Academies

“The first Project was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but Nouns.”

gentium

Languagehat is evangelising, but, although the goal of providing extended Latin script support is excellent, Gentium still doesn’t hack it as a screen font. Here’s a chunk of Revolutionary Workers Party ideology in 9, 10 and 12 point rendered using MSIE6:

ready teddy go

Gadgetopia asks whether we’re not reaching saturation point when even cuddly toy retailers have RSS feeds. Here’s a (Netscape-unfriendly) rendering of Bear St’s: Via The Shifted Librarian.

diffusion and variation in bogus money laundering

Zaid Khan, a merchant in Doha, Qatar with cancer of the esophagus, has contacted me again this morning to talk about the future of his fortune. This sudden wave of fatal stomach ailments amongst the Middle East’s HNW individuals leads me to wonder why no folklorists seem to be tracking the way these stories spread…

Survey shows that either 20.2 or 5.5% of Spaniards don’t know what email is

The headline figure this morning is 20%, but the survey (.doc) asks the question twice and the other answer is different. First there’s question 3: I’m going to read you a list of apparatus and new technologies that are being used more and more frequently in Spain. Tell me, please, of each one whether you…

empirialism

Oh, if only empirialism weren’t such a well-established (260 ghits) misspelling of imperialism! For what would suit those evangelical empiricists better? Word found in the comments section of swampman Chappell’s blog, currently awaiting recolonisation.

yo

That insolent colonial, John Chappell, has launched an all-out assault on this house, suggesting that I perform the work of a yeoman: 1a. An attendant, servant, or lesser official in a royal or noble household. b. A yeoman of the guard. 2. A petty officer performing chiefly clerical duties in the U.S. Navy. 3. An…

(illustration for previous post)

The scan below (100K) is of the front cover of Gil de Rusena’s El Memorialista Català, cited in the previous post. All I know of the artist, “Robert”, is that he worked for Salvador Bonavia and other publishers on a number of other books, including folklore collections. Bonavia’s old shop is just down the road…

Binman

Mrs Rodríguez opens her front door, walks down the street to the large public waste container, jacks open the lid with her foot, and screams in terror as a very dirty man inside reaches to take her bags. Who needs state-run recycling?

inquisition manual

Normally I’ll read any kind of rubbish, but this has got me defeated and puzzled. It’s a collection of instructions dating from 1484 to 1576 on how to run an inquisition (there’s some Torquemada in there) that belonged to one Doctor Martín Yánez de Padilla. However, not only are there no bloodstains on the pages…