Anthropology

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pink_bathroom_Second_Life.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

— Horace Miner, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” American Anthropologist, June 1956

(It’s satire. What’s Nacirema spelled backward?)

| Humor

Advice

In his 1986 commonplace book Hodgepodge, J. Bryan lists this as one of his favorite typographical errors:

‘Carolyn B—-, who spoke on ‘Looking Ahead,’ said that the three qualities necessary for success are faith, determination and Charles McFee.

“I can’t classify it or explain it at all. I can only quote it.” I haven’t been able to find the original source.

| Humor

Second Senses

Entries from the Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary:

beehive: what Australian teachers tell you to do
blistering: someone you enjoy calling on the phone
cannelloni: Scots refusal to give one an overdraft
cherish: rather like a chair
colliery: sort of like a collie but even more so
emboss: to promote to the top
female: chemical name for Iron Man
flatulence: an emergency vehicle that picks you up after you have been run over by a steamroller
Icelander: to tell lies about Apple
ivy: the Roman for four
lamb shank: Sean Connery’s sheep has drowned
laundress: grass skirt
pastrami: the art of meat folding
quick: noise made by a New Zealand duck
splint: to run very fast with a broken leg
Venezuela: a gondola with a harpoon
wisteria: a nostalgic form of panic
xylophone: the Greek goddess of Scrabble

A foible is “something coughed up by a New York cat.”

| Humor · Language

Fare

The recipe for “Groper, Head and Shoulders Boiled” in Mrs. Beeton’s Everyday Cookery (1923) concludes with the warning “Great care should be taken of the immense gelatinous lips, as these are considered the best part.” In 1948 New Statesman challenged its readers to invent a recipe with a more disgusting last line. L.G. Udall obliged:

GRILLED GORILLA’S FOOT

One foot will suffice for each person.

First shave the upper part of the foot and wash in warm water. With a gimlet (for preference as the skin is very hard) bore a number of holes through the thick skin of the under part of the foot. Grease liberally with lard. Grill slowly for about twenty minutes with the under surface downwards. Then turn the foot over and continue to grill steadily. From time to time place a fork on the foot. When it is quite done it will be found that the toes will curl up firmly over the fork, so that it can be lifted up and put on a hot plate. Leave the fork in the toes and serve immediately.

The other winners are here.

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Hematology

[T]o the human mind there is more to blood than its mere chemical content. … For example, blood must essentially be thicker than water, impossible to get out of stones, indelible in its staining. … When apparent on heads, it should leave them unbowed; and should have the capacities to combine formidably with toil, tears and sweat and to attain boiling-point when its host faces frustration.

— Patrick Ryan, in New Scientist

| Humor · Science & Math

Dispatches

“A Time-Series Analysis of My Girlfriend’s Mood Swings”

“Behavioral Conditioning Methods to Stop My Boyfriend From Playing The Witcher 3”

“Sub-Nyquist Sampling While Listening to My Girlfriend”

“Who Should Do the Dishes? A Transportation Problem Solution”

“Freudian Psychoanalysis of My Boyfriend’s Gun Collection”

“Breaking Up With Your Girlfriend but Not Your Friends: A Cyclic Graph Algorithm for Social Network Preservation”

“The Future of Romance: Novel Techniques for Replacing Your Boyfriend With Generative AI”

“Winning Tiffany Back: How to Defeat an AI Boyfriend”

“Would He Still Love Me as a Worm: Indirect Sampling and Inference Techniques for Romantic Assurance”

Via r/ImmaterialScience.

| Humor · Science & Math · Society

Plaque Buildup

For a fictional character, Sherlock Holmes has a strangely real presence in the physical world. This plaque is posted near the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherlock_Holmes_plaque.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This one’s on a cottage in Sussex:

sussex holmes plaque

There’s even a plaque at the spot where Holmes met Watson.

Naturalist Gilbert White, author of Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, seems to have had an imaginary contemporary nemesis. Someone has posted this plaque on the house opposite White’s 18th-century Hampshire home:

sullivan black plaque

(Black is the opposite of white, and Sullivan is the opposite, or at least the complement, of Gilbert.)

Finally, this plaque adorns the Park Street Eye Clinic in Tauranga, New Zealand:

nz plaque

Accurate enough.

(Thanks to readers Tom Race, Brieuc de Grangechamps, and Derek Christie.)

| Humor · Oddities

Footwork

Conclusion of a 2021 investigation by physicist Eve Armstrong of her cat’s reactions to a laser pointer:

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D3-D4 slice of the four-dimensional phase space (Figure 5,
middle left). Thisf particular viewing angfffle reveals the
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fffscinating and merits further investigation.

(Eve Armstrong, “My Cat Chester’s Dynamical Systems Analysyyyyy7777777777777777y7is of the Laser Pointer and the Red Dot on the Wall: Correlation, Causation, or SARS-Cov-2 Hallucination?”, arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.17058 [2021].)

| Humor · Science & Math