namely: absquatulate

I came across a new, perfectly cromulent word—as it’s not marked up by teacher’s red ink when put out there in the æther, in absquatulate. Although the term to abscond is more classical and synonymous to a degree, to absquatulate—suggestive of not only fleeing or to decamp, taking the money and run, it also implies abdication, shirking one’s duties, like some tinpot dictator—came into colloquial use in American English around the 1830s, as part of a larger, slightly baffling wave of pseudo-Latin vocabulary that lasted for a few decades. Other examples from this trend include perambulate (to have a stroll), discombobulate (to confuse), bloviate (to speak boastfully) and infamously sockdologising (an ambiguous word for something rude or to make a back-handed compliment, a corruption of doxology) which made the audience at Ford’s Theatre burst into laughter and was the cue for John Wilkes-Booth to assassinate president Abraham Lincoln. No wonder some vocabulary has gone the way of hornswoggle and skedaddle.

mall rats

In an age of abandoned ghost malls, empty main streets and the gutted department store victim to shingles that are not brick-and-mortar, BLDGBlog turns to look at the pioneer of the original venue that offered an embarrassment of choices in architect, marketer and very much an agoraphile (not under the open skies but rather a lover of the Agora, the bustling, gossipy marketplace of Antiquity) by the name of Victor Gruen. Psychologically-speaking, Gruen lends his name to a phenomenon called the Gruen Transfer, when one’s hunter-gatherer instinct is saturated to a point where one’s original objective is, under a type of manipulation if not duress, diverted and expanded. Even though we may no longer physically congregate in the commons to be subjected to such an experience—which may not be confined to shopping but rather may extended to all of our divisive, distracted decisions—the Gruen Transfer easily translates to the online environment, of bargain-hunting, sharing and haranguing that tend to take place concurrently and with one fell-swoop.

significant digits or wholly unscientific post-script

By way of an update and smattering of reflection, I found that the brilliant Jason Kottke shared in the absolute stupefaction and wonder when it came to the Fibonacci sequence revealed in a rather tame division problem. I also really appreciated how Kottke channelled Carl Sagan—namely his novel Contact—and pondered if this sort of coincidence wasn’t something akin to the code buried in the number ∏ that showed that the intelligence behind the design of the Universe was intentional and knowable. Also an explanation was offered that was by no means disenchanting—as if it was just a numerical sleight of hand, like the pictured recursive mathmagic, brain-teasing trick I was surprised to find reproduced in Hocus Pocus. I had come across a variant of this one before, which is I think something quite different, and aside from fact-checking, can you see where the delusion that cancels everything out lies?  Do you think the Fibonacci numbers will also be shown to be some kind of misapprehension too?

5x5

gom jabbar: The Guardian features a tribute to the Aquarian coming of Age science fiction masterpiece Dune, fifty years on and examines its legacy, via Super Punch

our castle and our keep: exquisite off-the-grid motor home converts to an enchanted castle at rest, via the enchanting Nag on the Lake

all work and no play: free to download 1998 board game based on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

o double-good: a look into the recent incorporation of milk as a staple food, via Neatorama

mathmagic land: dividing one by nine-hundred-ninety-nine quattuodecillion—nearly infinity—spits out the Fibonacci sequence

taxa or nomina dubia

Harking back to a time when humour was considered both an indemnifying and heuristic tool even in academic circles, stuffy, impenetrable old Michel Foucault deferred to the classification of the animal kingdom not down Linnaean lines but rather thus, alluding to the comprehensive Jorge Luis Borges having himself been influenced by the oriental method:

• A: Those that belong to the emperor
• B: Embalmed ones 
• C: Those that are trained 
• D: Suckling pigs 
• E: Sirens 
• F: Fabulous ones 
• G: Stray dogs 
• H: Those that are included in this classification 
• I: Those that tremble as if they are mad 
• J: Innumerable ones 
• K: Those finely drawn with a camel hair brush 
• L: Et cetera 
• M: Those who’ve just broken the flower vase 
• N: Those which from a distance resemble flies 

Of course, funny, quirky examples and illustrative scenarios are the staple of educational programming nowadays, but aside from embedding riddles or marriage proposals in research abstracts, it’s just done done to be provocatively jokey in serious scholarly discourse. The unlikely comic trio of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard were meant to be attended to with a slight smirk in order to get to the respective punchlines, rallying a tradition that goes back all the way to the deportment of Socrates but oversaw the end of that light-hearted tradition. Respectable, peer-reviewed academics, however, took a very dour and austere turn once we were able to give to everything a precise and interrelated place. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Major General’s Song is probably the best lampoon of this new science and new learning. Information animal, vegetable and mineral. I hope we can better balance going forward not hamming it up with engaging an audience that’s not restricted to the Ivory Tower.