week-by-week

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we’ve enjoyed these annual check-ins with author and editor Tom Whitwell (previously) to compare and contrast the fifty-two things highlighted he’s gleaned over the past year. First encountered on Amusing Planet, we’d heard about the egg-based registry of clown make-up and this wide-spread consequence of urban botanical misogyny and appreciated the chance to revisit them and to acquire several more interesting and compelling facts and figures to add to our knowledge base: we especially liked the reinforcement of the outstandingly precipitous drop in coal usage (15), our stereoscopic olfactory sense (37) and from Iris Murdoch, how municipal swimming pools in Victorian England kept frogs on the premises so people might imitate their strokes. Let us know your favourites and some tidbits you’ve acquired this year.