San Serriffe

In April 1977, as a joke, the British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement about a fictional island nation called San Serriffe. It fooled quite a few readers, which is surprising, since it’s essentially a series of bad puns about typography:

  • There are two main islands, the Upper Caisse and the Lower Caisse. The capital, Bodoni, is linked by highways to the major ports, including Port Clarendon, but Arial in the Lower Caisse has grown in importance during the personal computer era.
  • Natives are called Flong, and the descendants of colonists and known as colons. Those of mixed race are called semi-colons.
  • At independence in 1967, the country was led by General Pica, a military strongman.
  • Cultural highlights include the Ampersand String Quartet and “Times Nude Romances.”
  • The islands hold an annual endurance challenge race, known as the Two Em Dash, that now attracts international participants.

The island’s alternate name, if it needed any, is Hoaxe.

| Hoaxes

Barrett’s Classification of Demons

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vrubel_Demon.jpg

A classification of demons, from occultist Francis Barrett’s 1801 book The Magus:

  • Mammon: prince of seducers
  • Asmodai: prince of vile revenges
  • Satan: prince of witches and warlocks
  • Pithius: prince of liars and liar spirits
  • Belial: prince of fraud and injustice
  • Merihem: prince of pestilences and spirits that cause pestilences
  • Abaddon: prince of war
  • Astaroth: prince of inquisitors and accusers
| Religion

Jedi Census Phenomenon

More than 70,000 Australians declared themselves members of the Jedi in the 2001 census, thanks to a fad fueled by e-mail. So did 53,000 New Zealanders and 20,000 Canadians. In England and Wales, 390,000 people gave their religion as Jedi, making it the country’s fourth largest reported religion, behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

Ironically, the stunt led many otherwise apathetic people to take the census, so it may actually have improved its quality.

| Religion

The Platypus

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gould_John_Duckbilled_Platypus_1845-1863.png

The Platypus

My child, the Duck-billed Platypus
A sad example sets for us:
From him we learn how Indecision
Of character provokes Derision.
This vacillating Thing, you see,
Could not decide which he would be,
Fish, Flesh or Fowl, and chose all three.
The scientists were sorely vexed
To classify him; so perplexed
Their brains, that they, with Rage at bay,
Call him a horrid name one day,–
A name that baffles, frights and shocks us,
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.

— Oliver Herford

| Humor · Poems

Unquote

“Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It’s rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres!” — Sportscaster Jerry Coleman

| Humor · Quotations

Useful Knots

http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/

THE TWENTY MOST USEFUL KNOTS.

  1. Thumb or over-hand knot, tied at the end of a rope to prevent it from opening out, &c.
  2. Right or reef-knot, for securing all lashings where the ends of the rope meet together.
  3. Draw-knot, which offers great facility in undoing.
  4. Running-knot, used to bind or draw anything close.
  5. Sheepshank, serving to shorten a rope without cutting it or unfastening the ends.
  6. Clove-hitch, which binds with excessive force, and by which alone a weight can be hung to a smooth pole.
  7. Timber-hitch, very useful in hauling to move a weight.
  8. Single bowline-knot, difficult to undo, useful to throw over a post &c., to haul on, used for the draw-loop of a slip noose.
  9. Double bowline-knot, for slinging a cask.
  10. Running bowline-knot.
  11. Woolding or packing-stick hitch, used to tighten ropes.
  12. Men’s harness hitch, passing over the shoulder and under the opposite arm of men drawing a carriage, &c.
  13. Stopper hitch, for stoppering the fall of a tackle, &c.
  14. Inside clinch, for fastening a cable to the anchor ring, &c.
  15. Common or sheet bend, a very secure method of joining two ropes, or fastening a rope to a loop.
  16. Hawser bend, for joining two ropes, easily undone.
  17. Cat’s paw, the turn in the bight of a rope, for hooking a tackle to it.
  18. Dragrope or lever-hitch, used for fixing hand-spikes or capstanbars to the ropes attached to heavy carriages, &c., which have to be moved by men.
  19. Half-hitch, cast on the bight of a rope.
  20. Carrick bend. A wall-knot is a knot made at the end of a rope to prevent it from passing through a hole.

— The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, 1881

| Trivia