Chryselephantine: Archive

An argument about why bilingualism is good for you from a woman named Bialystok. Bialystok (in Poland) was the hometown of L.L. Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto. I find this amusing.

May 31, 20112 notes

“I first got a cell phone some years ago when I was put on call for a pressured work situation. I was surprised to find it relaxing. When it was not ringing I knew everything was fine at work.” —No More Mobile: I Heard a Beep Nearby and Laughed in Delight it was Not For Me | Open Reading

May 22, 2011-1 notes

“Over the following months, I spoke to scores of psychologists who all said the same. Everyone in the field seemed to regard psychopaths in this same way: inhuman, relentlessly wicked forces, whirlwinds of malevolence, forever harming society but impossible to identify unless you’re trained in the subtle art of spotting them, as I now was.” —How to spot a psychopath | Jon Ronson | Books | The Guardian

May 22, 20110 notes

“Astrologically, the Cattleya is governed by those three giant glowing balls of fire in the sky that follow you wherever you go.” —DR. BOLI’S COMPREHENSIVE HERBAL. « Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

May 22, 20110 notes

May 15, 20110 notes

“Eram quod es, eris quod sum - I was what you are, you will be what I am. (grave inscription)” —

poignant and beautiful!! (via doctom666)

Not to mention the handy conjugation of “sum” in three tenses.

May 13, 20116 notes

May 12, 20119,585 notes

May 09, 20113 notes

“The only explanation that makes any sense is that all of these people, things, concepts, and publication plans did indeed exist, but were erased by time travelers changing our timeline. Most of our evidence for them must come from reference works that traveled with the time travelers (and were thus unaffected by changes in the time stream). A moment’s thought makes it clear that these must not be finished reference works—for what would it likely matter if one lone copy of some dictionary contained an entry for jungfak? Who would even know? No, the documents that travel with the chrononauts must be early drafts of reference works! This is the inevitable result of the vicious lexicographic arms race that rages behind the genteel façade of polite lexicographic conferences and trade shows. Scholars know that something as small as being able to reliably and properly apply macrons to every Latinate etymon will double or triple dictionary sales—at the direct expense of rivals. It is all too easy to imagine a gaggle of gung-ho capitalist lexicographers leaping into a time machine to research details of pronunciation or orthography. While on safari, someone steps on a butterfly or uses the wrong verb form when speaking to a local, and the next thing you know, the clever story of the jungftak never takes hold in Persia. The only ironic remnant is in the stacks of early drafts the researchers carried with them to and fro in time.” —SpecGram—Ode to Jungftak, et al.—Nihila R. Tikel

May 09, 2011-1 notes

“Other famous cryptolexemes include the Maori fife-drum, the zzxjoanw; the rock-eating German Steinlaus (“stone louse”, Petrophaga lorioti); the Roman football-like game of apopudobalia; and English esquivalience, the willful avoidance of official duties. None exist, except on paper. Cryptobiographies also exist in reference works, including Lillian Mountweazel, famous non-photographer of rural mailboxes; Jakob Mierscheid, a non-member of the German parliament; Guglielmo Baldini, an Italian non-composer; Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, a Danish non-composer; and Metaf Üsic, the Turkish non-scholar of musical beards. Rarely, entire scholarly cryptotexts have been found, such as Anatomie et Biologie des Rhinogrades, by Harald Stümpke, a detailed biological description of the Rhinogradentia non-order of nose-using non-rodents. There is even one documented case of an entire cryptofield, Stratificational Linguistics, a non-subfield of linguistics.” —SpecGram—Ode to Jungftak, et al.—Nihila R. Tikel

May 09, 20111 note

“Unsurprisingly, Quinlan views Percy’s conversion from a psychological context, diagnosing a “striking need for an authoritative source of religious and moral guidance in [his] life” in the wake of his disillusionment with both Southern Stoicism and scientism. Such a view is tenable, even for those who, like Percy, are Christian believers: Since God is personal, then surely the myriad particulars of an individual’s life condition the manner in which he comes to accept Revelation.” —New Oxford Review

May 07, 20111 note

“I think there’s less of a problem with TMG seeming dated now than there would have been in the eighties/nineties, for the simple reason that the references are absolutely meaningless to students now (William Holden??). They take them purely as fictional names and judge the meaning by the context, instead of partially recognizing and depositing them in the ‘fogey’ bin.” —[percy-l] The Moviegoer

May 07, 20110 notes

“Here we are, staying up past midnight. This time scrolling through hundreds of tweets every few minutes. Every one is in reference to Osama bin Laden. I’m not going for another walk, but if I did it’s unlikely I’d see anyone on a payphone. And I already know what the papers will say. I watched the process become the product. I watched the story go from word of a mysterious presidential announcement to the first report of Bin Laden’s death through phases of speculation and gradual confirmation and finally — as of now — images of people celebrating at Ground Zero and in front of the White House.” —History, Perspective & Speed: 2001 – 2011 | Brian Frank

May 06, 2011-1 notes

May 02, 2011-1 notes

#russia moscow dogs 21c

Chryselephantine

May 2011

15 posts