“Very nearly a parody of the Southern Gothic novel…written in imitation Faulkner–a wearisome and hopeless style.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities
“Proton (positive) * Neutron (neutral) * Electron (negative)
The proton is stuck like a plumb pudding together with its neutron partners, wround which whiz the much smaller electron particles, within a space known as the electron cloud. This whole mysterious building block of life is held together by the power of electromagnetism to form atoms, which are listed in all their wonderful variety in that evocative list known as the Periodic Table of Elements.
Democritus, who brilliantly analyzed that the entire universe was ‘all in flux’ back in the fifth century BC, was the first to speculate about an atom–though our focus on the essential building block of life has somewhat shifted back a bit, since we have learned that quarks like beneath the surface of both protons and neutrons.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, readings/research, science literacy
“There are two kinds of music—good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music I don’t want to hear.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, music
“Reading V. is like listening to a scholarly but erratic documentation of hell by a disinterested onlooker, while verbal sewage and vignettes of all that is most disgusting in mankind alternates with with sociological asides, sardonic and blasphemous attacks on Christianity, Freudian tidbits…. To attempt to convey a sense of how completely boring all this melee finally is would tax the capabilities of better reviewers then myself.”
Best Sellers
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“[1] People love to play the Two Things game, but rarely agree about what the two things are. [2] That goes double for anyone who works with computers.
A few years ago, Glen Whitman was chatting with a stranger in a California bar. When he confessed to this stranger that he taught economics, the drinker replied without so much as a pause for breath, ‘So what are the Two Things about economics? You know, for every subject there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.’ ‘Okay,’ said the professor, ‘One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’
Inspired, Glenn started playing the Two Things Game and recording some of the results on a web page (Google ‘Whitman’ and ‘Two Things’ and you’ll get there). But it’s more fun to try it for yourself–and especially good if you find yourself at a dinner next to a self-important professional. Here are some of the best of Whitman’s:
Finance: [1] Buy low. [2] Sell high.
Medicine: [1] Do no harm. [2] To do any good, you must risk doing harm.
Journalism: [1] There is no such thing as objectivity. [2] The end of the story is created by your deadline.
Theatre: [1] Remember your lines. [2] Don’t run into the furniture or fall off the stage.
Physics: [1] Energy is conserved. [2] Photons (and everything else) behave like both waves and particles.
Religion: [1] Aspire to love an unknowable god. [2] Do this by trying to love your neighbour as much as yourself.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
“Ruth Gordon once described to G.S.K. [George S. Kaufman] a new play in which she was appearing: ‘In the first scene I’m on the left side of the stage, and the audience has to imagine I’m eating dinner in a crowded restaurant. Then in scene two I run over to the right side of the stage and the audience imagines I’m in my own drawing room.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, humor, literary oddities
“Functionary, n. A person entrusted with certain official duties. That great and good man, the late President Buchanan, once unluckily mentioned himself with commendable satisfaction as ‘an old public functionary.’ The description fitted him like a skin and he wore it to his grave. When he appeared as the Judgement Seat, and his case was called, the Recording Angel ran his finger down the index to the Book of Doom and read off the name: ‘James Buchanan, O.P.F.’ ‘What does that mean?’ inquired the Court. And with that readiness of resource which in life had distinguished it from a garden slug, that truthful immortal part replied: ‘Oncommonly phaultless filanthropist.’ Mr. Buchanan was admitted to a seat in the Upper House.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“There is nothing here to appease a reader’s basic literary needs.”
Atlantic Monthly
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
Mark Twain
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Sulphuric Acid * Iron Oxide * Sodium Carbonate * Sodium Nitrate * Liquor Hepatis * Red Pulvis Solaris * Black Pulvis Solaris
The alchemist’s vocabulary does not always translate directly into a modern formula. They were keen on Natron, which was a generic word that included both the salts of sodium carbonate and sodium nitrate. Vitriol, however, is what we know as sulphuric acid and Aqua Fortis was nitric acid. Black pulvis solaris was formed from ground black antimony (stibnite–a sulphide of antimony) mixed with ground sulphur. Red pulvis solaris was a mixture of mercury (which could be extracted by heating cinnabar) and sulphur.
The alchemists also made a strong connection between the seven prime metals and the planets. The sun was linked to gold, the moon to silver, Mars to iron, Mercury to quicksilver, Saturn to lead, Jupiter to tin, and Venus to copper.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities, science literacy
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