house music

Carroll Righter (*1900 – †1988), celebrity astrologer and horoscope columnist from the early 1940s onward and advisor to Ronald and Nancy Reagan, released a series of albums in 1969 with each record dedicated to a different zodiacal sign (see also), promising that the instrumental arrangements were especially attuned to one’s personality and constitution and will help alleviate everyday problems and help one to overcome challenges. More to explore at Weird Universe at the link up top.

like the back of your hand

We always enjoy a cartographical challenge round but of course don’t always excel with a random destination or especially remote outliers that do not really test one’s general or specialised geographic knowledge.  

And so we appreciated this novel quiz from Maps Mania that lets you choose familiar environs and prove how well you know your neighbourhoods. There are no thoroughfare, street or road names (see also) until you check your guesses, and it’s not too forgiving if you are more than a kilometre off, taking me several tries to get my orientation correct. Cities and towns world-wide are available for exploration.

small town snow globe refillery

Usually one to eschew all things to do with the holiday once it is over (with some allowances for Three Kings Day) until next time, this strange Winterval when the days blur in normal times, we did rather enjoy indulging this thread and storyboard for the typical Hallmark channel—courtesy of Super Punch—as reinterpreted by an artificial intelligence made to sample all the family-friendly permutations, banging out a formula that really resonates and captures an aspect of Christmas magic. It’s just the frame, the elevator pitch but I am sure that we could expound on the premise and make The Christmas on Christmas happen. “Yet still my twins are dad-free. They need double-dad.”

thermopolium

Previously we’ve covered this exciting find in the ruins of Pompeii suggesting a well-preserved snack bar, and appreciated the update regarding the excavation and research into this Roman fast food franchisee. Such stalls (from the Greek θερμοπώλιον for “a place where something hot is sold” but colloquially known also as popina, caupona or hospitium) were common all over the Empire but this discovery represents the first complete short-order diner uncovered and is yielding insights into the dining habits and diets of the patrons from two millennia ago. Preliminary analysis shows that pig, duck, fish and snail were among the menu items.

childermass

Venerated on this day in the Calendar of Saints by the Catholic Church in celebration of the first, unwitting and anonymous, martyrs to the faith, making the event that according to tradition took place on the fourth day of Christmastide when King Herod ordered the mass execution of all male infants in and around Bethlehem.  Numbers of victims range from a couple of dozen to tens of thousands, depending on the sources.

Terrible as humans are capable of being towards one another, most scholars of all stripes agree that the murderous rampage, set off accidentally by the visiting Magi when they are warned off reporting back to Herod by a dream, is an invention by author of the gospel of Matthew to solidify correspondence between the ascension of Jesus and that of Moses—or Œdipus—whom also had to go into hiding and flee over a prophesy that would disrupt and challenge the status quo. The narrative only appears in the one book of the Bible and is recalled in the Coventry Carol. Authors Albert Camus and José Saramago separately suggest, controversially, that survivor’s guilt is why Jesus allowed himself to be ultimately crucified, him knowing along with his step-father Joseph what Herod had planned but only choosing to save themselves. The Massacre of the Innocents is commemorated in some places with role-reversals such as children officiating church services, like with Saturnalia’s master waiting on the enslaved, pranks akin to April Fools—begging off innocence—and the blessing of Christmas toys.

‽

Via ibidem, we are directed towards a modest proposal from Fast Company contributing correspondent Dylan Mulvaney suggesting that a mostly forgotten punctuation mark, the interrobang (see previously here and here), that had its moment in the mid-60s to early 70s might be enlisted as we go boldly, flummoxed into 2021 and might be due for a revival. What do you think? A well-placed Madison Avenue adman called Martin Speckter who represented some of the biggest corporations at the time also happened to be the editor of a trade paper called TYPEtalks and proposed in a March 1962 magazine article entitled “Making a New Point—Or How About That…” his pitch for a new punctuation mark, arguably the first in centuries, his versatile, emotive interrobang. What do you think? There’s quite a bit to be said for consistency for adoption and though added to typewriters back then and included in Unicode today so it’s at one’s disposal, but there’s also a bit of a touch of trying too hard to it.

general knowledge paper

Via both Nag on the Lake and TYWKIWDBI (with lots more on offer as well), we are introduced to a new tradition coming just ahead of the holiday break that has been issued to students at King William’s College near Castletown on the Isle of Man (and to make one feel worse—that’s college in the sense of a finishing school for pupils to eighteen years of age) since 1904 in the form of a quiz—now voluntary and shared with the broader public—of notorious difficulty that the students are expected to research over the break and present once classes resume in the new year.

The annual paper is introduced with the Latin motto: Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est—that is, “the better part of erudition is knowing where one can find anything.” The answers are not quite at one’s fingertips, and of course it’s impossibly difficult but nonetheless something I feel we ought to have been assaying all along. While a few of the clues and prompts did seem adjacent to something we knew, I really couldn’t get any of these right off the bat. How about you? The quiz can be found at the links above as well as on the college’s website—where the answers will be published next month.

♃

Though we told that the astrological sign for the planet Jupiter is supposed to symbolise his thunderbolt or eagle, I’ve always thought it was a stylised number four for the fourth heavenly body in the firmament and just today learned that—unconnectedly—that in the subtractive notation for Roman numerals IV (four) is also an abbreviation for IVPITTER. To avoid blasphemy in inscriptions, it is postulated that the convention of additive notation (IIII) is used instead and preserved on most modern clock and watch faces and dedication, though by no means is this universal. The value 499, for instance, occurs as either ID, XDIX, VDIV, LDVLIV or CDXCIX and sometimes the Latin numerological terms—99 as undecentum—that is, one from a hundred or IC, set the standard.