Glog

Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

Humor

Books

Guten…Iceberg?

The publisher Taschen, known for its art and photo books, had a massive sale recently. That included discounting its facsimile copy of the Gutenberg Bible that’s in Göttingen, Germany—considered one of the best-condition and decorated ones on vellum, or calfskin—edited by Stephan Füssel, the director of the Institute for Book Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Normally $150, the sale dropped it to $60—plus $10 shipping, a bargain for a sixteen pound (7.25 kg) book!

It’s slightly smaller than the original 42-line Bible that paved the way for all European printing that followed and eventually printing worldwide. I was just coming off an intensive week-long class studying the context of what’s called “B42” with two fantastic instructors: Elizabeth Savage, a scholar based in London of early printed works, and author of (among other works) Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at

Podcasting

Pants in the Boot, Series Five

For the last few years, I’ve hosted and produced a podcast at The Incomparable network called Pants in the Boot. It’s a fun romp about what people in the US, UK, and other English-speaking countries call things. We get into lorries and trucks, pants and underwear, boots and trunks, but also into the kinds of foods we eat and meals we have, what items around the house are called, and much more.

I began posting episodes a few weeks ago in the latest “series” (in the UK meaning of each season being a “series”), and you can listen to them as well as the nearly 20 previous episodes recorded over the last two years.

Subscribe via this podcast feed, Apple Podcasts, or in any podcast app.

The latest episodes are:

Humor

One Ringee Dingee

Things I didn’t know my children didn’t know until we went to the Museum of Communications:

  • How to dial a rotary phone.
  • How to listen for a dial tone.
  • What a switchhook was.
  • How to hold the switchhook down to hang up and then release to get a dial tone.
  • That you had to lift the receiver to dial.
  • What a busy signal sounded like.
  • Why a busy signal existed.

Humor

The Muskovian Candidate

My love of the remarkable film, The Manchurian Candidate, just intersected with the supposition about Donald Trump's strange love for and connection with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the use of his daughter, Ivanka, to whitewash his personality at the RNC. May I introduce The Muskovian Candidate.

This movie is not suitable for children under 13, children 13 or over, or any audience. Rated R for he's really not Republican.
This movie is not suitable for children under 13, children 13 or over, or any audience. Rated R for he's really not Republican.
Charlie Brown, Pedestals, Toxic Masculinity, and the Nature of Desire

Cartooning

Charlie Brown, Pedestals, Toxic Masculinity, and the Nature of Desire

Cartoon panel by Zach Weinersmith,  Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal .
Cartoon panel by Zach Weinersmith, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal .
Snoopy is not a fish.
Snoopy is not a fish.

I just saw the new Peanuts movie with my kids, who are avid Peanuts fans and aged 8 and 11. We all felt it captured the nature and tone of the comics very well, even though it uses a sort of felt/fuzzy 3D that adds texture and stereoscopic effect without trying to create a weird 3D world. Snoopy when he's not fully to the side is represented as in the comics—with his eyes like a flounder, which looks correct!

But the little red-haired girl is a prominent plot point in the movie and, spoilers ahead, I fear the film recapitulates some troubling aspects from the strip. Charlie Brown is not a harasser or an aggressor, nor, should it be noted, are his intentions even inappropriate for his ostensible age, which seems around nine in

Humor

Stately Plump Jonathan Franzen Surveys Things of His Own Making

“I don’t like to hire people to do work that I can do,” [Jonathan Franzen] says. So that means he does his own dusting in the New York apartment he shares with his girlfriend? Franzen looks slightly shifty. “We do have a cleaner…
“I repainted our guest room this summer in our rather small house in Santa Cruz.…If I had hired someone, it would’ve been done better, and I was very sick of doing it by the end, and yet it seemed important. The first two coats I enjoyed and the third coat I was getting tired of it and the fourth coat was just sheer torture."

—Financial Times, 9 October 2015

Franzen looked down into the terraced pit. It was now all his.

"You never did say what you wanted to buy an iron mine for, Mr. Franzen," said the weather-beaten manager.

"Never mind, Philip," Franzen

Humor

Power Shaving to the People!

“This shave is so smooth, comrade. How did you get such a decadent blade!?”

“Natasha, is not decadent—it is revolutionary!”

Chorus: “Byyyyyyy Lenin"

We liked the factory that makes the blades so much, we seized the means of production.

We send a handle, three blades, and a Molotov cocktail to your door.

The Lenin: such a sharp razor, it doesn’t leave marks.

Humor

Agree before Reading

Pee per view.
Pee per view.

Thanks for visiting my blog! I have a few rules to cover before we get started on the reading experience that I am presenting to you free of charge.

  • There may be ads. If I show ads, you have to view them.
  • I'd like you to really take time to look at the ads.
  • There's a written test about the ads later.
  • From time to time I may include code snippets on my site that load in your browser, and connect to all sorts of other things to help better serve ads and measure site usage.
  • By "time to time" I mean 50 to 100 times per page.
  • They may also be used to follow you around the Internet.
  • If you search on something on my site or even look too long at an image, you may be served contextual ads at every other site you visit

Humor

That Simpsons Bit Wasn't a Joke

I always thought the bit where Mr. Burns briefly turns off the power plant to spite a strike among his workers was a joke ("Last Exit to Springfield"; script). You know, he and Smithers go through an array of high-security doors, including a facial recognition system that literally recognizes the shape of his face. Then they wind up in the control room, which has a faulty screen door and a dog has wandered in.

"Oh, for God's sake!  (slams door shut)  Good bye, Springfield. From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!"

This has always been a favorite scene of mine, but in reading John McPhee's 1980 book The Curve of Binding Energy, about a former nuclear-bomb designing genius' concern about the ease of bomb making, I came across this amazing passage (in image) from a report by the Atomic Energy Commission—an agency since dissolved and its function moved elsewhere—

A New Economy Discovered in My Own House: Derrick Dollars

Humor

A New Economy Discovered in My Own House: Derrick Dollars

Derrick dollars in production.
Derrick dollars in production.

As a business reporter, I’m always looking for unique economic angles in the new economy. Recently, while walking through my house, I encountered a new economy worker producing a form of scrip for an economy I was unaware of, denominated in Derrick dollars. Here’s the interview, published with the subject’s consent.

Glenn: Who makes Derrick dollars?

Rex (age 8): Any valid Derrick dollar worker. You need a membership card to create valid Derrick dollars.

G: What is Derrick’s role in Derrick dollars?

R: First in command. There are commands. The reason people make Derrick dollars for him is to get higher in command. By the time I finish all of these I am absolutely certain he will rank me second in command

G: What do you get for being higher in command?

R: It means if Derrick is not at school, if