Items prohibited from carry-on baggage by the Transportation Security Administration, as of June 2010:
And “snow globes … even with documentation.”
Maxims of Rochefoucauld:
And “Those who apply themselves too much to little things commonly become incapable of great ones.”
rhyparographer
n. a painter of unpleasant or sordid subjects
A classic railroad shunting puzzle. The segment at the top can accommodate either freight car, but not the locomotive. The freight cars can be joined if desired, and the locomotive can push or pull either or both cars from either direction. The task is to use the locomotive to swap the positions of the two cars.
This must mean something — move each letter in COBRA three places forward in the alphabet and you get FREUD:
In 1987, the residents of Wilkinsburg, Pa., prepared to dig up a time capsule that had been buried in the last century. But no one could remember where it was.
In 1976, during the American bicentennial, a cross-country wagon train collected the signatures of a reported 22 million Americans to be buried at Valley Forge, Pa. But when President Ford arrived for the sealing ceremony, someone had stolen the capsule from an unattended van. It remains missing.
In 1939, MIT engineers deposited a brass time capsule beneath an 18-ton magnet used in a new cyclotron. No one has figured out how to retrieve it.
(Thanks, Luke.)
The editor of the Milford (Del.) Beacon, was shown, a few days go, a coin — a composition of copper and brass — found on the farm of Mr. Ira Hammond, about two miles from that place. It is over 600 years old, bearing, date 1178; on one side is a crown, and upon the other the words ‘Josephus, I D J-PO RT-ET-AL G-REX,’ very legible, and the work well executed. This coin is about two hundred years older than the discovery of America, and the question very naturally arises, where did it come from?
— Scientific American, 6:250, 1851
UPDATE: Another mystery solved: A reader points out this entry in the U.S.
Bureau of the Mint catalogue of coins and tokens:
Gold
16. Meia dobra, 1768. (R). 6*Jy.
JOSEPHUS.I.D.G. – PORT. ET.ALG.REX.
Laureated bust, draped, to right; below, R 1758. Rev. Garnished shield
of arms of
Portugal, crowned. Edge, wreath. 32 mm. ; 216 grs.
Probably Scientific American‘s correspondent discovered a Portuguese coin from the 18th century and misread the date. (Thanks, John.)
Why is modesty a virtue? Classically, to be virtuous is to be wise, thoughtful, and prudent. But modesty seems to depend on ignorance.
Julia Driver writes, “For a person to be modest, she must be ignorant with regard to her self-worth. She must think herself less deserving, or less worthy, than she actually is. … Since modesty is generally considered to be a virtue, it would seem that this virtue rests upon an epistemic defect.”
As Sherlock Holmes says, “To underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”
“New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises ‘Why then are you not taking part in them?'” — H.G. Wells
A musical joke, by J.F. Rowbotham, 1908:
… wrote a musical wit to a friend of his, and in these terms conveyed an invitation to dinner. What is the explanation of it? “One, sharp. Beef and cabbage.” His friend, who was not behindhand at a joke, though by no means so witty as his host, replied:–
… which reads off by the same hieroglyphic: “Not a bad feed. Naturally (natural E) I will be in time.”
Rowbotham also offers this rather mean-spirited message for a vain lady:
