Perhaps my title's a bit hyperbolic, but writing today's other smell-related post got me fondly recalling my favorite sentence (and there was good competition) from Nicholson Baker's 1997 essay collection, The Size of Thoughts, which is—with a few diversions—a string of celebrations of commonplace cultural objects, often starting at the point before the starting point: the smell of a fresh book, the friendly rattle of a model airplane kit still in the box.

books, cultivation and creation, slang, smell

Nate

:

This may be the funniest and best-smelling work of profound lexicographical slang-scholarship ever published. Some may respect the hint of Elmer’s glue in recent printings of Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th ed.), or the faint traces of burlap and cocoa-bean that linger deep in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, or even the fume of indoor swimming-pool that clings to the paper-bound decolletage of Slang!: The Topic-By-Topic Dictionary of Contemporary American Lingoes. But a single deep draught of J. E. Lighter’s magnificent Historical Dictionary of American Slang (volume I, A-G) is a higher order of experience: it smells like a high-ceilinged bare room freshly painted white - clean and sunlit, full of reverberative promise and proud of its mitered corners, although with a mildly intoxicating or hyperventilational ‘finish’…

Insight into the cultural world of Munich's Oktoberfest, via its lost and found (here's the official site in German, in case you're missing anything). By my book, the best-ever Munich beer-binge description (which involves its own bit of lost-and found) can be found in Patrick Leigh Fermor's exquisite travel book A Time of Gifts—the link will drop you right at the start of Fermor's Hofbrauhaus set-piece.

cultural worlds, europe, food and drink, germany, literature, loss, patrick leigh fermor

Nate

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Anyone who has visited the Oktoberfest and seen hundreds of revellers dancing on the wooden tables, holding up their beer glasses and chanting along to DJ Ötzi’s cover version of “Hey! Baby” knows how merry the atmosphere can get.

For those who haven’t, a look at the lost and found register evokes the raucous celebrations.

Members of staff found 680 identity cards and passports, 410 wallets, 360 keys, 265 spectacles, 280 mobile phones and 80 cameras, one set of diving goggles, one set of angel’s wings, a superman costume and four wedding rings. A long-haired Dachshund was also found roaming the festival ground, but was later reclaimed by its owner.

“For the first time, no dentures were found,” the Munich city press department said with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. “Is this a sign of demographic change, good dental hygiene or a higher rate of tooth implants?”

Ah, the two-week gap between when this post was written and this week's financial scariness.

advertising, cultural worlds, economics, horizons of the possible, poverty, psychology

Nate

:

The finding from our first study, that when you make people feel poor they play more, is especially sad since playing the lottery is on average a massively losing proposition. The propensity of low income individuals to play the lottery has the perverse effect of exacerbating their poverty. Although there are no easy solutions to the problem, one obvious one would be to cease marketing and advertising that targets the poor. It probably makes sense for the state to sell lottery tickets, because otherwise they will be sold by organized crime. However, does it really make sense for the state to be inducing, through advertising, poor people to play who wouldn’t play in the absence of such inducement?

Similarly, states could promote and offer more games that appeal to wealthier players, such as Powerball, and not those popular with poorer players, such as instant scratch-off tickets. Another obvious solution, though one that is even less likely to be implemented, would be for the state to increase the payout on the tickets, and perhaps to increase the number of moderate size prizes.

Finally, a third option would be for financial institutions to issue investment instruments that have lottery-like qualities (for example, offered in small amounts, available at many convenient points of purchase, provide a small chance of a large upside) but offer a positive rate of return, providing the pleasure of playing the lottery without the steep cost. In many other countries “prize bonds” or other savings instruments are available that pay lottery winnings in place of, or in addition to, regular interest. Regulations in the United States have stymied the development of such offerings.

Kevin Kelly is one of those (alternately fascinating and infuriating) people who can never look at anything without seeing something new. Here is his arresting observation about how few links really separate us from the distant past, and the future.

3 12 120, generations, history, kevin kelly

Andy

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I could form a human bridge between me and Jesus, or Caesar, or Hero of Alexandria with only 26 people reaching out finger tip to finger tip across time.  Those 26 people could fit into one room.

Calculated this way 1,000, or even 2,000 years doesn’t seem so distant. To span 1,000 years we need only 13 lifespans. We can hold a list of 13 names connecting us to the year 1000 AD in our head, and many people in the past have done so.

Going in the opposite direction we can imagine only 13 lives (and perhaps fewer if longevity increases), linking us and the year 3000 AD. Between you and the year 3000 AD stand only 13 lifetimes. In terms of lifetimes — which are steadily increasing due to medical progress — 10 centuries is just next door.