|k| clippings: 2016-01-28 — my god, it's full of stars

WORK

“Don’t talk to me about the stars, about how cold and indifferent they are, about the unimaginable distances. There are millions of stars within us that are just as far, and people like me sometimes burn up a whole life trying to reach them.”

—Ted Kooser
—from The Wheeling Year

WORD(S)

dicker /DIK-ər/. verb or noun. To bargain or haggle. More generally to vacillate. As a noun, in an obsolete usage: a quantity of 10, usually furs or hides. Occasionally: many or a lot. From Latin decuria (a bundle of 10) and Middle English dyker and Middle Low German dēker (quantity of 10).

“Behold, said Pas, a whole dicker of wit…” (Sir Philip Sidney)

“He did not believe in giving the dealer a large profit. In the midst of a dicker he would turn his terrific eyes full upon his visitor and exclaim: I have heard enough. I’ll take this at the price you paid plus fifteen per cent.” (Virginia Woolf)

“Do you really think you can go down there and dicker with some greaser pimp that buys and sells people outright like you was goin down to the courthouse lawn to trade knives?” (Cormac McCarthy)

“My word on’t, Bertrand, I struck no bargain with Lord Baltimore, nor dickered and haggled any quid pro quos, I’m no more Papist this morning than I was last week…” (John Barth)

WEB

1. The Dora Lee Club of Chicago was a snail mail based social network and dating service in the 50s with a funny and fascinating “List of Women” looking for suitors.

2. Epistolary film fame could be yours. Or something… → The Eduardo Munez Letter Project

3. Some very clever little creations here → If Great Scientists Had Logos. This is just a portion of Kapil Bhagat’s “mostly minimalist” work. Thanks, Reader S.!

4. The Martin Luther Insult Generator Thanks, Reader G.!

5. Today in 1521, an imperial council—a diet—is convened in Worms, Germany to decide the fate of Martin Luther. Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to respond to charges of heresy. When asked to repudiate his works, Luther refused, stating that he would only do so if convinced by scripture or reason and saying to the assembled, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” A turning-point in the growing Reformation, Luther would later go into hiding and the diet would issue the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther an outlaw who was to be captured and punished as a heretic…an act that would hound Luther for the rest of his life.

WATCH/WITNESS

An ►awe-inspiring video about the most detailed map of our universe yet made. More than 500 million light-years across, containing more than 100,000 galaxies.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. asks: “Surely you meant your subject line to read ‘DEFiant buRSTs’, right?”

• Reader F. calls me out: “a whole segment for we ‘amperfans’” ???? Who committed this egregious error? Not “us,” surely! — Busted.

• Reader B. finds a 5-letter literordinym: “There is a street in Oslo: HeieRSTUVeien.” — I suspect other languages, or our representation of them, might allow for even longer examples…

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