a celestial emporium of benevolent knowledge
Buffalo can buffalo Buffalo buffalo, but don’t do it too much. – grade 5
Buffalo can buffalo Buffalo buffalo. – grade 10 (obviously much harder to parse)
A corpuscle is an outmoded idea from the early modern period. Modern science eschews such terms in favor of atomism. – grade 6
Did a mote perchance alight upon your nape ere your sojourn? – grade 5
Schadenfreude beckons: would that I were able to resist it. But its force, an animal magnetism of sorts, calls me. I must yield. – Grade 3
“When David called to say he and Patty were coming for a visit, Noel never thought of saying no. And he asked me how he could compete with David. He thought David was coming to his house to win me away. After he reads more literature he’ll realize that is too easy. There will have to be complexities. The complexities will protect him forever.”
From “Vermont,” by Ann Beattie
A beautiful and bitter poem by Theognis, addressed to his beleaguered young lover Kurnos.
I give you wings. You’ll soon be lifted up
Across the land, across the boundless crests
Of ocean; where men dine and pass the cup,
You’ll light there, on the lips of all the guests,
Where lithe, appealing lads will praise you, swelling
Their song to match the piper’s sweet, shrill tone.
At length, my boy, you’ll enter Hades’ dwelling,
That black hole where departed spirits moan,
But even then your glory will not cease,
Your well-loved name will stay alive, unworn;
You’ll skim across the mainland, over Greece,
Over the islands and the sea, not borne
By horses, Kurnos; you’ll be whirled along
By violet-crowned maids, the Muses; yours
Will be each practiced singer’s finest song,
As long as light exists and earth endures.
I give you this, for what? To be reviled–
To be betrayed and lied to, like a child.
From Felix Rieseberg, HTTP Status-Katzen.
Vin Diesel is not in the same league as Arnie
Setting up an Android developer environment on your Mac is easy
Been reading up on web development/design for mobile devices recently, and came across some helpful instructions on testing websites on Google Android. Turns out it’s pretty easy, but I thought I’d write up these instructions for OSX since the steps seem to have changed a bit since the above article was written. Continue reading “Testing your websites on Android phones”
Whimsical and retro
Typography is somewhere between a passing interest and a form of professional dilettantism. I like the Myfonts newsletter, the most recent edition of which highlights a couple particularly outstanding fonts. Continue reading “Two interesting fonts”
Goethe in same room as unaware Hölderlin; hilarity ensues
I’ve already been at Schiller’s too, once or twice, the first time not altogether successfully. I went in, was greeted warmly, and barely noticed at the back of the room a stranger whose appearance, and what little he said at first, did nothing to suggest anything special about him. Schiller told him my name, and told me his too but I didn’t catch it. Coldly, almost without looking at him, I greeted him and was totally taken up, inwardly and outwardly, with Schiller. For a long time the stranger didn’t speak a word. Schiller brought in the Thalia, which contains a fragment of my Hyperion and my poem to Fate, and handed it to me. As Schiller then left us for a moment the stranger took the ioumal from the table, flicked through the fragment as I stood beside him, and didn’t say a word. I felt myself getting gradually redder and redder. Had I known what I know now, I’d have gone white as a sheet. He then turned to me, enquired after Frau von Kalb, the area and the neighbours round our village, and I answered all this in monosyllables, in a way I think I rarely do. But luck was simply against me. Schiller came back, we talked about the Weimar theatre, the stranger let fall a few words weighty enough to make me suspect something. But I suspected nothing. The artist Meyer from Weimar also joined us. The stranger conversed with him on various subjects. But I suspected nothing. I left, and learnt the same evening in the Professors’ Club (have you guessed?) that Goethe had been at Schiller’s that day. Heaven help me to make good my misfortune and my stupid behaviour when I get to Weimar. Later on I had supper at Schiller’s – he comforted me as much as he could, and with his wit and his conversation, which revealed the full force of his extraordinary mind, made me forget the disaster that had befallen me on the first occasion. I am also at Niethammer’s occasionally. I’ll tell you more of ]ena next time. Make sure you write soon too, dear Neuffer.
Yours, Hölderlin (letter to Christian Neuffer, 1794)