Category: Random craziness

Just whatever people feel like writing.

Happy Presumed Birthday, Will Shakespeare!

We don’t know that you were born on April 23, 1564, just that you were baptized a few days later. And there’s no evidence that you ever spelled your name “Shakespeare” when you signed it. But never mind. You gave us lines like these:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

North Carolina Kokonvention, 2012

Last summer, Randomosity101, Agent Lightning, Tesseract, Kiwimuncher, Koppar, Lady Bunniful, and assorted parents Kokonvened at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Stories. We have pictures to prove it, but they’ll have to supply the stories behind them:
Continue reading “North Carolina Kokonvention, 2012”

March 2013 Random Thread: Arsenic and Old Emperors

Continuing our remembrance of favorite Muse issues and articles past, the GAPAs dedicate the March random thread to “The Murder (Maybe) of Napoleon” — blurbed as “Was Napoleon Killed by His Wallpaper?” on the cover of the January 2003 issue. The nautical-themed number also included articles about shipworms and Captain Kidd, step-by-step instructions on how to plunder a galleon, and a chapter from Hornblower and the “Atropos”, the fifth book in C. S. Forester’s celebrated Horatio Hornblower saga. In a landlubberly aside, Ivars Peterson’s Math Page gave tips on winning at Monopoly. A fine issue indeed, me hearties!

Ideas for future random threads are still welcome.

Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!

January 2013 “Happy Birthday!” Thread

Known Muser birthdays and “K Days” this month*:

01-01 Jadestone’s birthday (1992)
01-03 SilverLeopard’s birthday (1998)
01-03 Armada’s 6K Day
01-03 Lady Bunniful’s birthday
01-16 Cello-Playing Mathematician’s 7K Day
01-23 Kittymine’s birthday (1993)
01-25 Dodecahedron’s 7K Day
01-26 Glassboro’s birthday (1995)
01-29 Errata’s 6K Day

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between April 26 and May 26, 1999.
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between July 30 and August 29, 1996.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between November 3 and December 3, 1993.
You turn 8,000 days old this month if you were born between February 7 and March 9, 1991.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Just for Fun

Robert writes:

While reading old newspapers online for a personal project I’m working on, I ran across this ad in the San Francisco Daily Alta (April 20, 1871). I’m posting it just because I love it:

The amazing Professor Hazelmayer

Twenty performing birds and mice! Many incomprehensible things! And the world’s only Stylocarfe! You can’t see shows like that anymore. It would definitely be worth a dollar (and some of you would be eligible to get in for 50 cents).