Weird fact of the week: Dothraki, the language spoken by a race of pseudo-Mongol nomadic warriors in the HBO series “Game of Thrones”, is now heard by more people each week than Yiddish, Navajo, Inuit, Basque, and Welsh combined.
JP Morgan’s Guaranteed Formula for Success
January 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
One day, a man approached the famous financier J.P. Morgan, held up an envelope, and said, “Sir, in my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly sell to you for $25,000.” “Sir,” Morgan replied, “I do not know what is in the envelope. However, if you show me and I [...]
How Forks Gave Us Overbites
January 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork, on how historical changes in the ways we cook and eat have dramatically altered public health—and our teeth: Until around 250 years ago in the West, archaeological evidence suggests that most human beings had an edge-to-edge bite, similar to apes. In other words, our teeth were aligned liked [...]
The Virtue Inspired by a Coed Bathroom
January 19, 2013 By 1 Comment
Wendy Shalit on modesty: I first became interested in the subject of modesty for a rather mundane reason—because I didn’t like the bathrooms at Williams College. Like many enlightened colleges and universities these days, Williams houses boys next to girls in its dormitories and then has the students vote by floor on whether their common [...]
The Art of Pickpocketing
January 18, 2013 By 1 Comment
Apollo Robbins is is widely considered the best in the world at what he does, which is taking things from people’s jackets, pants, purses, wrists, fingers, and necks, then returning them in amusing and mind-boggling ways. In this video he shows reveals the secret of his craft.
Batman v. Spider-Man
January 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Which is the greater hero, Batman or Spider-Man? Travis D. Smith considers their merits: Batman seems rather to incarnate the willful modern project to end suffering by using reason to gain mastery over all things. Batman wages war against disorder in the cosmos as represented by the microcosm of Gotham City, a chaotic polis just [...]
Every Character in Winnie the Pooh Represents a Common Mental Disorder
January 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
From Flavorwire’s list of conspiracy theories about classic literary characters: In 2000, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an article diagnosing the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood with psychiatric disorders. “On the surface it is an innocent world,” the article begins, “but on closer examination by our group of experts we find a forest where neurodevelopmental [...]
Ignorance of Botany Is Ignorance of Literature
January 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Anna Williams on how ignorance of botany can interfere with the enjoyment of literature: I can easily find out what the named flowers look like: here are tea roses, red and white pelargoniums, Jacobæa lilies. But when I’m reading in bed, I don’t want to get up and Google it. Even when I’m reading with [...]
No Unjust Law Ever Sent Anyone to Hell
January 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
From John Piper’s book, What Jesus Demands from the World: It is risky for Jesus to say, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” That puts a high premium on obedience to the demands of Caesar. One of the realities that warrants this risk is that the heart of rebellion is more dangerous in [...]
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