Tag: asked and not worth asking
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Maybe an idea
Printing and bookbinding should try harder to compete with online. Some books do a good job of staying flat, some don’t. The two books I bought last week are examples of good and bad. Good: Hudson book. Sewn signatures, wide pages. It fits in my bookholder and lays flat without constant active intervention. It’s passive.…
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Another Hudson first
This new video about varieties of inside doorhandles on cars brought me back to an earlier trivia item about outside doorhandles. There’s a clear default pattern with a couple exceptions. Before 1940 all closed cars had simple turn levers, the same mechanism as house doors. Levers varied from T shape to L shape to stirrup,…
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What’s spycial about cylinder?
This was triggered by a couple of those 1950s newsreel and educational films. Narrators in that era were tiresomely Grammatical and Enunciative. Every phoneme agreed with the dictionary. This film is about engines and this is about mimeographs. Both topics constantly mention cylinders. I would expect the Enunciators to say sillinder, but they said sellinder…
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A better silly idea
Another silly idea from Andrew Yang. He says that Demon Amodei, head of Anthropic, wants his demonic company to pay more taxes. Demon Amodei suggests a 3% surcharge on revenue. Yang says this tax could be used to fund his biggest silly idea, Universal Basic Income. A better silly idea is a tariff on products…
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Verrrry uninteresting and pointless
Reading the McAlester architecture book triggered a pointless new thought, which no human will read. The book carefully distinguishes between folk and non-folk styles. Non-folk is the unmarked default. Victorian vs Folk Victorian, Italianate vs Folk Italianate. New thought for me, undoubtedly old for others… This distinction is clearcut in all realms of creative products.…
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Reconciling Gothic
Another tech history quickie to entertain my brain without spending much time on it. I’ve been thinking about typesetting lately. This recent item on prescription alcohol during prohibition linked to the ‘standard’ web picture of those prescription blanks. The blanks were set in what I call Record Gothic. We used this font for most of…
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Why Hank?
Thinking as usual about Henry Ford. A few very old friends were allowed to call him Hank. I’ve called him Hank in the Hank vs Frank comparison. Wait. How did Henry shorten to Hank? Harry is the more obvious phonetic elision, and the many King Henrys were often called King Harry in literature and song.…
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Random linguistic[s] question
Why are some traditional subjects plural in form? Most ic words are plural in form and singular in meaning. Physics, mathematics, electronics, linguistics, politics, statistics. And within physics, mechanics and statics and hydrodynamics. When those words are used as adjectives, they’re singular or add al. With al: physical, mathematical, political, statistical, mechanical. Without al: linguistic,…
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Why so vague?
Why do companies always put a misleading warning on envelopes containing bills or invoices? The envelope says Do not discard! Contains information about your utility bill. or IMPORTANT! Information regarding your medical plan! Information usually means updates to the Terms And Conditions or increases in rates. I don’t need to know those things. If they…
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Random language notes
1. Spam email from Grammarly: Apply to Jobs With Confidence. Sorry, I don’t have confidence in a grammar and style app that thinks ‘apply to jobs’ is preferable, and doesn’t capitalize consistently. You ‘apply for jobs’ and you ‘apply to General Motors’. (If you had good afterlife connections you might ‘apply to Jobs’ for a…
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Speaking?
Most old movies and TV shows have totally unrealistic phone behavior. Businesses don’t pick up the phone with the name of the business, they just say “Hello” or “Yeah?” The caller always does the ID. “Is this Acme Construction?” When shows try for realism, they use a method that may have been real in some…
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Never stopped to think…
I’ve been reciting the alphabet since I was 3, but never looked at the pattern of the official syllables. There’s a fairly consistent logic. All stops come before a vowel, most liquids and some fricatives come after a vowel. H is an odd exception. If it’s considered a fricative, it should be He. If a…
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Size = subject
A silly online poll asks how you arrange your bookshelf, and gives four illustrations. By size, by color, by author, or random. The poll didn’t include the way libraries do it, by subject. I arrange books by subject but not intentionally. I sort by size, which also sorts by subject. With only a few exceptions,…
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Another phonograph puzzle
One of the analog tech fans featured the Sony Flamingo. It was a marketing flop; apparently it didn’t work well and people didn’t like putting records in vertically. Raises yet another question about the history of the phonograph. When cylinders were replaced by disks around 1915, why weren’t the disks vertical, with a threaded gear…
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Antonym
I noticed a package of chocolate S’Mores in the grocery store. What about a S’Less? Spinach Cookies. Artichoke Chips. Limburger burger. Liver Krispies. Blood Pudding. Granola Bars. Oops, some of those aren’t fictional. Old-fashioned “health food” was nothing but S’Lesses. Not the best way to sell a basically good thing.
Polistra's Mill 