polaris schmolaris

on this day in the year 1793 b.c., the star, thuban in the constellation, draco ended it’s two thousand year reign as earth’s de facto north star. it handed over the title to kochab (a scrappy upstart) whose successor would be (the much ballyhooed) polaris. while the succession was ineveitable, we can all be thankful that due to the 25,765 year axial precession of the earth’s platonic year, thuban will again start jockeying for the position in the year 29,707 a.d.

let us never forget that the north star is a title, not a name. (the much ballyhooed) polaris should not take its position for granted.

stop referencing yourself!

hey mathletes, get this: when the above formula is graphed using a set of predetermined ranges for x and y—it produces itself! it’s called tupper’s self-referential formula and was invented by lee iacocca when he was developing the rack and pinion steering on the dodge caravan (a wildly successful minivan in its day). many years later, a minivan fitting this description ran over my neighbor’s pet snake, betelgeuse. accounts vary as to whether the minivan was swerving to get out of betelgeuse’s way or to hit him (presumably as a social service). no matter the intent, we have the rack and pinion steering to hold accountable for the result (a smear of snake guts along west church street).

see also these robo-jokers.

for wunderkammer: a paleolithic flute

q: what were you doing 40,000 years ago when your stone age neighbors were rocking out on paleolithic flutes made out of woolly mammoth femurs? a: you were probably some stinking monkey scratching your hairy butt with pinecones.

in celebration of the fact that you and me have had a musical culture that spans over 40 millennia, let us start a paleolithic flute/theremin jam band. IT WILL BE A POLITICAL STATEMENT and we will rock out on the top of the sphinx wearing sequins and goat hides.

demanding satisfaction

if you live your life according to the code duello the way that i do, you will know that in duels, the challenged party has the right to choose the dueling weapons. these could be anything from knives to ninja stars to (apocryphally) tainted sausages.

of course there has never been a dual more preposterous or unusual than the one that took place between french hot air balloonists armed with blunderbusses (a type of proto-shotgun) over the city of paris in 1808:

…Early in the nineteenth century, a Monsieur de Grandpé and a Monsieur de Pique…had quarreled over Mademoiselle Tirevit, a famous dancer who was the mistress of the former but had been discovered in compromising circumstances with the latter. They decided to fight it out in balloons and on May 3, 1808.

Watched by a huge crowd which had been drawn by the sight of the balloons but little imagined the purpose they were meant to serve, each combatant climbed into his car, armed with a blunderbuss, since pistols would obviously have been ineffective in the circumstances. At nine o’clock the cords were cut and the balloons rose majestically into the air keeping within about eighty yards of each other. When they had risen some 2,000 feet, Monsieur de Pique fired his blunderbuss without result. His fire was returned almost immediately by Monsieur de Grandpré, whose shot punctured his adversary’s balloon, so that it hurtled to the ground dashing Monsieur de Pique and his second [a trusted representative] to pieces on a rooftop. The triumphant Grandpré then drifted happily away from the scene of his victory to land safely at a distance of seventeen miles from Paris.

from robert baldick’s the duel (1965).

a space opera… in the year 2000

what do you imagine going to the opera will be like in the year 2000? what about people in the 1800s, what did they imagine what going to the opera would be like in the year 2000? furthermore, what do you imagine that people in the 1800s imagined what you would imagine that they would imagine what going to the opera 9 years ago would be like? before we sink into an infinite abyss, let us observe this 1882 illustration from the hyper-cool paleo future blog (which has several more pictures of this series) where lithographer albert robida conceptualises his 2nd millennium operatic vision. consider:

your elegant monocle and tender moustache and the bevy of fly honeys in paisley petticoats that you assist in boarding your flying yellow dolphin while kaiser wilhem patrols the perimeter in a solo spaceship (sword at the ready), and 100 feet below you, some dandy ushers boobsy mcgee out of her wooly overcoat. it’s almost as if steampunk scene happened last year.

and to think only a few years before this lithograph was published, nietzsche (in die geburt der tragödie) went on a 54 paragraph tirade about how much opera blows chunks. look who’s eating a corvine delmonico now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(answer: friedrich wilhelm nietzsche!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

the original little cæsar’s menu

suppose that (despite all odds) you have just been elected the chief priest of the roman state religion and you want to show your gratitude (and get a little publicity as well) by throwing a lavish dinner for the felyshyppynge of virgins that tend rome’s fire up at the atrium vestal. what are you gonna prepare?

for starters, they are virgins so you would not want to excite their libidos too much with phalliod sausages or erotic cakes. it might also be a smart political manœuver to keep the lavish menu on the frugal side as the roman economy is in a bear market right now and the last thing that you want to do is give your rascally opponents (catulus and publius) reason to slander you in their blogs.

you are perhaps the world’s greatest political and martial tactician yet your choice in matters culinary is now the most important decision of your life. it’s your move, hot shot.

[spoiler alert] this is the answer: i give you—the menu of dinner given by julius caesar to the vestal virgins after his election as pontifex maximus. rome 63 b.c.

i. service

prickly globe-fish, oysters of different kinds, thrushes, asparagus, fattened chicken, oyster-patties, black and white sea-acorns (a kind of mussels), sea-nettles, fig-packers (snipe), cotelettes of venison and wild boar, fattened wild game powdered with flour

ii. service

swine udders, wild boar’s head, swine-udder patties, ducks, potted teal ducks, roasted wild game, pudding, custard, pientinish sandwiches

wines

falerno, xérès, spanish médoc

image from the buttolph menu collection (this is a real thing) of the new york public library (1888).

the great bowel shift

as i have not officially called off show and tell day, i am still receiving the odd submission. and thus i have recently received a hot lead on the great vowel shift from an internet celebrity of such magnitude that i’m not even going to say his name, nor am going to link to a picture of him in camo pants holding a dead snake.

anywho, while i have always been captivated with the great vowel shift and the mystery behind it (which is referenced in the dinosaur comic above), my favourite part has always been the EXCEPTIONS and the eventual spelling fallout that would soon take place. wikipedia elaborates:

Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. ea in particular did not take the step to [iː] in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear and bear. Other examples are father, which failed to become [ɛː] / ea, and broad, which failed to become [oː].

Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further complications. ea is again a good example, shortening commonly before coronal consonants such as d and th, thus: dead, head, threat, wealth etc. (This is known as the bred-bread merger.) oo was shortened from [uː] to [ʊ] in many cases before k, d and less commonly t, thus book, foot, good etc. Some cases occurred before the change of [ʊ] to [ʌ]: blood, flood. Similar, yet older shortening occurred for some instances of ou: country, could.

if the history of the english language is your bag (it is the bag of the ragbag), you might enjoy the following (raynor recommended) books. they are written for the general public and are a real gas.

• the mother tongue by bill bryson (1990).
• the adventure of english: the biography of a language by melvyn bragg (2006).

if you want to skip the foreplay and go right to the authority, then look no further than a history of the english language (5th edition) by albert c. baugh & thomas cable (1951).

all this for a dame

internet wunderkind (and brassy aviatrix), kyle bingman knows the perfect recipe for a ragbag post (1 part literature, 1 part chart, and 30 parts of head-smashing battle gore!). she says:

Attached a[re]… two charts, one showing the battle wounds/fatalities as described in the Iliad and another the wound lethality in the Iliad by area of body… In the text the authors cite the Iliad as one of the earliest detailed literary accounts of ancient warfare and the wounds suffered by the armies involved.

One item of particular interest is the high fatality rate from head wounds, a curious fact when one considers that the helmets worn by the Greeks were effective at reducing shock from blows and providing coverage from cutting actions. The authors posit that many of the lethal head wounds were caused by stones being dropped from the 40 foot walls of Troy. Another option includes soldiers being struck in the face by arrows, as while standing at the base of the wall the open area of the face would present an easy target to those above. Finally, it is also likely that many Greek soldiers either wore their helmets improperly or took the face plates off of them to reduce heat.

public service announcement: when you are laying seige to an enemy’s city and standing at the base of his wall, MAKE SURE that your helmet is on properly or you will get an ARROW through your face (statistics from bingman don’t lie). the more you know.

both charts can be found in, from sumer to rome: the military capabilities of ancient armies by richard a. gabriel and karen s. metz (greenwood: london, 1991).

just another day at the office for raynor ganan

source: a bibliomaniac at his desk, a woodcut from the book, the ship of fools, by sebastian brant (1497).

note: the accompanying poem is worth your time (it’s a satire that, half a millennium later, still holds).

illumination

what were you doing in the 9th century when the chinese were rebelling against their emperor and his skanky concubine, charlemagne was subduing the lombards (again!), those rascally persians were penning one thousand and one nights, and the empress of the byzantines (irene sarantapechaina) was exiled to the island of lesbos where she spent the remainder of her days spinning yarn?

maybe you were cowering in the corner somewhere as viking hooligans pillaged your village. perhaps your final thought as a raider’s blade neared your quivering forehead is how awesome it would be to have illuminated badass manuscripts with florid majuscules (like the 9th century letters here presented). perhaps your final thought was the discovery of another non-gerund -ing noun in viking.

we shall never know for certain. but what we do know is that the project gutenberg copy of the book of ornamental alphabets, ancient and mediæval (1914). is well worth the browse.

here are some particularly stunning specimens.

and raynor’s babe alert went, “arugula arugula”

here are representations of just a few of the fancy bathers that i cavorted with* during my divorce from technology.

*when i say “cavorted with,” i mean “respectfully observed.†”

†when i say “respectfully observed,” i mean “oooogled via binoculars from a van with tinted windows.”

game genie codes for your phone

back in the 1600’s, at&t invented a thing called custom local area signaling services (CLASS) as a secret code which engaged your phone’s special powers. with the invention of cell phones in 1762, these CLASS became more or less unnecessary. here is a listing of both popular (star sixty-nine) and obscure (star seventy-eight) codes »

• *45: extends the dialtone length
• *52: allows the user to put the current call on hold
• *53 - *55: allows the user the ability to assign distinctive rings to incoming calls
• *57: provides the recipient of an abusive call the ability to request an auto-trace
• *59: allows the user to instantly rickroll any incoming call
• *66: automatically re-calls the last number called once it becomes available
• *69: the name of a sex club in bangalore, indiana
• *71: activates three-way calling
• *72: activates call forwarding
• *74: allows the user to to assign speed calling codes to selected numbers
• *77: allows user to reject calls from parties who have a privacy feature that prevents their number from showing up on a caller i.d. display
• *78: allows the user to change phone status to “do not disturb.” the calling party will receive a message to this effect
• *82: allows the user to block his number from the recipient’s caller i.d. display (this is useful when placing calls of the heavy panting variety)
• *88: plays an audio file of a cat and a todler fighting eachother thus allowing the user of the phone to excuse herself from a conversation involving a boring recap of last night’s biggest loser episode.

la vie de gargantua et de pantagruel

[FULL DISCLAIMER: i lost my virginity to the life of gargantua and of pantagruel by françois rabelais (as translated by thomas urquhart) and regret nothing.] here are some of the fictional books that are referenced in this masterwork. also, let us not forget that THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1532 »

• Abbots’ Donkey-Size Pricks
• Advanced Asslicking, for Graduate Students
• And Cheese, Too
• Antipericatamentanaparbeugedamphibricationes, or Discussions on All Manner of Subjects by Shit Monks
• Fairy Tales of the Law
• Folk Dances for Heretics
• Forcible Removal in Matters Requiring a Conscience
• Fun With Dice
• Heroes’ Elephant Balls
• How a Vision of Saint Gertrude Appeared to a Nun, at Poissy, When She Went into Labor
• How Priests Say No
• How to Keep It Up Till You’re Ninety
• How to Make a Nobleman Shut Up
• How Virgins Shit
• Judges’ Bulging Bellies
• Lawyers’ Complaints about the Abolition of Bribes
• On the Clownishness of Country Priests
• Perpetual Almanac for Those Afflicted with Gout or the Pox
• Poetasters’ Bellybuttons
• Rear-Flapping Trousers for Shitheads
• Worm Powder for the Poor

each and every one of these faux titles would make for a great blog name.

also: the accompanying absurdist woodcut was done in 1565 most likely by françois desprez. more can be found at the 5 star (on a 4 star scale) bibliodyssey site.