Irish Bulls

Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:

  • From the report of an Irish Benevolent Society: “Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year.”
  • A country editor’s correspondent wrote: “Will you please to insert this obituary notice? I make bold to ask it, because I know the deceased had a great many friends who would be glad to hear of his death.”
  • Quoted in the Greville Memoirs: “He abjured the errors of the Romish Church, and embraced those of the Protestant.”

“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”

| Humor · Language

Boom!

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FA-18_Hornet_breaking_sound_barrier_(7_July_1999).jpg

Sonic booms can get on your nerves.

NASA and the FAA learned this the hard way in 1964, when their testing over Oklahoma City caused eight booms per day for six months. It led to 15,000 complaints and a class action lawsuit — which they lost.

The idea seems to have caught Israel’s attention — last October it started using F-16 jet planes to create sonic booms over the Gaza Strip, to bug the Palestinians. Extra points for creativity, I guess.

| Technology

Guaranteed Turnout

Countries with compulsory voting:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Congo, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Fiji, Greece, Honduras, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mexico, Nauru, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela

| Society

“A Siege of Cranes”

Ornithological nouns of assemblage:

  • a murmuration of starlings
  • a desert of lapwing
  • a parliament of owls
  • a gulp of cormorants
  • a pitying of doves
  • a murder of crows
  • an exaltation of larks
  • a charm of finches
  • a stand of flamingoes
  • a watch of nightingales
  • a rafter of turkeys
  • a committee of vultures
  • a descent of woodpeckers
  • an unkindness of ravens
  • a convocation of eagles

Who comes up with these? They’re wonderfully poetic. Also: a sleuth of bears, a shrewdness of apes, a flutter of butterflies, an intrusion of cockroaches, a bask of crocodiles, a skulk of foxes, a smack of jellyfish, a leap of leopards, a crash of rhinoceroses, a scurry of squirrels, a streak of tigers, a shiver of sharks.

| Language

“Wonderful Peculiarity in the English Character!”

“The French, however wretched may be their condition, are attached to life, while the English frequently detest life in the midst of affluence and splendour. English criminals are not dragged, but run to the place of execution, where they laugh, sing, cut jokes, insult the spectators; and if no hangman happens to be present, frequently hang themselves.”

— Memoirs of Lewis Holberg, quoted in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, July 28, 1827

| Crime · History · Quotations