Friday, May 09, 2008
FactCheck.org: That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.
FactCheck.org: That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.
Interesting article. Keep the link stashed away and return it to anyone who sends you one of those chain e-mails about this or that presidential candidate.
posted by Sal Towse at 10:31 AM|
|
|
Interesting article. Keep the link stashed away and return it to anyone who sends you one of those chain e-mails about this or that presidential candidate.
posted by Sal Towse at 10:31 AM|
|
|
Friday, November 02, 2007
The sellingest album of all time ...
That can't be true, can it?
This article claims, "The Eagles Greatest Hits, 1971-1975 was released just four years after the band debuted. It has now sold more records than any album in history, including Thriller."
[via grapes2dot0, who was more interested in the story on Winslow, AZ, still cadging drinks thirty-five years later off their one brief bit of fame in 1972.]
posted by Sal Towse at 5:03 PM||
|
This article claims, "The Eagles Greatest Hits, 1971-1975 was released just four years after the band debuted. It has now sold more records than any album in history, including Thriller."
[via grapes2dot0, who was more interested in the story on Winslow, AZ, still cadging drinks thirty-five years later off their one brief bit of fame in 1972.]
posted by Sal Towse at 5:03 PM|
|
|
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING
Today is the sixteenth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee posting the first Web pages about his hypertext project that eventually evolved into the World Wide Web.
I mentioned that I'd come across my copy of WEAVING THE WEB yesterday, inscribed "To Sal" by Tim B-L, my hero.
PJ Parks, who used to have a very readable blog but now no longer does, wrote that she has a copy too and talked about ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING, a Victorian factoid book and the motivation for TB-L to name his proto-WWW project ENQUIRE.
Today, while sorting books and packing up boxes, I found a copy -- well, not the Brit version, mine is the American version: INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, or Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts WORTH KNOWING. Particularly intended as a book for Family Reference on Subjects connected with Domestic Economy, and containing the Largest and most Valuable Collection of Useful Information that has ever yet been published. INQUIRERS ARE REFERRED TO THE INDEX. (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, No. 18 Ann Street. 1858 [maybe 1856, the numeral didn't print clearly])
The book has all =sorts= of useful (and quaint and dated and sometimes flat out wrong) stuff.
e.g.
794. YULECAKE -- Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon. Melt the butter to a cream, and put in the sugar. Stir it till quite light, adding the allspice and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour, take the yolks of the eggs, and work them two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow, quite ready to work in. As the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the whites gradually, then add the orange-peel, lemon, and citron, cut in fine stripes [sic], and currants which must be mixed in well with the sweet almonds; then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop, in a hot oven, for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.
795. TO WASH CHINA CRAPE SCARFS, &c. -- ...
2004. Why does a lamp smoke, when the wick is cut unevenly? -- Because the points of the jagged edge (being very easily separated from the wick) load the flame with more carbon that [sic] it can consume; and as the heat of the flame is greatly diminished by these little bits of wicks, it is unable to consume even the usual quantity of smoke. The same applies when the wick is turned up too high.
Some of the stuff in INQUIRE WITHIN is word-for-word what's in ENQUIRE WITHIN. The scarf washing article above, f'rex, is word-for-word except that the title is "To Wash China Crêpe Scarves, &c." in ENQUIRE.
Other bits of information (the one about lamp smoke, f'rex) are not covered by ENQUIRE WITHIN at all.
All-in-all fun stuff. You can see why TB-L called his project ENQUIRE -- there's more than a bit of resemblance to the random collection of stuff on the Web.
How prescient of him.
Project Gutenberg has made a copy of ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING available. Did TB-L even dream sixteen years ago that his nifty little project would some day offer up ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING for anyone with Web access?
Thanks, TB-L!
posted by Sal Towse at 8:41 PM||
|
I mentioned that I'd come across my copy of WEAVING THE WEB yesterday, inscribed "To Sal" by Tim B-L, my hero.
PJ Parks, who used to have a very readable blog but now no longer does, wrote that she has a copy too and talked about ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING, a Victorian factoid book and the motivation for TB-L to name his proto-WWW project ENQUIRE.
Today, while sorting books and packing up boxes, I found a copy -- well, not the Brit version, mine is the American version: INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, or Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts WORTH KNOWING. Particularly intended as a book for Family Reference on Subjects connected with Domestic Economy, and containing the Largest and most Valuable Collection of Useful Information that has ever yet been published. INQUIRERS ARE REFERRED TO THE INDEX. (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, No. 18 Ann Street. 1858 [maybe 1856, the numeral didn't print clearly])
The book has all =sorts= of useful (and quaint and dated and sometimes flat out wrong) stuff.
e.g.
794. YULECAKE -- Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon. Melt the butter to a cream, and put in the sugar. Stir it till quite light, adding the allspice and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour, take the yolks of the eggs, and work them two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow, quite ready to work in. As the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the whites gradually, then add the orange-peel, lemon, and citron, cut in fine stripes [sic], and currants which must be mixed in well with the sweet almonds; then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop, in a hot oven, for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.
795. TO WASH CHINA CRAPE SCARFS, &c. -- ...
2004. Why does a lamp smoke, when the wick is cut unevenly? -- Because the points of the jagged edge (being very easily separated from the wick) load the flame with more carbon that [sic] it can consume; and as the heat of the flame is greatly diminished by these little bits of wicks, it is unable to consume even the usual quantity of smoke. The same applies when the wick is turned up too high.
Some of the stuff in INQUIRE WITHIN is word-for-word what's in ENQUIRE WITHIN. The scarf washing article above, f'rex, is word-for-word except that the title is "To Wash China Crêpe Scarves, &c." in ENQUIRE.
Other bits of information (the one about lamp smoke, f'rex) are not covered by ENQUIRE WITHIN at all.
All-in-all fun stuff. You can see why TB-L called his project ENQUIRE -- there's more than a bit of resemblance to the random collection of stuff on the Web.
How prescient of him.
Project Gutenberg has made a copy of ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING available. Did TB-L even dream sixteen years ago that his nifty little project would some day offer up ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING for anyone with Web access?
Thanks, TB-L!
Labels: books, factoid, history
posted by Sal Towse at 8:41 PM|
|
|
Monday, February 26, 2007
Family histories of Sharpton, Thurmond collide
Family histories of Sharpton, Thurmond collide
Researchers from Ancestry .com traced Sharpton's roots using a database with access to 5 billion records including birth and death certificates, slave narratives, census and bank records, and United States Colored Troops documents.
They discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.
"I know there's no such thing as a boring family tree," said the chief family historian for Ancestry.com, Megan Smolenyak, who presented the findings to Sharpton on Thursday. "I knew we would find something, but I certainly didn't anticipate this."
The information also showed his [Sharpton's] great-grandfather had been freed. Smolenyak said Sharpton was subdued and stunned when she told him about his family history.
Interesting histories.
Interesting times.
Update: Sharpton Wants DNA Test
posted by Sal Towse at 12:15 AM||
|
Researchers from Ancestry .com traced Sharpton's roots using a database with access to 5 billion records including birth and death certificates, slave narratives, census and bank records, and United States Colored Troops documents.
They discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.
"I know there's no such thing as a boring family tree," said the chief family historian for Ancestry.com, Megan Smolenyak, who presented the findings to Sharpton on Thursday. "I knew we would find something, but I certainly didn't anticipate this."
The information also showed his [Sharpton's] great-grandfather had been freed. Smolenyak said Sharpton was subdued and stunned when she told him about his family history.
Interesting histories.
Interesting times.
Update: Sharpton Wants DNA Test
posted by Sal Towse at 12:15 AM|
|
|
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
[URL] MacTutor History of Mathematics
Found the MacTutor History of Mathematics while looking for information on Johann Benedict Listing, the guy (not August Ferdinand Möbius) who actually discovered the Möbius Strip.
posted by Sal Towse at 2:04 PM||
|
Labels: factoid, information, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 2:04 PM|
|
|
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Important stuff! Where was the burger born?
Burger Brawl: Texas Rep Claims Burger Birthplace: Was the burger born in Athens, TX, or New Haven, CT?
New Haven weighs in.
Another paper weighs in.
DeStefano notes that New Haven has been a cradle of creativity, as the birthplace of the cotton gin, the first rubber tires, the corkscrew, the Frisbee, lollipops, Erector Sets and pizza.
Methinks it's time to check those bonafides.
The Frisbee? Lollipops? Hard to believe.
(Someone invented the hamburger? That's hard to believe too.)
posted by Sal Towse at 11:31 PM||
|
New Haven weighs in.
Another paper weighs in.
DeStefano notes that New Haven has been a cradle of creativity, as the birthplace of the cotton gin, the first rubber tires, the corkscrew, the Frisbee, lollipops, Erector Sets and pizza.
Methinks it's time to check those bonafides.
The Frisbee? Lollipops? Hard to believe.
(Someone invented the hamburger? That's hard to believe too.)
posted by Sal Towse at 11:31 PM|
|
|
