warns, be accompanied by gross enlargement of the sebaceous glands (see SKIN), leading to the gross enlargement of the nose known as rhinophyma (qv) or grog blossoms. The repetition there—gross enlargement … gross enlargement—is an uncharacteristic infelicity in Dr. Thomson’s usually euphonious if somewhat antiquated prose style. I wonder if he does house calls. He would be bound to have a calming bedside manner and a fund of information on all sorts of topics, not all of them health-related. Medical men are more versatile than they are given credit for. Roget of Roget’s Thesaurus was a physician, did important research on consumption and laughing gas, and no doubt cured the odd patient, into the bargain. But grog blossoms, now, that is something to look forward to.
—John Banville
—from The Sea
lagom /LAH-gəm/. adjective. A Swedish word meaning something like “happily and satisfyingly just the right amount.” Often translated as enough or adequate, lagom has a more positive connotation of fulfillment (though not perfection). Popularly believed to come from laget om (around the team), which goes back to the Viking custom of passing around a shared drink, each person contentedly sipping, it is actually derived from laghum (according to common sense). One of Sweden’s most well-known proverbs is Lagom är bäst, literally “the right amount is best” but often translated as “enough is a good as a feast.” See also: hygge.
From the brain trust at GQ, 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read (and 21 you should read instead)…with a little something to irritate everyone.
The New New York Times Twitter account tweets words as they appear in the New York Times for the first time. Great fun to follow despite the occasional “firsts” that are misspellings || Related: NYT Minus Context, posting often surreal verbatim bits from the New York Times || See also, more Twitter fun: Fake Library Stats
With pictures this powerful, I can’t imagine what experiencing the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice would feel like.
Even if just browsing them as nerdy eye-candy, Xenographics (“weird but (sometimes) useful charts”) are great.
Choose Your Own Adventure books are being adapted into interactive Choose Your Own Adventure Movies.
Two examples of large scale book art made their way to me this week…and they are astounding! → Alicia Martin’s Biografias Book Sculptures and Matej Kren’s “book cell”, which could come straight out of my head.
Inspired by this NYT article, I gave the peanut butter and pickle sandwich another try. And…they were right. Except in dissing the bread and butter pickle’s delectable suitability.
Can Handwriting be Copyrighted? Well, no. But using the names of celebrities could have been a problem.
Some great art this week: Seung Hoon Park’s woven photos & Mimi Choi’s Makeup Artistry & Kate Kato’s paper sculpture
Today in 1852, the first edition of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus is published. Originally “only” 15,000 words, the current 7th International Edition contains more than 325,000 words and phrases. Highly recommended: The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus, an ultra-readable biography of Roget, a driven, eccentric polymath, inventor of the slide-rule and, umm, frolicsome bachelor who was compelled to categorize just about everything starting at the age of eight. In fact, he intended his thesaurus to be not just a categorization of words, but of the world’s ideas.
► Dirty Computer - an emotion picture* by Janelle Monáe || Incidentally, the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams television series is mostly a forgettable, anemic Black Mirror imitation…but Janelle Monáe’s turn as an android factory representative was extraordinary.
► Fresh Guacamole by PES. The shortest film (1 minute, 40 seconds) ever nominated for an Oscar.
Reader M.: “Nobokov is mystical. Thanks for mentioning. People hate Lolita now because of the subject. I guess I want people to see it as more than that without disregarding what’s in it.”
Reader G.: "Thanks for posting that Kit Kat story, it’s so interesting - it reminded me of this I read last week: Is the Chinese Language a Superstition Machine? How ambiguity in language can create unique taboos..
Reader D.: “Mayracha. That’s probably a Japanese Kit Kat, too…”
Reader B.: “If you have the time, you should see this: Prague Astronomical Clock - 600th Anniversary Show. ¶ This is not the official video, but I like this one better.”
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