Subway Riders

Tiny, Tinier, Tiniest

clipped from cabinetmagazine.org

A Minor History of / Miniature Writing

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Joshua Foer

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2060 B.C.E.

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The earliest known example of miniature writing appears on a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet measuring 1 5/16 inches by 1 5/8 inches. (Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana)

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1877 C.E.

Sixty years after the publication of James Parkinson's landmark "Essay on the Shaking Palsy," French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot first recognizes micrographia, or increasingly miniaturized handwriting, as a clinical symptom of Parkinson's disease.

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1884 C.E.

The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris becomes the first library in the world to use microfilm to condense texts.

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1894 C.E.

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Miniature book collector George Salomon of Paris disperses his seven-hundred-title collection, a library that reportedly "could be carried in a moderate-sized portmanteau." His spirit lives on today in the Miniature Book Society, an organization whose interests extend only to printed works three inches or smaller. (Pocket Library of Lilliputian Folio Books, London, 1801. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana)

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2003 C.E.

The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Pawan Sinha and Pamela Lipson, a husband-and-wife team of vision researchers, along with psychology professor Keith Kluender, for creating the world's smallest book. While napping during an academic conference, Sinha, a Hindu, dreamt of inscribing the entire Bhagavad Gita on a grain of rice. When he awoke, he realized the Gita was too short to pose much of a challenge and instead conspired with his wife (a Jew) to develop software to print the 180,568-word New Testament in twenty-four-karat gold on a silicon chip. Each letter is the size of a red blood cell [Check this out!] The entire book fits on a five-square-millimeter tablet.

READABILITY

clipped from www.nytimes.com

READABILITY The single best tech idea of 2009, though, the real life-changer, has got to be Readability. It's a free button for your Web browser's toolbar (get it at

lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability).

[Further instructions: Using the Firefox or Safari browser just drag the Readability Icon under "(2) Add your bookmarklet" up to the navigation toolbar. With Internet Explorer. Go to View/Toolbar. Make sure the Favorites bar is checked. Then right click the Readability icon; click on Add to Favorites; click on "Yes" to continue; click on the down arrow in "Create in;" and click on Favorites bar.]

When you click it, Readability eliminates everything from the Web page you're reading except the text and photos. No ads, blinking, links, banners, promos or anything else. Times Square just goes away.

You wind up with a simple, magazine-like layout, presented in a beautiful font and size (your choice) against a white or off-white background with none of this red-text-against-black business. [To get back to the original page refresh or reload your browser.]

Click image to enlarge.

You occasionally run into a Web page that Readability doesn't handle right — no big deal, just refresh the page to see the original. But most of the time, Readability makes the world online a calmer, cleaner, more beautiful place.

Go forth and install it.

Readability : An Arc90 Lab Experiment from Arc90 on Vimeo.

Oh, yeah — and happy high-tech new year.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

The Giraffe Test

clipped from www.dclab.com

The Giraffe Test: Are You Really Qualified To Be A "Professional"?

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I don't want to worry you. You may have a good job and have been through college and various levels of training. But the thing is, you may not be qualified to be a "professional." The short quiz below consists of four questions and will reveal the truth.

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1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door.

This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, "Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator?" (Wrong Answer)

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door.

This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The King of the Forest is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross but it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it?

Correct Answer: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the animal conference.

This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

Note: According to sources, Anderson Consulting Worldwide (now "Accenture"), said around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong. But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting reportedly said this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four year old.

DCLnews Editorial

Frim Fram

Click on image to enlarge.

Frim Fram Sauce

I don't want french fried potatoes,
Red ripe tomatoes, I'm never satisfied,
I want the Frim Fram sauce with the ausanfey,
With shififah on the side

I don't want pork chops and bacon,
That won't awaken my appetite inside,
I want the Frim Fram sauce with the ausanfey,
With shififah on the side

Well, you know, a fella has really got to eat
And a fella should eat right
Five will get you ten
I'm gonna feed myself right tonight

I don't want fish cakes and rye bread,
You heard what I said, waiter please serve mine fried
I want the Frim Fram sauce with the ausanfey,
With shififah on the side

Paintings from Seaside

Two photos of paintings by a friend who lives in Seaside.

Auld Lang Syne

clipped from www.michigansthumb.com

What's with that New Year's song? The history of Auld Lang Syne

By TRACI L. WEISENBACH

Published: Thursday, December 31, 2009 9:16 AM EST

The clock strikes midnight. The sparkling ball drops at Times Square. Streamers fly, horns blare, glasses are clinked together and champagne is sipped in celebration of a brand new year.

Then, people start singing a song that, on the surface, doesn't make a lot of sense. Something about old lang sign?

By the time the song is sung, though, many people have had too many drinks to care if the song is nonsensical.

The song is "Auld Lang Syne," and the only time it's typically sung is New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Where did this song come from, and what does it mean?

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According to about.com and infoplease.com, "Auld Lang Syne" started its life as a poem written by Scottish poet Robert Burns. He transcribed it (and made some refinements to the lyrics) after he heard it sung by an old man from the Ayrshire area of Scotland, Burns' homeland.

Although Burns' poem was dated to 1788, there are some lyrics that appear to have been taken from an earlier poem by James Watson, titled "Old Long Syne."

It wasn't long before the song became traditional in Scotland and the British Isles as a folk song to be sung to commemorate the New Year. As folks from that area of the world immigrated to the U.S., they brought the tradition with them and it became a part of American tradition.

It was bandleader Guy Lombardo who popularized the song and turned it into a New Year's tradition, according to infoplease.com. Lombardo first heard "Auld Lang Syne" in his hometown of London, Ontario, where it was sung by Scottish immigrants. When he and his brothers formed the famous dance band, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, the song became one of their standards. Lombardo played the song at midnight at a New Year's eve party at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City in 1929, and a tradition was born. After that, Lombardo's version of the song was played every New Year's Eve from the 1930s until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria.

The literal meaning of "Auld Lang Syne" is "Old Long Since" or "Long, Long Ago," according to about.com. The original language of "Auld Lang Syne" is actually Scots, which is an Anglic language of Scotland.

The lyrics talk about raising a toast to days gone by and all the festive adventures shared between friends.

The portion of the song most people sing is the first verse: "Should old acquaintance be forgot / and never brought to mind? / Should old acquaintance be forgot / and days o' lang syne?"

These lines ask whether one can forget the days that have gone by and the friends with whom those days have been spent.

This year, blow your friends and family away by singing the chorus and the other verses of the song, which recall fun days gone by.

The chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne!

Verses
And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp (pint tankard)
And surely I'll be mine,
And we'll take a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
We twa (two) have run about the braes (hills),
And pou'd (pulled) the gowans (daisies) fine,
But we've wander'd monie (many) a weary fit,
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa (two) have paidl't (paddled) in the burn
Frae (from) morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid (broad) have roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.
And there's a hand my trusty fiere (friend),
And give us a hand o thine,
And we'll take a right guid-willie waught (goodwill drink),
For auld lang syne

Whether you just listen to the song or you partake in singing it at the top of your lungs, now you have a better understanding of the tradition of "Auld Lang Syne."

Just don't forget about it.

Traci L. Weisenbach • (989) 269-6461 • tweisenbach@hearstnp.com

Auld Lang Syne As sung by Dougie MacLean on the album Tribute.