The Worst Sentence Ever Written: 2022

09/19/2022 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (BLFC or affectionately known as the “Lytonniad”), established in 1982 by English Professor Scott Rice at San Jose State University, recognizes the worst opening sentence (also known as an “incipit”) for a novel. The name of the quasi-literary contest honors Edward George Bulwer Lytton, author of a very obscure 1830 Victorian novel, Paul Clifford, with a very famous opening sentence: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Each year, contest receives more than 5,000 entries from all over the world — proving that there is no shortage of wretched writers vying for acclaim. The contest now has several subcategories, including adventure, crime, romance, and detective fiction. The winner gets bragging rights for writing the worst sentence of the year and a modest financial award of $150 — presumably for writing lessons.

Below are the winners of the 40th Annual Lyttoniad:

The Grand Prize winner was John Farmer of Aurora, Colorado:
“I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn’t help—I was fresh out of salami.”

The winner in the category of Crime/Detective was Jim Anderson of Flushing, Michigan:
“The detectives wore booties, body suits, hair nets, masks and gloves and longed for the good old days when they could poke a corpse with the toes of their wingtips if they damn well felt like it.”

The winner in the category of Vile Puns was Peter Bjorkman of Rocklin, California:
“Prior to his CNN career, Wolf Blitzer slummed the gossip magazines, once inquiring of Hugh Grant’s then-wife, Liz Hurley, why he had never been in a film with Virginia Madsen, to which she replied, “Hugh’s afraid of Virginia, Wolf.”

ENJOY THE BOOK. If you love reading Atkins Bookshelf, you will love reading the book — Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. The beautifully-designed book (416 pages) is a celebration of literature, books, fascinating English words and phrases, inspiring quotations, literary trivia, and valuable life lessons. It’s the perfect gift for book lovers and word lovers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For futher reading: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
Dark and Stormy Rides Again by Scott Rice, Penguin Books (1996)

Fascinating Factoids that Fell Out of an Old Book

07/19/202207/19/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf books A common observation that you will find among book collectors is the eureka moment when something fascinating falls from a used book that was orphaned at a used book shop or library donation drop box. Quite often, booksellers glance at a book, price it, and shelve it for sale, unaware of the treasures that its former owner placed inside the book — perhaps a forgotten bookmark, a postcard, letter, or a clipped newspaper article. Depending on the age of the newspaper, specifically the type of ink and paper that was used at that time, the folded article can leave a ghostly imprint on the pages of the book, leaving behind a permanent watermark, as it were, proudly stating: “A cherished memento once lived here!”

Recently, I was reviewing a reference book that I had purchased at a library sale — I should really say, I rescued it, since it sat there dusty and forlorn at the end of a long row of tables. In any event, as I opened the book to a random chapter, out fell a neatly folded newspaper clipping. The book was titled Whose What? A Reference Book for All the Strange Expressions that Have Entered the American Language by Dorothy Blumberg. Although the book was published in 1969, the newspaper clipping was dated a few years later: March 6, 1972. Although the clipping was darkened considerably by age — the paper had turned from cream to brown — remarkably, it did not leave an imprint in the book’s pages. In my experience, most newspaper clippings relate directly to the book or its author; however, this article from the feature page of the Detroit Free Press contained a rather curious collection of fascinating factoids beneath the title “You Can Look It Up and Learn That…” with the subtitle “Things I Never Knew Until I Looked Them Up” by Sydney Harris. Since this was decades before the advent of the Internet, presumably curious fellow looked it up the old-fashioned way — by visiting a library and looking up various topics in actual books. Imagine that!

Even more fascinating — from a provenance point of view — is the book’s incredible journey. First, think about who was the original owner of this book? There was no name or bookplate; therefore, given the topic of the book and newspaper article, one could surmise that it was an educated person — curious, most likely with an interest in the English language and trivia. Second, consider that the book had traveled from Detroit to California, a distance of over 2,500 miles. Did it travel in a box, a suitcase, or a backpack? Finally, ponder that the book’s journey has taken a half century! And how the world has changed from 1969 to today! But I digress…

This serendipitous encounter with random facts — learning that goes beyond the scope of a specific book — is one of the wonderful byproducts of book collecting. Sadly, most books on bookcollecting don’t even address that incredible aspect. Nevertheless, without further ado, here are the fascinating facts that I learned when a newspaper clipping fell out of an old book:

Things I Never Knew Until I Looked Them Up

Baseball is an older sport than tennis; it goes back to at least 1840, whereas modern tennis began only 100 years ago, in 1872, when the first outdoor courts were built in England.

Florence Nightingale was the first woman ever to be named “Florence”; she was born in that city, and until her subsequent fame, the feminine name “Florence” was unknown in the English-speaking world.

Speaking of cities, both London and Paris were named by the Romans during the Caesarean period: the former was the Roman fort, Londinium, and the latter was a fishing village called Lutetia Parisiorum.

Sicilians wave “goodbye” with the same beckoning gesture that almost all other people employ to mean “come here.”

The Oriental “rickshaw,” a mode of travel identified with the ancient East, was actually invented by an American missionary in Japan.

The military title, “Marshal,” which in many countries designates the officer of the highest rank, originally comes from the name of the lowly stable-boy, or keeper of the horses.

The custom of throwing rice at a wedding comes, oddly enough, from India.

The term “cowboy” did not originate in the West at all, but was a name adopted by a group of guerillas operating in New York State during the Revolutionary War. (It was then taken up by a gang of wild riders headed by one Ewen Cameron, who specialized in assaulting Mexicans soon after Texas became an independent state, in 1835, and only later came to mean the cow-punchers of the West.)

Speaking of the Revolutionary War, Paul Revere is a national hero only because of [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow’s poem [“Paul Revere’s Ride” published in 1860], which celebrated the wrong man. Revere was captured by the British on the famous “midnight ride,” and only Samuel Prescott got through to Concord with the message. Revere’s military career was mediocre at best: once he was arrested and court-martialed for disobeying orders.

All the Old Testament was originally written like this: “Gd crtd th hvns nd th rth,” with consonants only, and it was not until a thousand years later that Hebrew scholars supplied vowel points which indicated the proper vocalization and followed the traditional pronunciation.

The Germans have never called themselves “Germans,” and the origin of the name is totally unknown.

The first U.S. flag, raised by George Washington, had no stars on it at all, but the British crosses of St. George and St. Andrew.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

Intriguing Connections: Elvis and the Gerber Baby

07/07/202207/31/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf culture When it comes to reading obituaries, people fall into two camps: those who believe they are morbid and those who believe they are fascinating, revealing facts lost to time or as fragments of recent history. Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, shares this perspective: “The New York Times comes each morning in a blue plastic wrapper, and never fails to deliver news of the important dead. Every day is new; every day is fraught with significance. I open the not-yet-smudged pages of newsprint. Obituaries are history as it is happening… Whose time am I living in? Was he a success or a failure, lucky or doomed? I shake out the pages. Tell me the secret of a good life! Other people, it seems, also read the obits faithfully, snip and save them, stand in the back of the old theater, feeling that warm and special glow that comes from contemplating and appreciating [who] has left the building forever.”

Notice the phrase she just used: “who has left the building” a variation of the well-known idiom “Elvis has left the building.” Were it not for the obituary of country music promoter Horace Lee Logan, Jr. (1916-2002) on October 13, 2002, most people — especially the writers of English idiom and phrase reference books — would not have remembered or known who had originated the phrase “Elvis has left the building.” In this case, Logan’s obituary served a very important purpose in the realm of the English lexicon: it brought to the forefront a long forgotten fact: that on December 15, 1956 at the Hirsch Memorial Coliseum in Shreveport, Louisiana, Elvis Presley had performed for a very enthusiastic and adoring audience. Since Elvis had performed in the middle of the evening’s line-up, Logan had to calm down the audience so that the other performers could get on stage and perform. He had to announce that Elvis had left the coliseum so he announced, “All right, all right, Elvis has left the building. I’ve told you absolutely straight up to this point. You know that. He has left the building. He left the stage and went out the back with the policemen and he is now gone from the building.” That phrase became a catchphrase associated with Elvis which was repeated at the end of some of his shows, radio interviews, and captured on some of his albums. The catchphrase, included in most idiom reference books published after 2002, is used more generally to refer to any person who has either left a location or has passed away.

Let us turn the page to another obituary… A recent obituary on June 4, 2022 would not capture most people’s attention: it featured the name of a 95-year-old former teacher and writer that few would recognize: Ann Turner Cook. Although she lived in relative obscurity, she has one of the most recognized place on this planet seen and known by billions of people. If you saw the face you would recognize instantly. You see, Ann Turner Cook is the face of the iconic Gerber baby that appears on all baby food packaging. Her identity was a secret for more than a half century. Gerber finally revealed her identity at the drawing’s 50th anniversary in 1978 — a detail lost to time. At the time of her death, the staff at Gerber wrote the following tribute: “Gerber is deeply saddened by the passing of Ann Turner Cook, the original Gerber baby, whose face was sketched to become the iconic Gerber logo more than 90 years ago. Many years before becoming an extraordinary mother, teacher and writer, her smile and expressive curiosity captured hearts everywhere and will continue to live on as a symbol for all babies.”

It’s a remarkable story. When Cook was merely five months old, a neighbor, Dorothy Hope Smith, who was a commercial artist who specialized in children, drew a simple charcoal sketch of her face with an unfinished body. She submitted it to the Gerber Products Company, founded by Dorothy Gerber in Fremont, Michigan in 1927 (Gerber joined the Nestle family in 2007), that was running a contest to find the face for their baby food advertising campaign. The executives had pored over thousands of entries, some that were very detailed oil paintings; however, they were delighted with the rendering’s simplicity, innocence, and universality. Consequently, they they accepted exactly as Smith had rendered it. Cook explained in a 1992 interview, “I have to credit Dorothy with everything. I was really no cuter than any other baby, but she had wonderful artistic talent and was able to draw a very appealing likeness.” Indeed, the appealing wide-eyed, cherubic face with pursed lips was used for the next 90 years on billions of baby food products. In 1931, Gerber trademarked the iconic baby face. Naturally, since Gerber kept the baby’s identity a secret, there was much speculation in the press and the public about the model’s true identity, including Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor, Brooke Shields, and even Humphrey Bogart. Sadly, Elvis never made that list. One family even sued the Gerber company, claiming that their baby was the one on the label; however, once Smith testified, the family lost the case. In 1951, Smith sought a settlement for her original drawing and received $5,000 from Gerber. Back then, that amount was “enough to make a down payment on a modest house and to buy a first car,” she said in an interview. (For comparison, note that the Pepsi logo cost $1 million in 2008; the BBC logo cost $1.8 million in 1997; and the BP logo cost $211 million in 2008.)

Cook married, had four children, moved to Orlando, Florida and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in English. She taught English in junior high and high school. After she retired she began writing crime novels that she published independently.

Through most of her life, Cook’s secret was in plain sight and she took pride in being a global symbol for babies. In an interview with CBS in 2013 she noted “I can’t think of anything nicer than to be a symbol for babies. And that’s what I think I became.”

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/04/business/ann-turner-cook-gerber-baby-dead.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-much-the-worlds-most-iconic-logos-cost-companies-2013-3#bp-211-million-13

July 4: The Day Three Presidents Died

07/04/202207/07/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf trivia While July 4th is a day of celebration marking the day that the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, it is also a solemn day. In one of the most fascinating coincidences in U.S. history, three Presidents, who were Founding Fathers, died on July 4th: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe.

Jefferson, who served as the third President, died of illness on July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence — at the age of 83 in Monticello, Virginia. He had been suffering from rheumatism and intestinal and urinary disorders. He was also enormously troubled that he was deeply in debt. His last words were “No, doctor, nothing more” as he refused medicine (laudanum) from his doctor.

Just five hours later, Adams, who served as the second President, died of illness at the age of 90 in Quincy, Massachusetts. At 90 years old, he was old, frail, and ill and suddenly collapsed in his reading chair. For the next few hours in was in and out of consciousness until he finally passed away. Unaware that Jefferson had died hours earlier, Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” President John Quincy Adams (John’s son), observed that the timing of the death of these two former presidents, who had become close friends over the years, was “visible and palpable remarks of divine favor.” American statesman and lawyer Daniel Webster’s eulogy for these two revered men underscored the role of divine intervention: “The concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act, that they should complete that year, and that then, on the day which had fast linked forever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?” (Incidentally, it was Webster’s son, Noah, who published the first American dictionary in 1806 and the comprehensive American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828.) The editors of the New-York American (1895-1937) write an equally eloquent eulogy of this coincidence: “By a coincidence marvellous and enviable, Thomas Jefferson, in like manner with his great compeer, John Adams, breathed his last on the 4th of July. Emphatically may we say, with a Boston paper, had the horses and the chariot of fire descended to take up the patriarchs, it might have been more wonderful, but not more glorious. We remember nothing in the annals of man so striking, so beautiful, as the death of these two ‘time-honoured’ patriots, on the jubilee of that freedom, which they devoted themselves and all that was dear to them, to proclaim and establish. It cannot all be chance.”

Monroe, who served as the fifth President, died of tuberculosis, five years later on July 4, 1831 at the age of 73 in New York City. The following day, this remarkable coincidence was called a “coincidence that has no parallel” by a reporter from the New York Evening Post, the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton; he wrote: “Three of the four presidents who have left the scene of their usefulness and glory expired on the anniversary of the national birthday, a day which of all others, had it been permitted them to choose [they] would probably had selected for the termination of their careers.”

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: John Adams by David McCullough, Simon & Schuster (2001)
Marilyn Johnson: The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries (2006)
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dwebster/speeches/adams-jefferson.html
constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog/three-presidents-die-on-july-4th-just-a-coincidence
http://www.bu.edu/historic/battin.htm

What is an Antigram?

03/17/202206/16/2022 / Alexander Atkins / 2 Comments

You are probably familiar with an anagram, one of the most popular forms of word play that recombines all the letters of a word or phrase to create a new word or phrase. For example, “inch” is an anagram of “chin.” The anagram, of course, is at the heart of board games like Scrabble, Clabbers, Boggle, and Bananagrams and puzzles like Jumble and Cryptic Crosswords. An antigram is a type of anagram that is the antonym of the original word or phrase. A classic example of an antigram is “Santa = Satan.” Another one is “funeral = real fun” — which always lightens the mood at a gloomy funeral. Below are examples of antigrams:

adultery = true lady

adversaries = are advisers

butchers = cut herbs

customers = store scum

earliest = arrise late

evangelist = evil’s agent

filled = ill-fed

fluster = restful

funeral = real fun

honestly = on the sly

infection = fine tonic

militarism = I limit arms

misfortune = it’s more fun

protectionism = nice to imports

Santa = Satan

silent = listen

united = untied

violence = nice love

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: The Game of Words by Willard Espy
Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature by C. C. Tombaugh edited and annotated by Martin Gardner
A Word of Day by Anu Garg
Wordplay: A Curious Dictionary of Language Oddities by Chris Cole
The Dictionary of Wordplay by Dave Morice
A Treasury of Words & Wordplay by Richard Whiteley

The Symbolism of Twosday — 2.22.22

02/22/202202/23/2022 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf trivia Today is a very special day: 2-22-22 that falls on Tuesday, the second day of the week — also referred to as Twosday. Because the date is a palindrome (it can be read the same way forward of backward), it is considered a sign of good luck. This has inspired hundreds of weddings to take place on this day, all around the globe. Several cities, like Las Vegas and Singapore report record-breaking number of weddings on that day, especially when couples can tie the knot at exactly 2:22 pm. In an interview with The Washington Post, Aliza Kelly, a celebrity astrologer believes that Twosday has a metaphysical meaning: “When we have a repeating number such as two two-two two-two, we have this sort of metaphysical thought which says that this evokes a feeling within us because it is connected to these higher esoteric metaphysical frequencies that align us.”

In numerology, because Twosday is a series of repeating numbers it is considered an Angel Number. An Angel Number has spiritual significance. Specifically it conveys the need for balance, harmony, and equilibrium in one’s life. Celebrity spirit guide Megan Firester explains, “Angels speak to us in synchronistic ways, which basically means that we will see something over and over again, so much so that it goes beyond mere coincidence.”

According to Jean Chevalier, author of the authoritative A Dictionary of Symbols, two represents several meanings: “[Two] is the symbol of confrontation, conflict, and recoil and denotes either balance achieved, or hidden threat. It is the figure which epitomizes all ambivalence and split personality. It is the first to separate and it separates most radically — creator and creature, black and white, male and female, matter and spirit, and so on — and it is the source of all other divisions… The number two symbolizes dualism, the basis of all dialectic, endeavor, struggle, movement, and progress.”

In his seminal work, A Dictionary of Symbols, Juan Cirlot writes: “Two stands for echo, reflection, conflict and counterpoise or contraposition; or the momentary stillness of focus in equilibrium.”

Speaking of two, ever wonder how many two-letter words exist in the English language? If you are a aficionado of Scrabble or crosswords puzzles, you may be familiar with the common ones (like be, go, he, and it) as well as the more esoteric ones (like ba, et, oe, za). According to the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (6th Edition) there are 107 two-letter words in the English language. Of those, about 80 are fairly common and used often.

The number two is very popular in English idioms. The Free Dictionary lists more than 300 idioms containing the word two. Here are some common idioms:

to be of two minds about something

like two peas in a pod

choose the lesser of two evils

a game that two can play

to kill two birds with one stone

not have two pennies to rub together

two steps ahead of someone

give ones two cents

a thing or two

two strikes against

your number two

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/02/21/2-22-22-meaning/
http://www.wellandgood.com/what-are-angel-numbers/
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Two_Letter_Words
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/two

The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index: 2021

12/24/202112/27/2021 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Back in 1984, the PNC Bank (a bank based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) developed the Christmas Price Index that totals the cost of all the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a flippant economic indicator. In 1984, the Christmas Price Index was $12,623.10; more than three decades later, in 2021, it reached $41,205.58 — a dramatic bounceback from $16,168.14 in 2020, an aberration caused by the economic downturn caused by the COVID-10 crisis (the significant decrease was due to the cancellations of live performances).

Despite their symbolism, the twelve gifts of Christmas are not only extremely random, they are more of a nuisance than carefully-selected gifts that you would actually cherish. As if the holidays are not stressful enough, imagine all those animals running and flying about helter-skelter, defecating all over your clean carpets — not to mention the nonstop, grating sound of drummers drumming and pipers piping pushing you toward the brink of a mental breakdown. Truly, no book lover would be happy with these gifts. Bah humbug! Therefore, I introduced the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index in 2014 that would be far more interesting and appreciated by bibliophiles. The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index replaces all those unwanted mess-making animals and clamorous performers with first editions of cherished classic Christmas books. The cost of current first editions are determined by the latest data available from Abe Books, the leading online antiquarian bookseller.

For 2021, the Atkins Bookshelf Christmas Price Index is $108,625 (shipping and tax are not included), a slight decrease of $3,520 (about 3%) from last year ($112,145). The biggest hit to your wallet remains — by a very large margin, Charles Dickens’ very coveted and valuable first edition of one of the most well-known literary classics, A Christmas Carol valued at $75,000 (a price unchanged from last year) — a valuation that would be sure to warm Scrooge’s heart. The second most expensive Christmas book, coming in at $15,000 (the price is also unchanged from last year), is Clement C. Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (more commonly known at “The Night Before Christmas”) that has largely influenced how Santa Claus is depicted. The poem was included in a collection of Moore’s poems in 1844, a year after the publication of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Below are the individual costs of the books that make up the Atkins Bookshelf Christmas Price Index.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens: $75,000

A Visit from St. Nicholas (included in Poems, 1844) by Clement C. Moore: $15,000

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) by Dr. Seuss: $3,500

A Christmas Memory (1966) by Truman Capote: $3,500

The Polar Express (1985) by Chris Van Allsburg: $2,250

The Nutcracker (1984 edition) by E. T. A. Hoffman: $1,250

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) by Valentine Davies: $1,500

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) by L. Frank Baum: $1,250

The Greatest Gift (1944) by Philip Van Doren Stern: $5,000

Christmas at Thompson Hall (included in Novellas, 1883) by Anthony Trollope: $150

Old Christmas from the Sketchbook of Washington Irving (1886) by Washington Irving: $150

The Gift of the Magi (included in The Four Million, 1905) by O. Henry: $75

Happy Holidays!

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: https://www.pnc.com/en/about-pnc/topics/pnc-christmas-price-index.html

What is the Largest Lego Set?

10/10/202110/10/2021 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf trivia Ole Christiansen began making wooden toys in 1932 and expanded his line of toys to include plastic interlocking bricks that evolved to the colorful bricks now known as Lego (from the Danish leg godt, meaning “play well”) bricks. Almost 90 years later the Lego brand is ubiquitous — seen in department stores, branded stores, movies, theme parks, video games, and commercials. Indeed, Lego is a financial powerhouse — in 2020, the Lego Group had revenues of more than $6.8 billion. And each year, Lego enthusiasts eagerly await the release of about 130 new sets. Naturally, that begs the question: which is the largest Lego set? And by large we mean most number of pieces and biggest dimensions of the finished set. The set with the most number of pieces is Lego Art World Map (11,695 pieces with a building instruction manual that is 159 pages long!). This set also has the longest building time of any set: 33 hours. But the set that has the largest dimensions, once the model is completed, is the newly-announced Lego Titanic (53 inches long), based on a 1:200 scale model of the famous doomed ocean liner. Some of these sets can appreciate considerably, creating an entire Lego economy: some Lego builders and collectors buy them for investment. For example, the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, mint in a sealed box, can fetch up to $2,000 on the secondary market.

Here is the top ten list of the largest Lego sets (model number in brackets, release date in parentheses), along with estimated building times:

1. Lego Art World Map [31203] (2021), $250
Number of pieces: 11,695
Dimensions: 25.8 x 40.9 inches (H x W)
Building time: 33 hours

2. Lego Titanic [10294] (2021), $630
Number of pieces: 9,090
Dimensions: 17.5x53x6 inches (H x W x D)
Building time: 26 hours
Iceberg not included

3. Lego Colosseum [10276] (2021), $550
Number of pieces: 9,036
Dimensions: 11x21x24
Building time: 26 hours

4. UCS Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon [75192] (2017), $800
Number of pieces: 7,541
Dimensions: 8x33x22
Building time: 21 hours

5. Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle [71043] (2018), $400
Number of pieces: 6,020
Dimensions: 22x27x16
Building time: 17 hours

6. Lego Creator Expert Taj Mahal [10256] (2008 and 2017), $370
Number of pieces: 5,923
Dimensions: 22x19x7.2
Building time: 17 hours

7. Lego Harry Potter Diagon Alley [75978] (2020), $400
Number of pieces: 5,544
Dimensions: 16×10.6×10
Building time: 16 hours

8. Ultimate Collector’s Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon [10179] (2007), $500
Number of pieces: 5,197
Dimensions: 25.3 x 18.7 x 7.7 cm
Building time: 15 hours

9. Lego Ninjago City [70620] (2017), $300
Number of pieces: 4,867
Dimensions: 19.3x23x7.3
Building time: 14 hours

10. UCS Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer [75252] (2019), $700
Number of pieces: 4,784
Dimensions: 17x43x26
Building time: 14 hours

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: https://www.brickfanatics.com/the-lego-groups-full-2020-annual-financial-results-by-the-numbers/
https://www.lego.com/en-us/categories/adults-welcome/article/biggest-lego-sets-ever-made
http://www.brickeconomy.com
http://www.mybrick.net

Who are the Best and Worst Presidents in U.S. History: 2021

07/04/2021 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf trivia Just in time for the country’s July 4th celebration, C-SPAN published its Presidential Historian Survey 2021 that reveals the best and worst presidents in U.S. History. C-SPAN has been publishing this survey since 2000. On their website they explain their methodology: “Surveys are distributed to historians, professors and other professional observers of the presidency who are drawn from databases of C-SPAN programming, research in the field and suggestions from our academic advisers.” The advisory team for 2021 included: Douglas Brinkley (Professor of History, Rice University); Edna Medford (Professor of History, Howard University); Richard Smith (Presidential biographer); and Amity Shlaes (Chariman of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation).

It is important to note that this is not a political survey (sorry GOP and Democratic Party!), nor is it a popularity contest. The participants, who are historians and presidential scholars, do not rank the presidents themselves, but rather make assessments of ten leadership qualities (each quality is ranked on a scale of 1, “not effective” to 10 “very effective”): (1) public persuasion, (2) crisis leadership, (3) economic management, (4) moral authority, (5) international relations, (6) administrative skills, (7) relations with Congress, (8) vision/setting an agenda, (9) pursuit of equal justice for all and (10) performance within the context of the times. Each of the ten categories is given equal weighting to arrive at the total score for each president. The participants’ responses are tabulated by averaging all responses for each category for each president.

According to historians and presidential experts, the top ten presidents are:

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. George Washington

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. Theodore Roosevelt

5. Dwight D. Eisenhower

6. Harry S. Truman

7. Thomas Jefferson

8. John F. Kennedy

9. Ronald Reagan

10. Barack Obama

According to historians and presidential experts, the worst presidents (the five listed at the bottom of the list) are:

40. William Henry Harrison

41. Donald J. Trump

42. Franklin Pierce

43. Andrew Johnson

44. James Buchanan

Interestingly, since 2009, the ranking of the top four presidents has not changed, suggesting that historians and presidential experts, regardless of different perspectives or changing public attitudes, strongly believe that Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt were the country’s best presidents.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: http://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

What is the Longest Street Name in the U.S.?

07/01/202107/03/2021 / Alexander Atkins

alex atkins bookshelf trivia The U.S. Census tracks information about roads and street names in the country. As of the last census in 2020, there are are over a million roads in the United States. The most common street name? “Park” (about 9,640) and in second place, “Second” (about 8,232). However, the longest street name in the U.S. is 38 characters long: “Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Lake Shore Drive” located in Chicago, Illinois.

This long street name just entered the record books on June 25, 2021 (as of this writing, even Google Maps has not been updated) when the Chicago city council voted to change the city’s iconic lakeside roadway from “Lake Shore Drive” to “Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Lake Shore Drive,” to honor Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (1745-1818), a trader of African descent who is considered the first non-Indigenous settler of Chicago. (Incidentally, Pointe de Sable is French for “sand point.”) It wasn’t until the 1850s when Point du Sable was finally recognized as the true “Founder of Chicago,” displacing a Scots-Irish trader named John Kenzie who had purchased Point du Sable’s home and was mistakenly recognized as the founder of Chicago. However, it took almost a century before Point du Sable would be officially honored via tangible memorials — there are now various locations in the city named after him, including a park, harbor, museum, high school, and bridge, in addition to the aforementioned road. Little is known about his early life, but historians have found primary sources that describe Point Du Sable as “handsome” and “well-educated.” In 1788 he married a Potawatomi woman, named Kitihawa, and had two children: a daughter (Susanne) and son (Jean). In 1913, he sold his home and moved to St. Charles, Missouri and operated a ferry business until his death in 1818.

Although it doesn’t have a fascinating historical story behind it, the second longest street name is 34 characters long: “Northeast Kentucky Industrial Parkway” located in Greenup, Kentucky.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: All Facts Considered: The Essential Library of Inessential Knowledge by Kee Malesky, Wiley (2010).
http://www.kentuckyroads.com/ky_67/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-was-jean-baptiste-point-dusable-new-namesake-chicagos-lake-shore-drive-180978087/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/06/these-are-the-most-popular-street-names-in-every-state/

The Ironic History of Mother’s Day

05/09/202105/09/2021 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

alex atkins bookshelf culture Ironically, the person who conceived of the modern version of Mother’s Day — a national celebration for children to honor their mothers — never married and never had children, and became well-known as a staunch opponent of Mother’s Day.

The history of Mother’s Day begins with Julia Ward Howe (born 1819), a poet and social activist who promoted women’s suffrage and pacifism. She is remembered mostly as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1861, the Howes met with Abraham Lincoln at the White House. During that trip, a friend suggested that she write new lyrics for a marching song about abolitionist John Brown (the song was known as “John Brown’s Body) that was very popular with the Union during the Civil War. Howe’s stirring words were published in the Atlantic Monthly a few months later in 1862 and became the rallying song for the Union soldiers. Several years later in 1870, she conceived of “Mother’s Day for Peace” to be observed on June 2 — calling women throughout the world to support disarmament and peace. Unfortunately for her, this version of Mother’s Day never took root.

Fast forward to 1907. Anna Marie Jarvis, of Philadelphia, wanted to fulfill her mother’s dream of a holiday that would honor mothers. The first “Mother’s Day” was a memorial service to her mother, held two years after her death, on May 12, 1907. The original idea for the celebration of “Mother’s Day” was a special church service, held on the second Sunday in May, where members of the congregation wore white carnations. With the help of a wealthy local merchant, she promoted the concept until Woodrow Wilson, who clearly loved his mother, declared it a national holiday in 1914.

It didn’t take long for American business to see the potential gold in mining this new national holiday. Within a few years, whether out of genuine love or guilt, sales of candy, flowers, greeting cards, and long-distance phone calls raked in billions for American companies. Anna Jarvis was horrified at the excessive commercialization of the pure celebration and tribute she originally envisioned, and in the early 1920s became a very vocal opponent of the holiday. Almost as if following Julia Howe’s footsteps she became an activist against Mother’s Day, staging protests — even to the point of being arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace. She had deep regrets: “[I wish I ] would never have started the day because it became so out of control.” Jarvis was no fan of Hallmark — she considered that children who would send a card (letting Hallmark’s wordsmiths do all the heavy lifting) were simply too lazy and uncaring to write a personal letter to their dear mothers. You can only imagine what Jarvis would say about texting and email.

And just how much do Americans love their mothers? According to the National Retail Federation, consumers will spend as much as $28.1 billion saying “I love you Mom.” The average consumer will spend an average $220 this year, primarily on greeting cards, flowers, and meals. This average is $16 more than last year — call it a Covid-19 pandemic tax. Many consider motherhood one of the toughest jobs in the world, but let’s face it — that job got much tougher during the pandemic. So this year in particular, mothers have really earned effusive praise for their Herculean work. As mothers around the globe know well, it came with a price — mothers’ mental and physical wellbeing were pushed to the breaking point as they cared for their families for over a year with many simultaneous challenges, including long periods of sustained lockdowns and shortages of certain food and household items. This was even more dramatic for mothers who were juggling remote work, raising young children who were home-schooling, and increased housework. As the World Economic Forum recognized in its story “Covid-19 is Damaging the Mental Health of Mothers,” extensive research has indicated that the well-being of mothers is absolutely critical for children to flourish. Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic had a deleterious effect on the health of mothers. Medical health experts reported that mothers experienced higher levels of stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, hypertension, and obesity — not to mention that there were many times over the past year that many mothers felt like throttling their spouse or kids — or both (but, of course, didn’t).

In the context of holiday expenditures in the U.S., Mother’s Day ranks fourth in the list below Christmas (1st place, with over $729 billion in spending), Thanksgiving (2) and Valentines (3).

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: The Folklore of World Holidays by Robert Griffin, Gale (1998). www.wikipedia.com.
nrf.com/insights/holiday-and-seasonal-trends/mothers-day
nbcnewyork.com/lx/mothers-day-spending-expected-to-skyrocket-following-a-year-of-pandemic-hell/3040818/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/03/17/the-pandemic-has-highlighted-many-challenges-for-mothers-but-they-arent-necessarily-new/
http://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/918127776/this-is-too-much-working-moms-are-reaching-the-breaking-point-during-the-pandemi
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/06/992401123/if-your-brain-feels-foggy-and-youre-tired-all-the-time-youre-not-alone?
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/06/992401123/if-your-brain-feels-foggy-and-youre-tired-all-the-time-youre-not-alone
http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/mental-health-4-ways-that-mothers-can-be-supported-throughout-covid-19/
mint.intuit.com/blog/money-etiquette/holiday-spending-statistics/

The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index: 2020

12/24/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Back in 1984, the PNC Bank (a bank based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania) developed the Christmas Price Index that totals the cost of all the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a flippant economic indicator. In 1984, the Christmas Price Index was $12,623.10; more than three decades later, in 2019, it reached $38,993.59, but due to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-10 crisis, the amount tumbled down a dramatic 58.5% to $16,168.14. The team that calculates the index attributes the significant decrease to the cancellations of live performances.

Despite their symbolism, the twelve gifts of Christmas are not only extremely random, they are more of a nuisance than carefully-selected gifts that you would actually cherish. As if the holidays are not stressful enough, imagine all those animals running and flying about helter-skelter, defecating all over your clean carpets — not to mention the nonstop, grating sound of drummers drumming and pipers piping pushing you toward the brink of a mental breakdown. Truly, no book lover would be happy with these gifts. Bah humbug! Therefore, I introduced the Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index in 2014 that would be far more interesting and appreciated by bibliophiles. The Atkins Bookshelf Literary Christmas Price Index replaces all those unwanted mess-making animals and clamorous performers with first editions of cherished classic Christmas books. The cost of current first editions are determined by the latest data available from Abe Books, the leading online antiquarian bookseller.

For 2020, the Atkins Bookshelf Christmas Price Index is $112,145 (shipping and tax are not included), an impressive increase of about 24% from last year ($88,263) — something that would surely bring a smile to that old greedy curmudgeon Scrooge. The biggest hit to your wallet remains — by a very large margin — Charles Dickens’ very coveted and valuable first edition of one of the most well-known literary classics — A Christmas Carol ($75,000, an increase of $30,000 from last year!). The second most expensive Christmas book, coming in at $15,000 (price unchanged from last year), is Clement C. Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (more commonly known at “The Night Before Christmas”) that has largely influenced how Santa Claus is depicted. The poem was included in a collection of Moore’s poems in 1844, a year after the publication of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Below are the individual costs of the books that make up the Atkins Bookshelf Christmas Price Index.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens: $75,000
A Visit from St. Nicholas (included in Poems, 1844) by Clement C. Moore: $15,000
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) by Dr. Seuss: $5,500
A Christmas Memory (1966) by Truman Capote: $3,500
The Polar Express (1985) by Chris Van Allsburg: $2,250
The Nutcracker (1984 edition) by E. T. A. Hoffman: $950
Miracle on 34th Street (1947) by Valentine Davies: $1,500
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) by L. Frank Baum: $5,495
The Greatest Gift (1944) by Philip Van Doren Stern: $2,450
Christmas at Thompson Hall (included in Novellas, 1883) by Anthony Trollope: $150
Old Christmas from the Sketchbook of Washington Irving (1886) by Washington Irving: $125
The Gift of the Magi (included in The Four Million, 1905) by O. Henry: $225

Total $112,145

SHARE THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: https://www.pnc.com/en/about-pnc/topics/pnc-christmas-price-index.html

The Worst Sentence Ever Written: 2020

12/04/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Each year, contest receives more than 10,000 entries from all over the world — proving that there is no shortage of wretched writers vying for acclaim. The contest now has several subcategories, including adventure, crime, romance, and detective fiction. The winner gets bragging rights for writing the worst sentence of the year and a modest financial award of $150 — presumably for writing lessons.

The winner of the 2020 BLFC was Lisa Kluber of San Francisco, California:
Her Dear John missive flapped unambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like a pizza menu on the doorknob of my mind.

The runner up was submitted by Lisa Hanks or Euless, Texas:
As hard-nosed P.I. Dan McKinnon stepped out into the gray gritty dawn, a bone chilling gust of filth-strewn wind wrapped the loose ends of his open trench coat around him like a day-old flour tortilla around a breakfast burrito with hash browns, sausage, and scrambled eggs, hold the pico.

The winner in the category of Crime/Detective was Yale Abrams of Santa Rosa, California:
When she walked into my office on that bleak December day, she was like a breath of fresh air in a coal mine; she made my canary sing.

The winner in the category of Vile Puns was Aaron Cabe of Hillsboro, Oregon:
As the passing of Keith Richards was announced on the evening news, just as had been done with Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood before him, Jorge gazed at the television in his Tijuana home and felt a sickening knot form in his stomach, for he realized that finally, after all the albums, concert tours, and era-defining cultural impact, the Rolling Stones would gather no más.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For futher reading: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2020
Dark and Stormy Rides Again by Scott Rice, Penguin Books (1996)

What is the Gruen Effect?

06/15/202006/15/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Ever find yourself completely lost at an Ikea store wishing you had brought a bag of breadcrumbs so you could retrace your steps to find a way out of the retail labyrinth? It’s enough to drive you to madness (just like those novel-length, wordless furniture assembly guides they produce, where you end up with extra hardware and you wonder: did I build this correctly?). It is not uncommon to see people of every age wandering aimlessly among the aisles with a glazed look in their eyes. Where’s the freaking exit?

This abomination of retail design, that exasperates millions of consumers each year, has a name. It is known at the Gruen effect of Gruen transfer. The Gruen effect is defined as the feeling of confusion and distraction experienced by a consumer when placed in a shopping center or store that is confusing and maze-like, forcing the consumer to be exposed to more products (displayed in an enticing manner or in large quantities) and thus be more susceptible to make impulse buys. This form of psychological manipulation is named after the Victor Gruen, the Austrian architect who designed the very first open-air shopping mall (Northland Mall in Southfield, Michigan in 1954) and the first enclosed shopping mall (Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota in 1956). Ironically, Gruen was very much opposed to this type of behavior manipulation. Gruen designed some of the first window shops filled with beautiful, dazzling displays designed to lure customers into the store. But Gruen stopped there. Retailers like Ikea, department stores, and grocery chains took the Gruen effect to an entirely different level. He believed that his ideas were “bastardized.”

According to research, 50% of purchases are unplanned. Journalist Carlos Waters investigated how Ikea mastered the Gruen effect for Vox. He writes: “Ikea has mastered the Gruen effect using story layout to influence customer behavior. From the moment you enter an Ikea, layout designers nudge you onto a specific path through a maze of products. That path is the least direct route to the register. By the time you’ve finally picked up a shopping cart and selected your first item, you’ve considered the possibilities of purchasing many of the items on display. Researchers have found that increased exposure leads to impulse buys.” Vox presents a video developed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh to show the path of a typical consumer in an Ikea store. When you see the path, you cannot help of thinking of a hungry lab rat desperately finding its way through a maze to find the desired piece of cheese.

So the next time you find yourself in a retail maze and feel exasperated you can focus your anger and curse “that damned Gruen effect!”

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by FOLLOWING or SHARING with a friend or your readers. During the coronavirus pandemic quarantines, it is a perfect time to explore the more than 1,600 articles on Bookshelf. Cheers.

For further reading: https://www.vox.com/2018/10/17/17989684/ikea-gruen-effect-unplanned-purchases
https://psmag.com/magazine/gruen-transfer
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/03/15/the-terrazzo-jungle

Are You a Hypochondriac?

05/01/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

It’s tough enough muddling through the sustained sheltering in place necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic — but imagine what hypochondriacs are going through. So what is hypochondria? Hypochondria is the chronic and abnormal concern for one’s health. For a hypochondriac some physical symptoms are imagined, while others are real but are exaggerated. Fun fact: about 5% of the human population are severe hypochondriacs. You probably know one. Famous hypochondriacs include: Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, and Marcel Proust.

The word hypochondria was introduced in the 4th century BC by the famous Greek physician Hippocrates of Kos, known as the “Father of Medicine” (he is attributed with the Hippocratic Oath, although it is very likely that it was written after his death). The word is derived from the Greek word hypo (meaning “under”) and chords (meaning cartilage); so literally it means “under the rib cage.” Initially the term referred to digestive disorders of the liver, gallbladder, and spleen. Two centuries later, the Roman physician Galen of Pergamon linked digestive illness to melancholy. The term “hypochondriacal melancholy” was popularized by Robert Burton in his seminal work The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621. However it was Marcel Proust, in his magnum opus In Search of Lost Time (published in seven parts between 1913 to 1927), who assigned hypochondria with the meaning that we recognize today. The term was finally formalized in 1980, in the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd Edition (DSM-III). In the DSM-III hypochondria is listed under somatoform disorders.

The writers of Knock Knock, an independent maker of clever books and gifts, published the tongue-in-cheek but very insightful book The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs in 2007. In a fascinating introduction to the “noble hypochondriac” they break down the identifying behaviors of a hypochondriac:
Constant fear of illness
Preoccupation with the body
Interest in self-diagnosis
Either seek out medical treatment or avoid it
Distrust or disbelief in diagnosis
Continuously shopping for new doctors
Need for reassurance

Right now during the coronavirus everyone is exhibiting some of these previously mentioned concerns. But I know what you are asking: “Am I a hypochondriac?” Let’s find out. Let us turn to one of the simplest and earliest test, developed by Dr. Issy Pilowsky, known as the Whiteley Index. Answer the 14 questions below. Score according to the following:

1 = Not at all
2 = A little bit
3 = Moderately
4 = Quite a bit
5 = A great deal.

Total the numbers. A score of 14-28 indicates a healthy person without health anxiety. A score of 32-55 indicate high probability of a health-anxiety disorder and you should consult a healthcare professional. Caveat: as with all simple tests, the scores should be interpreted cautiously.

The Whiteley Index

1: Do you worry a lot about your health?
2: Do you think there is something seriously wrong with your body?
3: Is it hard for you to forget about yourself and think about all sorts of other things?
4: If you feel ill and someone tells you that you are looking better, do you become annoyed?
5: Do you find that you are often aware of various things happening in your body?
6: Are you bothered by many aches and pains?
7: Are you afraid of illness?
8: Do you worry about your health more than most people?
9: Do you get the feeling that people are not taking your illnesses seriously enough?
10: Is it hard for you to believe the doctor when he/she tells you there is nothing for you to worry about?
11: Do you often worry about the possibility that you have a serious illness?
12: If a disease is brought to your attention (through the radio, TV, newspaper, website, or someone you know), do you worry about getting it yourself?
13: Do you find that you are bothered by many different symptoms?
14: Do you often have the symptoms of a very serious disease?

For further reading: DSM by the APA
https://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/hypochondriacs/
The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You by Knock Knock
https://za.toluna.com/opinions/4180774/The-Whiteley-Hypochondria-Test

Test Your Creativity with This Clever Thinking Puzzle

04/29/202005/05/2020 / Alexander Atkins / 2 Comments

After weeks of sheltering in place you may have exhausted all the ways of killing time — binge eating, binge watching Netflix shows, binge watching silly pet videos on Youtube, scrolling through mind-numbing social media posts, and so on. You can practically count the cells in your brain dying by the hour. Would you like to kick-start your brain and test your creative thinking? Let me introduce you a really fun brain-building word game you can play and share with your friends. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the obscure and overlooked ditloid. A ditloid is a curious and clever puzzle — something that would have greatly amused Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. Specifically, a ditloid is a word game in which a phrase, term, title, quotation, proverb, or fact must be deduced from numbers and abbreviations in the clue. Here are some examples (answers in parenthesis):
60 = S. in a M. (60 seconds in a minute)
99 = B. of B. on the W. (99 bottles of beer on the wall)
7 = A. of M. (7 Ages of Man).
You get the idea. The word game was named after the following puzzle: 1=D. it L. o I. D. (1 Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), by the Daily Express, a London newspaper. This word game is also referred to as a “linguistic equation” or “numerical phrase.”

The most famous ditloids — indeed, the ditloids that launched a thousand ditloids — were created by puzzle master extraordinaire Will Shortz, former editor of Games magazine and current crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times, puzzle master on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and author of more than 100 books on puzzles. (Incidentally, he is an avid puzzle book collector, owning more than 20,000 puzzle books and magazines). Shortz introduced the word game, which he initially called an “Equation Analysis Test” , in the May-June 1981 issue of Game magazine. Since this was the time before the birth of the Internet, the puzzle was circulated the old fashioned way; Shortz elaborates: “Some anonymous person had retyped the puzzle from Games (word for word, except for my byline), photocopied it, and passed it along. This page was then rephotocopied ad infinitum, like a chain letter, and circulated around the country. Games readers who hadn’t seen the original even started sending it back to Games as something the magazine ought to consider publishing!” Interestingly, this “photocopied” list still gets forwarded, albeit as an image file in chain emails.

Shortz’s inspiration for the word puzzle came from Morgan Worthy’s AHA! A Puzzle Approach to Creative Thinking, published in 1975. Worthy introduced the Formula Analysis Test that had a slightly different construction: M. + M. + N.H. + V. + C. + R.I. = N.E. (Maine + Massachusetts + New Hampshire + Vermont + Connecticut + Rhode Island = New England) and 1 B. in the H. = 2 in the B. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush). Worthy, in turn, was inspired by obscene graffiti in a college bathroom; Worthy explains in his book, “I first became interested in aha! thinking ten years ago while a graduate student at the University of Florida. Part of the graffiti in the men’s room of the psychology building was a cryptic formula someone had written in large letters on the wall. I was intrigued by this little puzzle and, of course, had occasion to be reminded of it from time to time. Finally, one day, the answer (yes, obscene) suddenly came to me. It happened that I was studying creativity at the time and I realized that my response to solving the graffiti puzzle was very like the ‘aha! effect’ about which I had been reading… I constructed a test of times similar in principle to the one I found on the rest room wall.” In order to develop his Formula Analysis Test, Worthy followed this criteria: the puzzles do not require special information or a large vocabulary, the puzzles cannot be solved by step-by-step process, and each puzzle is relatively easy in that it is short and contains few items. Based on research by Worth, scores on solving these type of tests are not correlated significantly with I.Q. scores, but rather validated tests that measure creative thinking.

Without further ado, here are the original 24 word puzzles, the Equation Analysis Test, created by Shortz. Give it a shot, and see how many you can solve. The answers are presented below. And no cheating (i.e., using Google to solve the equations). Remember, solving the puzzles is not about being smart — it is about being creative. So clear your mind, put some music on, chill, and let the letters and numbers speak to you… and be sure to share this with your friends, to see how they do.

1 = W. on a U.
3 = B.M. (S.H.T.R.!)
4 = Q. in a G.
5 = D. in a Z.C.
7 = W. of the A.W.
8 = S. on a S.S.
9 = P. in the S.S.
11 = P. on a F.T.
12 = S. of the Z.
13 = S. on the A.F.
18 = H. on a G.C.
24 = H. in a D.
26 = L. of the A.
29 = D. in F. in a L.Y.
32 = D.F. at which W.F.
40 = D. and N. of the G.F.
54 = C. in a D. (with the J.)
57 = H.V.
64 = S. on a C.
88 = P.K.
90 = D. in a R.A.
200 = D. for P.G. in M.
1,000 = W. that a P. is W.
1,001 = A.N.

Let me know if you enjoyed these word puzzles and if you would like to see more of them.

For further reading: Aha! A Puzzle Approach to Creative Thinking by Morgan Worthy
Will Shortz’s Best Brain Busters by Will Shortz
http://thebiggamehunter.com/main-menu-bar/mechanical-puzzles/mechanical-puzzle-collectors/shortz-will/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditloid
https://www.braingle.com/news/hallfame.php?path=language/english/meaning/equations.p&sol=1
http://www.greenleecds.com/rgbest/NumAKey.pdf
https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/singma/singma5/LANGUAGE/NUMPHRAS.DOC

Answers here.

When Was William Shakespeare Born?

04/23/202004/23/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

For Shakespeare scholars, Shakespeare’s actual birthdate is still a bit of a mystery. To paraphrase King Lear’s famous lament, “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools — especially when they forget to record the date of your actual birth.” Coincidentally, his birth is tied to a deadly pandemic, very similar to what we are experiencing now with coronavirus.

So when was Shakespeare born? The short answer is — no one really knows. Shakespearean scholars and biographers have simply settled on a date, a best guess, on which to honor the world’s most famous and gifted poet and playwright: April 23, 1564. What is known for certain is when he was baptized — April 26, 1564 — and when he died — April 23, 1616 at the age of 52. For all we know, Shakespeare’s birthday jumped around the calendar, much like modern-day Easter, frustrating poor little Will: “When do I get to blow out my birthday candles this year, Mum?”

So why did biographers settle on April 23? Bill Bryson, drawing on the work of many respected Shakespearean biographers explains: “Much ingenuity has been expended on deducing from one or two certainties and some slender probabilities on the date on which he came into the world. By tradition, it is agreed to be 23 April, St. George’s Day. This is the national day of England, and coincidentally also the date on which Shakespeare died 52 years later, giving it a certain irresistible symmetry.”

Similar to the coronavirus pandemic of the present day, Shakespeare was also born during a frightening, deadly pandemic. The bubonic plague (known as the Black Death) was sweeping through Europe. The Black Death was painful and lethal: people who were infected suffered headaches, vomiting, fever, delirium, coughing up blood, and painful enlarged lymph nodes (known as buboes). The mortality rate was 50%; and 65% for infants. Thus, given the high rates of mortality during the 16th century (about 20% of the entire population), it was customary to baptise an infant soon after birth — but exactly how many days later is simply conjecture. As S. Schoenbaum notes in his landmark biography, Shakespeare’s Lives, “It would be frequently be assumed that [Shakespeare] was born on the 23rd on the unwarranted assumption that baptism customarily took place three days after birth. The Prayer Book of 1559 merely prescribed baptism not later than the next Sunday or other holy day following birth. In 1564, 23 April fell on Sunday; if Shakespeare was born then, he should have been baptized by the 25th, St. Mark’s Day.” Bryson adds: “Some people thought St. Mark’s Day was unlucky and so, it is argued — perhaps just a touch hopefully — that the christening was postponed an additional day, to 26 April.”

Understanding the impact of the bubonic plague when William Shakespeare was born leads to the realization of one of the most remarkable strokes of good fortune in the world of literature — it was a miracle that Shakespeare escaped the lethal clutches of the bubonic plague. Realize that just a few houses over, a neighbor of the Shakespeares lost four children to the plague that year. Bryson summarizes it this way: “In a sense William Shakespeare ‘s greatest achievement in life wasn’t writing Hamlet or the sonnets but just surviving his first year.” Evidently, where there’s a Will, there’s a way…

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please LIKE and FOLLOW (via email or WordPress Reader) or share with a friend. The coronavirus quarantine is a perfect time to explore the more than 1,600 articles on Bookshelf. Cheers.

For further reading: Shakespeare’s Lives by S. Schoenbaum
Shakespeare: The Illustrated and Updated Edition by Bill Bryson
The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro
http://www.biography.com/news/shakespeare-tragedies-macbeth-king-lear-antony-cleopatra-plague
thwww.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/24/shakespeares-great-escape-plague-1606–james-shapiro
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/application/files/5014/5434/6066/london-plagues-1348-1665.pdf
http://www.historytoday.com/archive/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever
/www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/pestilence-and-playwright/

Places You Shouldn’t Visit: North Sentinel Island

03/17/202003/20/2020 / Alexander Atkins / 2 Comments

If you value your life you will stay far away from North Sentinel Island inhabited by the Sentinelese, a pre-Neolithic people, that have inhabited the island for more than 55,000 years without any contact with the outside world. There is no way to sugar coat it: if you dare approach and land on their island there is a 100% chance that they will kill you with their primitive weapons: spears, arrows, and stones. And get this — because they are a protected Aboriginal tribe, they will not be prosecuted for killing you. Since the Sentinelese have rejected all contact with the outside world, and have killed anyone who has tried to land there, the Indian Navy patrols the area and keeps all vessels and people away. Individuals who wander into the exclusion zone, which extends five nautical miles from the island’s perimeter, will be arrested.

The tiny island, covering roughly 23 square miles (about the size of Manhattan), may look inviting because it is completely forested and surrounded by pristine narrow white-sand beaches; however it is not easy to land there because it is surrounded by coral reef; moreover it lacks any natural harbors. North Sentinel Island is a part of the Andaman Islands that neighbors Nicobar Islands, an archipelagic island chain, located about 415 miles west from the Myanmar coast and more than 800 miles southeast of the Indian subcontinent. North Sentinel Island is not as remote as it should be — it lies just 31 miles west of Port Blair, the largest city on South Andaman Island. Using aerial photography taken in 2012, the population of North Sentinel Island is estimated between 50 and 400 natives. In contrast, the neighboring Nicobar Islands has a population of 36,844 according to a 2011 census. Both of these islands located in the Bay of Bengal (the northern part of the Indian Ocean) are territories of India. The Indian government considers North Sentinel Island completely autonomous and independent, allowing the inhabitants to eschew the impact of modern civilization, including any diseases to which they have no immunity. For example, the current coronavirus that is spreading all around the globe would wipe them out in a matter of weeks.

North Sentinel island and its inhabitants were first noted by British surveyor John Ritchie in 1771. Despite the natives’ aggression over the past century, there was a time when individuals did land on the island and survived to tell the tale. Most notable, was British naval officer Maurice Portman who led a small group of intrepid explorers to land on the island in 1880 to study the natives and their culture. They found a network of pathways that led to a few small abandoned villages. Eventually they encountered and captured six natives, an old couple and their four children. They were taken to Port Blair (talk about invasive and unethical research tactics!) where the couple quickly succumbed to illness and died. Soon after, the children were returned back to their island along with consolation gifts (“So sorry we killed your parents, but here is a food basket with our compliments — good luck with everything!). Despite the disastrous results of his research, Portman returned to the island several times between 1883 and 1887 and survived.

One fellow who was not so fortunate was American John Chau, a 26-year-old missionary that traveled to North Sentinel Island, on behalf of All Nations, to bring Christianity to the tribespeople and translate the Bible into Sentinelese. Based in Kansas City, the vision of All Nations is “to see Jesus worshipped by all the peoples of the earth. Our mission is to make disciples and train leaders to ignite church planting movements among the neglected peoples on earth.” According to one of their executive leaders, Chau was uniquely suited for this mission: “A seasoned traveler, John had previously taken part in mission projects in Iraq, Kurdistan and South Africa. He joined All Nations in 2017 and trained at our North American Hub in Kansas City. John was one of the most well-equipped young missionaries we’ve ever seen. He read books on cultural anthropology and missiology at the rate of one every three days. He was also trained in linguistics so he could learn the language of the Sentinelese people. He was a certified wilderness EMT, so that he could serve the Sentinelese in practical ways. He was also delightful, kind, and funny. Small children felt at ease with him, and everyone who met him felt his warmth.” Fellow missionary, Mat Stavers, shares that introducing Jesus to the Sentinelese was one of Chau’s lifelong dreams: “John loved people, and he loved Jesus. He was willing to give his life to share Jesus with the people on North Sentinel island. Ever since high school, John wanted to go to North Sentinel to share Jesus with this indigenous people.”

Chau made an initial try on the evening of November 15, 2018 and was greeted with an onslaught of arrows, one which hit the Bible he was carrying. In his journal he wrote, “Why did a little kid have to shoot me today.” He returned the following night, but the natives got a hold of canoe and destroyed it, forcing Chau to swim back to the boat. Those incidents did not deter the well-intentioned missionary. In his journal he wrote to his parents: “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. God, I don’t want to die. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed — rather please live your lives in obedience to whatever He has called you to and I will see you again when you pass through the veil.” On November 17, Chau finally succeeded in landing on the island. Apparently, the Sentinelese were perfectly happy with their religion and therefore not very receptive to the story of Jesus. Tragically, the hostile natives proceeded to kill Chau; the natives dragged his along the beach and buried his body there. Subsequently, the Indian police arrested seven individuals who used a wooden boat with motors to get Chau on the restricted island (Chau used a canoe to reach the shore from the boat. In the canoe he carried gifts, including fish and a football.) Days later, the police marine unit attempted to retrieve the body, but faced a very fierce and heavily armed group of tribesmen that were protecting their beach. Faced with insurmountable obstacles, Chau’s family made the difficult decision to leave their son’s body on the island; they stated that they forgave the tribe for their actions and were not insisting for his remains to be returned to the U.S.

The Sentinelese are not the only isolated tribes in the world — there are about 100 others around the globe, with most found in the Amazon and New Guinea rainforests. Many of them are hostile to outsiders, explains Jonathan Mazower of Survival International, that protects these isolated tribes: “Often, they are very fearful of outsiders — with very good reason. Sometimes they will have in their collective memory a massacre, a violent incident, or a disease or epidemic — so very often, there are well-founded reasons for these tribes to not want to have anything to do with the outside world.”

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Do you agree or disagree; additional perspectives? I welcome thoughtful discussion via comment section or email. Be a part of the community. Cheers.

For further information: Contemporary Society Tribal Studies by Georg Preffer and Deepak Behera
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/north-sentinel-island-andaman-nicobar-tribe-american-killed-5460144/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/25/asia/missionary-john-chau-north-sentinel-island-sentinelese/index.html

Home

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/police-faceoff-with-sentinelese-tribe-as-they-struggle-to-recover-slain-missionarys-body/news-story/a88d3780059939a5e11ebcfb556327ac

The Deadliest Pandemics in History

03/16/202003/20/2020 / Alexander Atkins

As of this writing, the coronavirus (COVID-19) has claimed 7,100 lives around the globe (80 of those have been in the U.S.). There is an estimated 181,000 people who have contracted the virus (4,300 of those are Americans). Unfortunately, COVID-19 is just getting started. As many experts have stated, it is going to get worse before it gets better. So that invites the question, how does COVID-19 stack up against some of the deadliest pandemics in human history?

Before we get to that, let’s clarify the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic. An epidemic is the rapid spread of a disease across a specific region or regions. Once that disease spreads from country to country around the globe, it is classified as a pandemic. Thus, all pandemics begin as epidemics; however — and fortunately — not all epidemics become pandemics. In general, pandemics result in more fatalities than epidemics. One notable exception is the Cocoliztli epidemic (also known as “The Great Pestilence”) that occurred in 1545 resulting in 12-15 million deaths in Mexico. The native Aztecs succumbed to the lethal disease brought by the Spanish conquistadors, led by Hernan Cortes. The Aztecs were particularly vulnerable due to a variety of factors: weakened immunity, exacerbated by years of disease after a long drought, on top of a deadly outbreak of smallpox in 1520, also introduced by the Spanish, that resulted in more than 8 million deaths.

When you review the list of the deadliest pandemics in human history, you realize that the mortality rate of the COVID-19 is relatively low so far — but that can change as quickly as a virus can mutate. Here are the deadliest pandemics in human history, in descending order:

The Black Death (Bubonic Plague; in the Middle Ages it was referred to as “The Great Mortality”) pandemic: 1346-1353
Origin: Central or East Asia
Death toll: 75-200 million

Plague of Justinian: 541-542
Origin: Byzantine Empire (the capital was Constantinople, what is now Istanbul, Turkey) and port cities around the Mediterranean Sea
Death toll: 25-50 million

HIV/AIDS pandemic: 2005-2012
Origin: Democratic Republic of Congo
Death toll: 36 million

Antonine Plague (also known as the Plague of Galen): 165-180
Origin: Aisa Minor
Death Toll: 5 million

Asian flu pandemic: 1956-58
Origin: Guizhou, China
Death toll: 2 million

Russian or Asiatic flu pandemic: 1889-1890
Origin: Bukhara, Turkestan (what is now Uzbekistan)
Death toll: 1 million

Hong Kong flu pandemic: 1968
Origin: Hong Kong
Death toll: 1 million

Third cholera pandemic: 1852-1860
Origin: India
Death toll: 1 million

Sixth cholera pandemic: 1910-11
Origin: India
Death toll: 800,000

For further reading: The Black Death, The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 by John Aberth
Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel Leon-Portilla
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-updates-cases-fears-deaths-us-latest-2020-03-16/
https://www.mphonline.org/worst-pandemics-in-history/

Places You Shouldn’t Visit: Runit Dome

02/10/202002/10/2020 / Alexander Atkins / 5 Comments

Scattered like pebbles in a massive pond, the Marshall Islands, located in the Pacific Ocean about 2,500 east of Hawaii, consists of 29 atolls (for those who slept through Geography 101, an atoll is a ring-shaped chain of islands formed of coral), containing 1,156 small islands and islets. (The official name of this island country, with a population of 59,000 people, is the Republic of the Marshall Islands; it was never formally adopted as a state, and is therefore considered a “United States associated state.”) One of these coral atolls, is the Enewetak Atoll, consisting of 40 tiny islands and a population of 664 people (known as the Marshallese). As you fly above the atoll, one witnesses some of the bluest seas, punctuated with tiny islands outlined by beautiful white sand beaches; and as you head toward the northern part of the atoll, one comes across something incredibly surreal — what appears to be a massive perfectly round beached alien space ship straight out of some apocalyptic sci-fi movie. WTF is this thing and why is it there? To answer these questions, let us go back in time 70 years to learn about the island that time has largely forgotten.

The Enewetak Atoll has to be one of the most unfortunate places on the planet. First, between 1948 to 1958, the United States conducted 43 nuclear tests on the atoll. In one of the tests, the bomb did not explode properly, scattering small chunks of radioactive plutonium all over the islands. Second, the Enewetak Atoll is located just 215 miles east from the Bikini Atoll, where the United States conducted 23 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites — underwater, on the reef, inside the atoll, and in the air — the combined release of energy equivalent of 30 million tons of TNT! Holy crap! (For comparison, the blast from Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, released energy equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. Fat Man produced an explosion equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT.) You can imagine what happened to the island. It is extremely radioactive and is uninhabitable for more than 24,000 years — it makes the Chernobyl nuclear disaster looks like a small grassfire. And guess what else happened? During some of the tests, weather forecasts that predicted that the winds would be blowing away from Enewetak were wrong. Surprise! — all that nuclear fallout blew right into those inhabited islands causing an epidemic of radiation sickness.

So what did the U.S. government do? In typical government fashion, military leaders decided to spend $100 million to do a half-assed job. Of course, the military leaders vastly underestimated the costs of the clean-up: in the end, it cost taxpayers more than $239 million! Over a three year period (1977-1979), the government sent thousands of unsuspecting military members (they were told that they were serving on “an island paradise”) to scrape off top soil and debris from nearby islands and bury all of this material in one of the blast craters on Runit Island. In addition, the soldiers had to bag over 400 radioactive chunks of plutonium without wearing any protective or safety gear. (Recall the horrifying scene in HBO’s Chernobyl when the military sends those unsuspecting cleanup workers to the reactor site where radiation exposure was equivalent to 80,000 to 160,000 chest x-rays.) It is estimated that the crater contains up to 95,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris. The crater was then capped with a massive dome of concrete, known as the Runit Dome (locals call it “The Tomb”) — the alien space ship mentioned earlier in this post. Visually, it is spectacular. Imagine this large, round concrete structure, 377 feet in diameter, made up of 358 concrete panels of slightly different shades of gray, each 18 inches thick. People are forbidden to visit Runit Island, but surprisingly, there are no warning signs or barriers of any kind to discourage trespassing.

The geniuses who designed the contamination container in a “cost-saving” move, did not line the bottom of the crater, which is made of porous coral and sand. So even though the crater was capped with a massive dome of concrete, it has been leaking radioactive debris for decades. Studies have shown that the sediments in the lagoon are more radioactive that the debris contained in the dome. If that isn’t bad enough, the dome has been deteriorating as rising sea levels, due to climate change, are causing radioactive elements to seep into the ocean. Furthermore, experts are concerned that the dome can no longer withstand a typhoon. A typhoon would completely destroy the concrete dome, releasing tons of radioactive elements that will contaminate the Pacific Ocean for thousands of years.

Sadly, many of the soldiers who worked on the Runit Dome have come down with illnesses (cancer, tumors, brittle bones, skin lesions, birth defects, etc.) related to their exposure to radioactive contamination, and consequently facing crippling medical bills. Moreover, many of these soldiers have died at a young age, suffering terrible pain, as a result of radiation poisoning. A declassified cable (1972) from the U.S. government states: “Radiological conditions Runit island… the number of nuclear devices exploded on Runit and subsequent earth and debris moving activities have resulted in a complex radiological situation in which each unit division of island is unique from adjacent islands… Actual surveys have been superficial but have identified the presence of a plutonium bearing sand layer outcropping on the ocean side of the midisland area and the existence of apparently solid plutonium bearing chunks, grains and other particulate on the island surface.” The government’s response has been to deny the problem by denying that the soldiers’ illnesses are not linked to the work on the island (they deny that it was a nuclear clean up project) and refusing them healthcare and refusing them the medical help they need. Decades later, the soldiers continue to battle for justice.

In the documentary, “This Concrete Dome Holds A Leaking Toxic Time Bomb” Enewetak veteran Ken Kasik, now restricted to a hospital bed due to declining health, makes a powerful statement that evokes the same lessons of the Chernobyl disaster: “There’s nobody trained [for] the [removal of] atomic waste. There’s people trained in the actual making of bombs, testing the bombs, and all like that, but not [for] picking [up the waste from the bomb.] You cannot get rid of this. The island should just be destroyed… America dumped all of their worst rubbish to the Marshallese and abandoned them with it — and we don’t want to hear about it. It’s a disgusting shame and it it makes us look bad.” In many ways, it seems that Runit Dome is America’s Chernobyl, a cold, concrete tomb that continues to haunt its victims psychologically and physically.

For further information: “This Concrete Dome Holds a Leaking Toxic Time Bomb” on YouTube
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-today/
https://www.livescience.com/65673-is-visiting-chernobyl-safe.html

The Person Behind the Word: Maverick

01/15/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Being branded (pun intended) a maverick can either be a compliment or denigration, depending upon your perspective. The primary definition of a maverick is an independently-minded person; one who bucks the status quo, as it were (sorry, could’t resist). Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable uses the term “masterless man” — leave to the Brits to be so dramatic. The secondary meaning of a maverick is an unbranded calf or yearling. Because of this, some people mistakenly believe that the word is derived from the horse; however, the word is actually an eponym, based on a real American — you certainly wouldn’t recognize him if you saw his photo in a history book, but you certainly know his surname: Samuel Maverick.

Maverick was well-known in Texas during the mid 1800s (he was born in 1803 and died 1870), where he was a respected Yale-educated attorney, politician, landowner, and rancher. Maverick, was of course, the original maverick because he refused to brand his cattle, much to the consternation of nearby ranchers. Language maven, William Safire shares one explanation provided by J. David Stern who wrote Maverick Publisher: “Old man Maverick… refused to brand his cattle because it was cruelty to animals. His neighbors said he was a hypocrite, liar, and thief, because Maverick’s policy allowed him to claim all unbranded cattle on the range. Lawsuits were followed by bloody battles, and brought a new word to our language.” As early at 1867, ranchers called any unbranded cattle “mavericks.”

The term eventually drifted into the realm of politics. Safire continues: “Maverick drifted into the political vocabulary around the turn of the century; McClure’s magazine mentioned the occasional appearance of a ‘maverick legislator.” The simplicity and aptness of the metaphor made it both durable and universally understood.” In this context, it means a person who is unorthodox in his or her political views and is disdainful of party loyalty. The maverick is truly a man without a brand. Safire notes that being a maverick in the world of politics can either be a virtue or a vice — and many notable politicians have been mavericks at some point during their notable careers.

Reviewing the troubling state of partisan politics in America today, one would hope that there were more mavericks serving in Congress today.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: Safire’s New Political Dictionary by William Safire

The Literary Magic 8-Ball that Provides Sound Advice

01/04/202001/04/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

Who or what do you turn to when you need helpful advice for life’s most important questions? If you grew up in the mid-1900s or if you are President Trump or work in his administration, you turn to the Magic 8-Ball. The Magic 8-Ball, initially called the Syco-Slate, was invented by Albert Carter and Abe Bookman back in 1950, inspired by a device used by Albert’s mother, who was a clairvoyant. The plastic ball, resembling an 8-ball from billiards, contains an icosahedron (20 sided die) floating in alcohol that is dyed dark blue. A user asks a yes-no question, shakes the ball, and turns the ball to reveal the window and read the answer. The 20-faced die contains 20 answers, 10 of which are affirmative, 5 are non-committal, and 5 are negative. Sometimes consulting the Magic 8-Ball can be exasperating when it tries to be coy: “better not tell you now” or is recovering from a bad acid trip: “reply hazy, try again.” Below are the 20 possible answers revealed by the Magic 8-Ball:

Affirmative answers:
As I see it, yes.
It is certain.
It is decidedly so.
Most likely.
Outlook good.
Signs point to yes.
Yes.
Yes — definitely.
You may rely on it.
Without a doubt.

Negative answers:
Don’t count on it.
My reply is no.
My sources say no.
Outlook not so good.
Very doubtful.

Non-committal answers:
Ask again later.
Better not tell you now.
Cannot predict now.
Concentrate and ask again.
Reply hazy, try again.

Not content to receive answers from an indifferent, sometimes sassy icosahedron inebriated by alcohol, Carol Bolt, a multi-disciplinary artist who incorporates words, drawings, and interactive elements into her work, believed there was a better source for sound advice: literary classics. So in 2000, she published an antidote to the Magic 8-Ball, The Literary Book of Answers, to allow sentences drawn from famous works of literature to provide the answers. You could say that it is a literary version of the Magic 8-Ball. Should I quit my job this year? Should I ask for a raise? Should I move to New York? Should I begin my novel this year? Shall I part my hair behind. Do I dare eat a peach? Whatever the question, the user simply opens the book and lands on one of the 704 pages that contains a sentence from a famous literary work. Doing this randomly, I received the following five answers:

“Change something from the way it was before.” (from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury)

“Quick, ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning.” (from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)

“Let everything rip.” (from Ulysses by James Joyce)

“Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it.” (from Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

“Adopt that course if you like.” (from Symposium by Plato)

The book has been very successful, and was recently published as a 20th-anniversary edition. Bolt also published six other editions, some of which are still in print: The Book of Answers, The Movie Book of Answers, Love’s Book of Answers, The Soul’s Book of Answers, Mom’s Book of Answers, and Dad’s Book of Answers.

Of course having two very different sources of advice for life’s important question begs the question: which is the better source of advice? So, naturally, I asked The Literary Book of Answers: “Are you the better source of advice, over the Magic 8-Ball?” Then I turned to a random page that revealed this definitive answer: “Depend on it, my dear” (from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen). Case closed.

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

Trivia About the Number 20

01/03/202001/04/2020 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

“Our lives our governed by numbers,” writes Herb Reich in the introduction to Numberpedia, “Not the evanescent assumptions of the numerologist, but the widely applied codified numerical systems underlying our very existence… Numbers serve two functions: they may denote measurements or designations. Thus, they both quantify and identify.” So what does that really mean? It means that to our own circle of family and friends, we are known by our names — but we are just numbers to everyone else. For example, each person is identified with a social security number, a customer number, a student number, a driver’s license number, an account number, an IP address, a physical address, and so on. Furthermore, each person is described by numbers unique to them; for example, a credit score, a test score (SAT, GRE, PSAT), GPA, IQ, weight, height, blood pressure, heart beat rate, and so forth. Since Reich is fascinated by numbers, he decided to write a book that examines the various meaning and associations of numbers, from 0 to 100. Since we have just ushered in the year 2020, let’s see what associations the number 20 has (listed in no particular order):

The base of the Mayan number system

Number of days in each of the 18 months in the Mayan calendar

The sum of the first seven Fibonacci numbers

The atomic number of calcium

Value of Roman numeral XX

Fluid ounces in a pint (British measure)

The age of majority (hatachi) in Japanese society

Number comprising a score (recall Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: “Four score and seven years ago…” meaning 87 years)

Number of first moves possible for each player in the game of chess

Number of human baby teeth

Number of pennyweights in an ounce troy

The number of quires in a ream of paper

Measure of visual acuity (normal vision at 20 feet for left eye and right eye is 20/20)

A dart board is divided into 20 sectors

An icosahedron is a 20-sided die, each side containing an equilateral triangle (one is found floating inside the Magic 8-Ball)

A dodecahedron is a solid with 20 corners

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: Numberpedia by Herb Reich
https://badseypublications.co.uk/number/Num20.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_(number)

What Were the Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of 2019?

12/30/201912/31/2019 / Alexander Atkins / 3 Comments

The measure of a culture is what its people read or watch, which provides some insight into what they actually think about. As the year 2019 comes to a close it invites the question: what did people think about in 2019? What were they curious about? We can, of course, ask that another way that is perhaps more practical: what topics did people look up the most in Wikipedia in 2019? In mid-December, a researcher analyzed the Wikipedia metrics to ascertain the most popular articles of 2019. If you expect to see a number of profound, philosophical topics, you will be greatly disappointed — the list reveals an intellectual shallowness, characterized by an obsession with fictional heroes, movies, and celebrities. Given all the critical issues that nations — and the entire planet — are struggling with, is this really what people are pondering? There is no way to sugarcoat this — we are in deep trouble. Perhaps a superhero can materialize and help us! Here are the 25 most searched topics in Wikipedia for 2019 (number of pageviews in parenthesis):

Avengers: Endgame – 43,847,319
Deaths in 2019 – 36,916,847
Ted Bundy – 29,062,988
Freddie Mercury – 26,858,123
Chernobyl disaster – 25,195,814
List of highest-grossing films – 24,547,640
Joker (2019 film) – 22,062,357
List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films – 21,467,603
Billie Eilish – 19,638,478
Keanu Reeves – 16,622,576
Jeffrey Epstein – 15,905,486
Game of Thrones (season 8) – 15,643,215
Captain Marvel (film) – 15,631,936
Game of Thrones – 15,252,675
Elizabeth II – 14,808,717
List of Bollywood films of 2019 – 14,213,919
United States – 13,981,783
Donald Trump – 13,961,113
Spider-Man: Far From Home – 13,468,700
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – 12,958,871
YouTube – 12,537,494
2019 in film – 11,338,657
Nipsey Hussle – 11,308,502
Jason Momoa – 11,304,629
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – 11,000,322

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/wiki-most-popular-articles-of-2019-15b9257a0009?

E-Commerce Product Returns by the Numbers

12/26/201912/27/2019 / Alexander Atkins / Leave a comment

For retailers, the holiday season (November 1 to December 31) is the most wonderful time of the year. For many businesses, that period generates the most sales and profits. In 2018, for example, holiday sales amounted to $707.5 billion — bah, humbug! However, those record sales are a double-edged sword. High sales, unfortunately, also mean high rate of returns — usually around 10% of all holiday sales. In general, 25-40% of products purchased online are returned, compared to 8.9% at brick-and-mortar stores. The amount of products returned to retailers last year was $260 billion dollars! It is one of the greatest challenges to e-commerce retailers. For Amazon alone, for example, consumers return more than $100 million in North America alone.

So what happens to when you return a product to an online retailer, like Amazon? While some brick-and-mortar stores simply retag the item and place it back on the shelf, most online retailers sell their products to a network of liquidators and wholesalers who pay pennies to the dollar. The savings is passed onto the secondary market, where consumers purchase “as is” or “salvage grade” products in boxes, pallets, or truckloads from the liquidators’ listings and auctions. However, if a retailer cannot sell returned products, they are simply discarded. Sadly, each year more than four billion tons of new merchandise finds its way into landfills.

So how do you purchase products for liquidators? You simply log onto the website of any of the liquidators and wholesalers. Three of the largest liquidators are Optoro based in Mount Juliet, Tennessee; Direct Liquidation, based in Miami, Florida; and Inmar, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It operates similar to Ebay. A consumer can review the many auctions that are listed under various categories (eg, clothing, jewelry, consumer electronics, computers, housewares, etc.). When you bid on a box or pallet on a liquidator’s website, you are provided with a manifest (a list of items that are included), that may be very specific or simply list the category of items. A pallet can have all of the same items, or a pallet can contain extremely random products (think of Storage Wars — you never know what’s in that storage locker!). A savvy consumer can save a ton of money; for example, a pallet with a total suggested retail value of $3,000 can be bought for a mere $100.

If you wonder what happens to used books — yes, there are liquidators and wholesalers that specialize in returned or remaindered books. Some of the largest book commercial wholesalers in the U.S. include: Book Depot (Buffalo, New York), Books Liquidation (Sacramento, California); Book Country Clearing House (McKeesport, Pennsylvania), and American Book Company (Knoxville, Tennessee). While these companies sell mainly to commercial accounts, consumers can purchased returned and remaindered books through e-commerce sites like Book Outlet (Buffalo, New York), Daedalus Books & Music (Hudson, Ohio), and Hamilton Books (Falls Village, Connecticut).

Let’s take a quick look at e-commerce/retail product returns by the numbers:

Rate of returns at brick-and-mortar stores: 8-10%
Rate of product returns at online stores: 25-40%

Amount of products returned by consumers in 2018: $707.5 billion

Online retailers that offer free return shipping: 49%
Percentage of shoppers that review the returns page before making a purchase: 67%

Top reasons of why consumers return products:
Product damaged in shipping: 20%
Product looks different than picture: 22%
Received wrong item: 23%
Other reasons: 35%

Percentage of shoppers that will buy something if returns are easy: 92%
Percentage of shoppers that want free return shipping: 79%
Percentage of shoppers that will shop online if they can return to a physical store: 62%
Percentage of shoppers that would purchase an item that costs more than $1,000 if returns are free: 27%
Percentage of shoppers that would purchase an item that costs more than $1,000 if returns are not free: 10%

Percentage of returns due to retailer’s fault: 65%

SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoyed this post, please help expand the Bookshelf community by sharing with a friend or with your readers. Cheers.

For further reading: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-retail-sales/u-s-2018-holiday-sales-numbers-surprise-nrf-fall-short-of-expectations-idUSKCN1Q32MB
https://fortune.com/2019/12/02/black-friday-shopping-cyber-monday-record-spending/
https://www.invespcro.com/blog/ecommerce-product-return-rate-statistics/
https://www.readycloud.com/info/ecommerce-returns-statistics-for-2018
http://www.liquidation.com
http://www.internetbookselling.com/book-wholesalers.html

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: