Thursday, January 30, 2014

Trivia of the day

Question: What was the first typewritten manuscript submitted for publication?

Answer: Life on the Mississippi (1883) by Mark Twain

Twain receives the credit for having dictated the book to a secretary, although this is not so much a verified fact as a claim found to be the most plausible case for first such use of the typewriter.

[Source - The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements by Sam Kean]

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Quote of the day

"Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power." - Paul Krugman, "Paranoia of the Plutocrats"

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Quote of the day

"The conservative capacity for driving nails into their own palms may well be limitless." - Charles Pierce

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Quote of the day

"Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things." - Michael Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Monday, January 13, 2014

Quote of the day

"Clearly he was the cause of the stories that had arisen recently in the more extremely abhorrent sectors of the tabloid press about there being 'Something Nasty in the Woodshead.' The stories had, of course, been offensive and callously insensitive and had largely been ignored by everybody in the country except for those very few millions who were keen on offensive and callously insensitive things." - Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Friday, January 10, 2014

Quote of the day

"Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what [one] does not believe." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Monday, January 06, 2014

Quote of the day

"With cold weather it is inevitable that the American right wing, which has a poor grasp of science and math (along with economics, American history, and current events), will claim this to be evidence against global warming." - Ron Chusid