Here's a portion of visual whimsy from me, albeit on a fairly unseasonal subject.

This Guardian article about reading on holiday introduced me to a charming quote from Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia (no, I haven't read it either). But instead of just requoting it, I decided to combine it with a pictorial tribute to one of my fave illustrators, ( Read more... )

Here's a trivial-but-true tale that I chanced upon during some recent work-related research.

You may imagine that tacky celebrity merchandising, illegal copying, and obsessive fans with more money than sense are modern phenomena. However, you'd be very, very wrong.


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Although I am known as a purveyor of sophisticated wit and intellectual discourse to the massed minions of the internet (hem hem), I admit that my sense of humour can be very childish indeed. Those who know me well will need no proof of this, but I'm going to show you some anyway.

Exhibit A:
While browsing the fascinating archives of LIFE magazine ( Read more... )

For no real reason other than to satisfy my own gnawing curiosity, I'd like to enlist your help with a piece of vocabulary research. But before you jump into the nearest tickybox, please point your eyes at the following informative diagram:


( Read more... )

While I'm making plodding progress through my recent icon requestathon, here's a little something I stumbled across on Google Books, while on yet another workcentric fact-hunt ( Read more... )

While the world is waiting for me to finish my latest bout of iconic scribbling (estimated time of finishedness: um... soonish?), here's another pointless trivia quiz to keep you all off the streets for thirty seconds. This one's on the theme of classical mythology - never let it be said that I don't scour the furthest corners of world culture for ( Read more... )

It's time for another daft quiz, and once again, it's brought to you by Bits Of Trivia I Picked Up While Doing My Day Job. Today's specialist subject: fishing techniques! Never let it be said that I do not bring you pebbles from the deepest (and dampest) corners of the infoworld.

Poll The "I'm Gonna Eat You, Little Fishy" Quiz

( But if you're all out of ideas, the correct answers are below this cut... )

Time for another silly quiz, and once again, it's based on nuggets of trivia dredged from the open-cast pit of my working week. (Look, I have to live with these facts cluttering up my brain. I don't see why the rest of you shouldn't help to share the load a little bit.)

Poll The "Something Dynastic In The Woodshed" Quiz

( Have you made your choice? Well, the correct answers are under this cut... )

From the sack marked "Strange bits of information I stumble over while I'm at work", here's my favourite Wikipedia page of the week: Obsolete units of measureAdmittedly, plenty of folk are still having trouble with the old metric/imperial divide, but I believe that society could shuffle up and make room for a few of these charming linguistic gems, ( Read more... )

I recently discovered that Google Books contains a complete archive of back-issues of LIFE magazine from 1936 to 1972. This delighted me, not only because LIFE has a lot of great photography in it, but also because I love retro advertising and all its peculiar foibles, so there's hours and hours of browsing pleasure to be had ( Read more... )