In recent years, the moustache has gone from cheesy to ironic to strangely hip. Phil McAndrew demonstrates some of its undiscovered properties in a new web comic. Via Ectomo for Boose.
The Machine Stops
The Machine Stops was written in 1909 by E.M. Forster, who you may recognize from A Room with a View, Howard's End, and suchlike. It's a short story about a future society in which space has been abolished. People live in small, hive-like cells and have everything brought to them through the function of a world-spanning device called the machine. They spend their days communicating with friends, consuming culture, and rehashing ideas without ever leaving their rooms. There is no physical contact and no direct experience of the world.
It's a bit terrifying to see how, a century later, much of the story's predictions are increasingly true in spirit.
Pretty Words
Erin McKean recently wrote an article for the Boston Globe about the new Pictorial Webster's, which features over 12,000 engravings set and printed by hand from the 1859 edition of the Merriam-Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language. Its a lovely book. If the cheapest edition weren't $2600, I'd want one for myself. Incidentally, Ms. McKean gave a delightfully geeky TED lecture about lexicography last year.
I'm tossing this entry into the Vickies and Eddies filter, since it may be of interest to steampunk enthusiasts.