Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

kateelliott

Humans like to figure out other humans. We evolved to observe, interact, gossip, and create relationships. Creating a relationship between the characters is not all a novelist does. We as writers are also creating a relationship between the character and the reader.

• Another entry in the annals of obscure bar signs. Like the commentator, I'm quite taken with the sequence of connectives. Check out the potential source suggested in the comments.
  
  
• What caffeine actually does, neurochemically -- turns out, it's not a stimulant per se as a fatigue-receptor blocker. (via)
  
  
• Two articles on current theories of gender dysphoria (via forgotten) and differences (via).
  
  
• One article on the current research on how language shapes cognition, with sidenotes teasing out cultural influence. (via)
  
  
• On the increasing obsolescence of that technology known as "management", with sidenotes on the insufficiency of profit motives. (via forgotten)
  
  
• Examples of potential Swiss expansionism, with sidenotes on Libyan proposals to instead dismember the Confederation.
  
  
• "Editors ship, dammit." (via)
  
  
• It is possible to take 1000 origami cranes too far.
  
  
• Video of people watching a total solar eclipse.
  
  
• Porcupines make playful, if round, pets. Who knew?
  
  
• A field guide to typographic mustaches. I'm ludicrously fond of Mr. Oxford's 'stache. (via)
  
  
• I may have posted this before, but if so, this is a still pretty good paper airplane (uses A4 paper).
  
  
• Examples of various Japanese bows of apology. Including the one to do if you are a ninja who lost the secret message.

1. Lingua Latina saepe dicitur mortua esse. Coleus! Modum iam pridem meridiatur. Iam diu autem multa verba facit dormiens. Re vera, non potes eam in silentium redigere. Circuspice—Lingua Latina se pandit ubique tanquam toga vilis.
   
   
2. There is one characteristic which may be safely said to belong to nearly all happily-married couples—that of desiring to see equally happy marriages among their young friends; and in some cases, where their wishes are strong and circumstances seem favourable to the exertion of their own efforts, they may even embark upon the perilous but delightful course of helping those persons whose minds are as yet not made up, to form a decision respecting this important crisis in life, and this done, to assist in clearing the way in order that this decision may forthwith be acted upon.
   
   
3. 53. Repeat steps 45–52 on the other side.
   55. Squash fold.
   58. Repeat steps 55–57 on the right.
   59. Repeat steps 45–53 for the second head.
   60. Repeat steps 55–59 behind for the third head.
   
   
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behavior. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.
   
   
5. As a new face [The Times New Roman] should, by the grace of God and the art of man, have been broad and open, generous and ample; instead, by the vice of Mammon and the misery of the machine, it is bigoted and narrow, mean and puritan.

1. Henry Beard, X-Treme Latin: Lingua Latina Extrema (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2005).
2. Sybil G. Brinton, Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (Naperville, IL: Sourcebook Landmark, 2007 reprint of the 1914 edition).
3. John Montroll, "Three-Headed Dragon," in Mythological Creatures and the Chinese Zodiac in Origami (New York: Dover Publications, 1996).
4. Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
5. John Morrison, A Tally of Type, 3rd ed. (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 1999).

1. Yes, I'm dubious about his Latin, too.
2. Yes, a sequel to all six novels at once. Edward and Elinor Ferrars have one of the Darcy livings, for a start, and Mary Crawford is in the orbit of Sir Walter Eliot.
3. I have now proven it is possible to fold this in 15cm paper, but the result is so small as to be barely worth the effort. Also, Tiamat looks so silly shrunk to 4cm long. Undignified.
4. A brief but generally sensible work, which breaks no new ground.
5. To be fair to Morrison, he's putting these words in William Morris's mouth. But I more or less agree.