I wasn’t so hot at algebra but I kicked azimuth in geometry. It’s a visual think / thing I guess. Which probably explains why Venn diagrams give me a kick. They say a whole lot about as laconically as it’s possible to get, rather like a joke when you come to think of it.

I recommend two sites where you can feast on these set pieces: a Tumblr: Fuck Yeah Venn Diagrams; and the delightfully witty Indexed. But herewith a bunch of my favourite Venns (and a bit of earnestness toward the end). You’re seeing thumbnail versions below, . . . [more]

Un certain Marchant, avocat, homme d’esprit, disait : «On court les risques du dégoût en voyant comment l’administration, la justice et la cuisine se préparent.»

A certain witty advocate, Marchant, observed: “One risks disgust in seeing administration, justice and one’s dinner being made.”

Nicolas de Chamfort (1741–1794)

Perhaps. But I’ve been involved in the making of a small amount of justice and a much larger amount of dinner, and I’ve rather enjoyed the process in both cases. (“Administration” might be another matter, I freely admit.)

I like to see the creative act in the act, so to speak. Or, to . . . [more]

Human beings are sensitive to scale. Makes sense, I guess: more is better — to a degree; big is dangerous — much of the time. And when impressive size is combined with intensity, a scale of its own, the result can be awe-inspiring. Let me give you a couple of visual examples.

The first is a set of narratives cut in stone. It comes from the far north, in Russia, just about where that red dot appears on the map below.

Add to the scale of “far northness” the time scale fact that the work in question is 5,000 years . . . [more]

Okay, this one’s a little odd.

It consists, essentially, of two links to YouTube videos. Together these offer you a seven-hour train ride from Bergen to Oslo, as seen from a camera installed on the front of the locomotive. That’s it.

Only in Norway, you say. Well, you may be right. That country’s been in the blogs recently as the source of some pretty peculiar film and television. The one that’s caught commentators‘ (caustic) imaginations the most is the 12-hour TV show of logs burning to ash in a fireplace.

This train ride is somewhat more lively, I assure . . . [more]

An article in the Globe and Mail earlier this week got me thinking about the names that drug companies give to their products. The article talks about diclofenac, a commonly prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that some researchers believe is quite dangerous. As odd ad the word “diclofenac” is, it was the even stranger name of a similar drug that really made me wonder: “etoricoxib”.

What is going on? Who could coin such a monstrosity, and more to the point, why would they? I picture a big pharma Eden, where some utterly exhausted Adam, strung out on caffeine and out-of-date benzedrine, is . . . [more]

The Economist reports on pigeons. At least it does when they’re unable to find their way back home in upstate New York. Seems homing pigeons, long a marvel to the geolocation folks, have trouble with their animus revertendi, as we ex property profs like to say, when it’s animated near Jersey Hill, NY. And this, we learn from “The Birdmuda Triangle,” provided the anomaly that led biologist Bill Keeton to figure out a third piece in the puzzle that is pigeon homing. Scientists have known about the birds’ ability to use the sun and the Earth’s magnetic . . . [more]

This week I debated with myself as to whether the fillip should be about piece of meaningless fluff (actually a whole dust bunny of pieces of meaningless fluff) that might be NSFW, or about a weighty question raised by a philosopher in the NYTimes (that probably was in its way NSFW i.e. not satisfactory for weekends). Fluff won. It is, after all, now February, that Thursday of months, when, speaking for myself, the winter thing becomes just a tad teejus and light, whatever its form, might be welcome.

The sub-trivial treat for today comes to us thanks, in part, to . . . [more]

In reading about Aaron Swartz after his death, I came across a website/program, Image Atlas, he built for his friend Taryn Simon, as part of an art exhibit. It’s simplicity itself: using search terms of your choice, you call up the top images from Google in a wide variety of countries. The images are displayed in strips, one above the other, so that you can see at a glance how countries differ in their use of graphics on the web. (I should not that of course your search terms are translated into the languages of the countries you’re . . . [more]

Height is a thing with humans. You can see it in the various English phrases that capture a de haut en bas relationship: we “look down on” lesser people, and may well be given “oversight” over them, and if things are truly insignificant to us we are likely to “overlook” them. But this fillip isn’t really an essay on wordplay. Rather, it’s a sort of overview of the prospect from the gods.

Let’s start with maps, that most common of views from above. It takes an act of imagination to position yourself in the bosom of the clouds and . . . [more]

As I think I’ve remarked before in this space, there are a number of things fundamental to being human that science still cannot fully explain. These “mundane marvels” interest me — I’m thinking of laughing, crying, sleeping . . . and yawning. We yawn 25,000 times in our life. Fetuses do it, apparently. We do it when we’re bored, anxious, hungry, tired.

But why?

And that’s the problem. Nobody has the answer. Or, there are too many answers. Have a look at this article, which gives you something of the essence of Wolter Seuntjens’s dissertation, a work in . . . [more]

“Prestidigitation” — one of my favourite words. And something that, like a whole lot of people, I tried to learn when I was a kid. I knew that Houdini (we shared a birthday) was really Erik Weisz, and I knew who Houdin really was. And I had the magic rings, the collapsible wand, the fake-bottomed cup . . . But, alas, no talent, and certainly no perseverance to compensate.

Magic still delights me, though, as it does most of us. And for me, prestidigitation is most impressive. It’s one thing — and no easy thing, I realize — to . . . [more]

It is that time of year. Having made your wish list, checked it twice, you’ve found out whether you’d been naughty or nice. And now it remains to make your list of New Year’s resolutions.

I’ve been here with the Fillip before, I know. But that was almost two years ago; and besides, a second Fillip about lists makes the beginnings of a list. This year, the New Yorker, unable to resist this invitation to self-reference that a discussion of lists evokes, offers up a hyperlinked list of the Hundred Best Lists of All Time. It proceeds, late-show . . . [more]