Category: quick thought

Spread The Books Around

A bright fellow I know recently brought Book Crossing to my attention.

Got an extra book (or seven) that you liked, but didn’t love? Print out a BCID (Book Crossing ID) sticker, and place it inside.

Leave it somewhere.

Done!

With any luck your freed novel will find its way into the world’s library, and not into some hobo’s underpants for insulation. The new owner opens the book to see the BCID sticker (which includes instructions), and logs onto BookCrossing.com to register having found the work – and to hopefully be inspired to carry on the idea.

A Rush Limbaugh Movie?

Sciafani gives his perception on the film, “This is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, where you have a man who always had trouble relating to people in the outside world, but does it effortlessly in the booth.” He also adds that Limbaugh was the “proverbial fat kid” always ignored in school, “There’s this anecdote about a game of spin the bottle in high school. The bottle pointed at him, and the pretty girl who was supposed to kiss him ran away, and that stayed with him. When he came up in radio, he was culturally opposed to everything happening in the 60s and 70s, and all this left him with something to prove. He is an underdog, and became an extremely determined person with something to prove.” – JoBlo

I think it’s pretty understood that Rush’s “Rosebud” would be an “Eva” or “Margarita”.

Despite the fact that I’m not a fan of the guy, I could definitely see this being an interesting film.

Regarding The Dutch

I recently learned that the Dutch weren’t big on surnames until Napoleon came through in 1811, conquering and forcing people to do paperwork. Until then they’d utilized patronymics – using their Father’s name as their own last name – or occasionally just the attachment of a profession or physical attribute: Abel The Baker, Jans The Friggin’ Huge, etc.

Once Napoleon arrived, he forced everyone to register their names in the format utilized by the French. Many of the Dutch thought the registry would be quickly forgotten, so they opted for comical names – allowing me to link to this fantastic example table from wikipedia.

Dutch surname Explanation English
De Keizer probably a wordplay on Napoleon when people registered their name; Who are you? I’m the emperor. Lit. “emperor”.
Rotmensen rot, adjective meaning “rotten” + mensen “people” Lit. “rotten people”.
Poepjes poep, noun meaning “poo/feces”, + jes plural diminutive Lit. “excrement; poopie”.
Piest piest, third-person singular form of the verb piesen meaning “to urinate/to piss” (He/She/It)“pisses/urinates”
Naaktgeboren naakt, adjective meaning “naked”, + geboren meaning “born” Lit. “born naked”
Zeldenthuis zelden, adverb meaning “seldom”, + thuismeaning “at home” Lit. “seldom at home”

Some Notes On Charivari

They seem to have been forgotten in most places, but the subject of our current Blackhall story, charivaris, were a real practice.

From wikipedia:

The custom dates back to the Middle Ages and originated in France… In the early 1600s, the Council of Tours forbade charivari and threatened its practitioners with excommunication. Nevertheless, the custom continued in rural areas.

The writer of the wikipedia article states:

North American charivari is noted as less extreme than those in Europe. They were unique and the depended on the family as well as who was participating. While embellished with some European traditions, the North American charivari were often more so dipping the culprits in horse tanks or forcing them to buy candy bars for the crowd.

This actually runs contrary to my own findings – it may simply be the case that a non-violent charivari wasn’t worth the news-space, but there are plenty of examples of something more than roughhousing taking place.

American Gothic

Here’s an excerpt from the Perth Courier, Sept. 12, 1873 – the telling takes up after old Mr. Chapman has already been dragged from his home, his door having been smashed in with rocks. He fainted, so the intruders held a mock funeral:

After maltreating the old man for a length of time in this manner, one of the villains deliberately fired a shot at the prostate body, the charge taking effect just above the knee… The ruffians then left Mr. Chapman to his fate. Medical aid was summoned… doctors concur in the belief that his case is an extremely doubtful one, and that the chances are very strong against his recovery.

The same issue of the paper also noted:

Such exhibitions of atrocity as are so frequent at charivari are simply disgraceful, without one mitigating accompanying circumstance. That the strong arm of the law should step in and quell all such disturbances of the peace,… no law abiding citizen can deny.

Still, I did love this detail from the wikipedia article:

From an 1860 English charivari against a wife-beater a chant was created which was sung during this particular man’s charivari:

“Has beat his wife! Has beat his wife! It is a very great shame and disgrace To all who live in this place It is indeed upon my life!”

Body Snatcher

Not to purposefully continue the morbidity today, but: this story, about a fellow who runs a free ambulance in Bangkok, caught my eye.

We’re called the “body snatchers” by locals. After a year or so I began working in the rescue vehicles collecting the dead from all over Bangkok and Thailand. I’ve being doing it ever since. – CNN

Body Snatcher? I know what he’d be called if he were here in North America.

(Hint: Socialist.)
It oughta be 'hero'.Image from CNN.com

He has a website up, which collects donations to replace his former ambulance.

Barbarian Arithmetic

Yesterday’s post got me thinking on the funny books of my youth.

When I was a kid, I used to pick up a lot of the magazine-sized Conan comics. I loved the gritty black and white art, and the general swashbuckling, but somewhere between thirteen and sixteen I came to realize that Conan’s largest problem year-after-year wasn’t actually the dark magic of Thoth-Amon, it was math.

The Savage Sword Of Conan

In the earliest issues, every fight was a concern. Conan fighting two people at once involved a lot of ornate cussing and some doom-talk from the narrator. The problem was, just as with televisions, there was nowhere to go but up: three, four, five people at once – his enemies began to look less like swordsmen and more like angry soccer teams comprised of late-’80s WWF wrestlers.

If the books are still running, I have to assume by now his enemies are facing him in lengthy, easy to trim, rows – or feasibly they march along in single file as Conan cranks a comically over-sized meat grinder.

Diving For 3D Dollars

I have to admit: I’m not usually terribly impressed with shipwreck-dive movies.

As a general rule I love ruins, and I’m always drawn in by the opening moments of ethereal stillness, but it doesn’t take a lot of barnacle encrusted video before I’m zoning out.

I think that’ll change when we can send down the technology to generate a detailed 3D model of a wreck interior.

Why spend long hours, and risk multiple trips into the freezing depths of the sea, when you can scan it once and explore for days from the comfort of your office chair?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKcpmo4pwRg]

Shrews Vs Cancer

My friend Hardy pushed this article from the CBC along to me:

Shrew spit tames cancer cells

[…]

At first, Stewart thought the chemical — called soricidin — might be a potential painkiller, because it blocked nerve transmission. When he tested it on a random cell culture that happened to be ovarian cancer cells, however, he found the cells died[…]

Northern Short-tailed Shrew by Gilles GonthierNorthern Short-tailed Shrew, Photo by Gilles Gonthier

I think we can all agree that any new tool to fight cancer is a welcome one, but what really brought the story home for me was the description of his process:

Stewart spent several years luring the animals with pepperoni and trapping dozens of shrews in his rural backyard before he eventually identified the chemical in shrew saliva that causes paralysis. Researchers then purified and synthesized it.

People tend to think that a single person can no longer make a difference in the scientific community, that the age of the sole-tinkerer is over, and that nothing gets done without a larger machine to make things happen.

If this passes the tests and manages to become key to a widely used treatment, it won’t be because of the scads of test tube wranglers and suit wearing money-holders, it’ll be because one interested fellow spent years in his backyard with pepperoni grease on his fingers and a real need to know burning in his brain.