A Never Ending Read

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Did you know that there’s a book no one will ever be able to finish reading in their lifetime, and it only has 10 pages?
In 1960, the French writer Raymond Queneau introduced what is probably the world’s longest book. It’s called *Cent mille milliards de poèmes*, and it consists of just ten pages, each containing a sonnet. The verses all share the same rhyme pattern and are printed on strips, allowing readers to combine lines from different sonnets.
This setup results in a total of 10¹⁴ possible combinations, meaning the book contains one hundred trillion unique poems. The implication is that no one will ever manage to read the entire book, even with the greatest effort, as it would take millions of years to match up all the possible poem combinations—without taking breaks for eating, sleeping, or reading anything else. And all of this comes from just ten pages!
Each mix you create will result in a coherent sonnet with proper stanzas, rhythm, and rhyme. Moreover, it’s highly likely that any randomly selected poem will be one that no one has ever read before. Queneau himself claimed that if it takes about 45 seconds to read one sonnet and another 15 seconds to prepare the next, it would take around 200 million years to read through all the possible combinations.
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God Bless Us, Everyone

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

On this date in 1843, Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol. Dickens wrote the novel after his first commercial failure. His previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit had flopped, and he was suddenly strapped for cash. Martin Chuzzlewit had been satirical and pessimistic, and Dickens thought he might be more successful if he wrote a heartwarming tale with a holiday theme.

Dickens struggled to finish the book in time for Christmas. He no longer had a publisher so he published the book himself, ordering illustrations, gilt-edged pages and a lavish red bound cover. He priced the book at a mere 5 shillings, in hopes of making it affordable to everyone. It was released within a week of Christmas and was a huge success, selling six thousand copies the first few days, and the demand was so great that it quickly went to second and third editions.

 

 

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A Wonderland for Christmas

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Just in time for Christmas, the NYRB Kids imprint has published a new edition of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrated by the Finnish author and artist Tove Jansson. Jansson is most famous for her Moomin books, which remain an influential cult favorite with kids and adults alike. She illustrated Carroll’s Alice in 1966 for a Finnish audience; this NRYB edition is the first English-language version of the book. There are illustrations on almost every page of the book; many are black and white sketches — doodles, portraits, marginalia — but there are also many full-color full-pages.

Jansson’s illustrations shift between whimsical and sinister — a fitting take on Carroll’s Alice, which we might remember fondly as a story of magical adventures, when really it is much closer to a horror story, a tale of being sucked into an underworld devoid of reason and logic, ruled by menacing, capricious, and ultimately invisible forces.

 

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Traveling Feline

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

The new online geo-game  Travel Cat  lets you pilot a plane as a cat. Flying a feline-piloted plane past the Eiffel Tower in Paris or around the Statue of Liberty in New York is as cute as it sounds. It is also a lot of fun.

Travel Cat uses the Google Maps API’s 3D view to create a basic flight simulator that allows you to explore anywhere in the world. Or drive! Clicking on a road in the 3D map view instantly places your cat on terra firma, behind the wheel of a car. Press ‘B,’ and the car transforms into a 3D model of a boat, letting you explore waterways with equal ease.

The charm of Travel Cat lies primarily in the whimsical nature of its protagonist – a fearless feline pilot. Flying a cat-piloted plane around some of the world’s most famous landmarks elevates what might have been a straightforward flight simulator into a heartwarming and imaginative experience. Google’s 3D map view enhances the realism of the game, delivering an immersive low-altitude flying experience.

Whether you’re soaring above landmarks or cruising through streets and waterways, Travel Cat offers a delightful blend of exploration and whimsy that helps to set it apart from other map-based flight simulators.

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The dumbest souvenir of the year

Posted on December 14, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

My favorite place to chill out in Italy is the little town of Varenna on Lake Como. The only souvenirs that I have of my time there are a few photos and some very fond memories. But apparently the region is no offering a quite silly souvenir for tourists.

It’s an empty can, but it contains 400 ml of pure, ‘clean’ air from Lake Como. It also has nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.93 percent), carbon dioxide (0.04 percent), neon (0.0018 percent), and a few more ingredients.

One catch is they’re not available online. People have to visit select stores around Como to acquire them because the idea is to draw visitors into the must-visit destinations in the area using the influence of the air in cans. ‘Only those who visit Lake Como can want to buy our souvenir. Memories are not bought but lived,’ as written on the Lake Como Air site. The shelf life of the souvenir is infinite, and once opened, owners can reuse the recyclable packaging of the the Lake Como Air cans as a pen holder, plant pot, or stationery container.

This frivolous gimmick by the Como-based agency ItalyComunica follows other touristy souvenirs on offer such as canned air from Rome, Athens, London, California, Beijing, Patagonia, Wroclaw, Norway, and more. There’s even canned fresh Icelandic mountain air sold as a souvenir for tourists visiting the island nation. But at €9.90 a can, this seems to be the dumbest souvenir in a long line of expensive tat.

 

 

 

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Bookstores are making a comeback in the U.S.

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

After more than a decade of bad news stories about the imminent demise of the American bookstore it seems that things are looking up for a change.

 

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I hang on the edge of this universe

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I hang on the edge
of this universe
singing off-key
talking too loud
embracing myself
to cushion the fall

I shall tumble
into deep space
never in this form
or with this feeling
to return to earth

It is not tragic

I will spiral
through that Black hole
losing skin limbs
internal organs
searing
my naked soul

Landing
in the next galaxy
with only my essence
embracing myself
as

I dream of you

—-

Sky Diving
Nikki Giovanni RIP

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Traveling Light

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

In my planning for an upcoming trip to Japan, I stumbled upon a very clever service aimed at visitors. Any Wear, Anywhere is an inspired clothing rental plan that allows tourists to literally travel light.

The negative environmental effects of flying were weighing on Miho Moriya. “I love to travel but also felt guilty about using flights that produce CO2,” says the 40-year-old accountant based in Japan. So when her employer, Japanese trading house Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., held its annual entrepreneurship competition in 2019, she pitched an idea that could make a tiny dent: a clothing-rental service for travelers. Instead of flyers hauling luggage—the weight adding to a plane’s carbon emissions—they could borrow clothes on the ground.

The idea became Any Wear, Anywhere, part of a venture between Sumitomo and Japan Airlines Co. Travelers arriving in Japan can now rent clothing for as little as $31 for up to two weeks, delivered to their hotel. The online service, more for the utilitarian-minded than the fashionista, rents sets—including perhaps three pairs of pants, three tops and a couple of jackets—all secondhand or sourced from overstock to keep with the eco-friendly vibe. It offers seven size options for adults and nine for children, with sweaters and jeans for winter and shorts and T-shirts for summer.

The service is currently available only in Japan, which happens to be enjoying a tourism boom. But traveling entirely suitcase-free is still just an aspiration: Shoes, underwear, PJs and toiletries aren’t yet part of the pitch. Moriya, who left her job in accounting to help operate Any Wear, Anywhere as its project leader, says going green feels good, but traveling without carrying luggage is even better. “My ultimate dream,” she says, “is making it possible to travel anywhere in the world hands-free.”

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Good News For Flyers

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Under consumer protection rules that the U.S. Transportation Department announced earlier this year, airlines may owe travelers money back when services that passengers paid for go awry. Some of those rules went into effect October.

Here’s what air travelers in the U.S. need to know:

Refunds for canceled flights and big delays

Since May, when President Joe Biden signed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill into law, passengers have been entitled to a refund without them jumping through hoops if airlines cancel or significantly change their flights and they choose not to rebook or take the changed flight.

Under the law, airlines are required to proactively offer refunds rather than vouchers or credits without passengers having to ask for it. The money is due within seven business days if the ticket was bought with a credit card and within 20 business days for other transactions.

The law also spells out for the first time how long a delay must be to qualify as “significant” enough for a refund: three hours for domestic flights and six hours for international trips.
“This is a protection for airline passengers that’s long overdue,” Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said in an email.
Before the rule, Murray said, airlines “often slow-walked” refunds they were obligated to provide for cancellations. “That’s not allowed anymore,” she noted.
Murray said some passengers might not want a refund; they might just want to get to their destination as soon as possible. But for those who do want their money back, they should get it without hassle. “The starting point should be that if you do want a refund, you get it quickly and without delays or marketing tricks,” she said.

Refunds for checked luggage fees

Regulations cover refunds for other parts of a flight. If a traveler pays a checked-bag fee but their luggage is mishandled, they are entitled to a refund for the baggage if it is not delivered within 12 hours of their arrival for a domestic flight. For international flights, the threshold is either 15 or 30 hours from arrival, depending on how long the flight was.

Refunds for broken WiFi, seating fails, passengers who pay for WiFi, a specific seat assignment or in-flight entertainment are also owed a refund for those fees if the airline isn’t able to deliver what it promised.

Refunds for other changes Under the new regulations, travelers are also owed a refund if they choose not to take a flight that was significantly changed because of factors that go beyond delays, including an increase in the number of connections; a downgrade of cabin class or service; departures or arrivals from a different airport or certain changes that make travel less accessible for travelers with a disability. (…)

Airlines for America, an industry trade group, said in a statement in April that the 11 largest passenger airlines in the country had issued $43 billion in customer refunds between January 2020 and December 2023.

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Some Comic Relief

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

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