|k| clippings: 2015-10-08 — those hoarded constants

The discover of liquid water on Mars brought to mind today’s WORK. And today’s WORD is inspired by Reader B., who was obviously paying attention to the Zipf’s Law video a few weeks ago.

WORK

“There is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier”

There is absolutely nothing lonelier
than the little Mars rover
never shutting down, digging up
rocks, so far away from Bond street
in a light rain. I wonder
if he makes little beeps? If so
he is lonelier still. He fires a laser
into the dust. He coughs. A shiny
thing in the sand turns out to be his.

—Matthew Rohrer
—from the Columbia Daily Tribune

WORD(S)

hapax legomenon /ha-PAKS lə-GAW-mə-nawn/ (pronunciation guide). noun. A word that occurs only once in a text, oeuvre or a body of literature (aka a corpus). Often abbreviated as just hapax. Surprisingly, 40–60% of large collections of text are made of hapaxes. Read more: Wikipedia. See also: hapaxanthic (a plant that fruits and flowers only once). Borrowed from Greek hapax legomenon ([a thing] said only once).

“This is the Age of Complete Interconnection. No wires can hang loose; otherwise we all short-circuit. Yet, it is undeniable that life without individuality is not worth living. Every man must be a hapax legomenon…” (Philip Jose Farmer)

“The term for a word that only appears once in a text is hapax legomenon, which sounds like a character from an Asterix story, or a Scandinavian death metal band, and in this text appears only once.” (Alex Bellos)

“…where would their practice be or where the human race itself were the Pythagorean sesquipedalia of the panepistemion, however apically Volapucky, grunted and gromwelled, ichabod, habakuk, opanoff, uggamyg, hapaxle, gomenon, ppppfff, over country stiles, behind slated dwellinghouses, down blind lanes, or, when all fruit fails, under some sacking left on a coarse cart?” (James Joyce)

WEB

1. Metaphor Map of English [Via Reader S. who says “I really don’t understand this but thought you might.” Well, it’s fun to explore even in my ignorance!]

2. First, the Oregon Shakespeare festival announces a large-scale project to “translate” all of Shakespeare’s plays into “modern English”. I’m no purist by any means—I love adaptations of—and new variations on—the Bard’s work…but this seems deeply misguided. I’m not alone in that. In modern times, this kind of project is actually an outlier. Much more interesting, to me, is the ongoing project to have some of our best novelists re-imagine Shakespeare’s plays as novels.

3. The strange and fascinating Ribbon Farm is “devoted to unusual takes on familiar themes. What we call ‘refactored perception.’” [Thanks, Reader M.!]

4. Jana Dambrogio’s “Letterlocking” Page takes forever (well, at least a minute or more; that’s what happens when you have 75+ megabytes of images on a single page) to load…but once it does, it is chock-full of interesting images and resources about historical, locking letterfolds.

5. Today in 1871, at 11:30 P.M., the Great Chicago Fire (cool site; check it out!) erupts. It would burn for 36 hours, kill nearly 300 people and leave over 100,000 people homeless in the 3.3 square mile area it consumed. While the Irish Catherine O’Leary (and her cow) made a fitting scapegoat during the heavily anti-Irish times, she (and her cow) were later exonerated and theories abound as to what really started the blaze. There’s no question, however, that the thin, mostly all-wood construction technique popular there at the time contributed to the fire going quickly out of control. Ironically, the demand for lumber to rebuilt was so great that some areas of Michigan were totally deforested…and Singapore, MI would subsequently be overrun by sand dunes and become, for a time, a famous ghost town.

WATCH/WITNESS

Some of the notes collected for the Hope 1980 artist book; a project from The Homeless Library.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader V. found an assignment: “I love the minimal elegance of the Animated Book Covers and plan to have my digital illustration students make some of their own.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.