PAPER

Terms for book page sizes (folio, quarto, octavo, etc.) come from how many times a sheet of paper is folded to make a book signature. I got to wondering if the first playing cards were printed in octodecimo (4" x 6 1/2") or trigesimo-segundo (3 1/2" x 5 1/2") sizes. Well, I wasn't really wondering if they were octodecimo or trigesimo-segundo, but I was wondering in a kind of general way. Of course they have to be convenient to handle, but printers wouldn't have come up with a new size of paper, even if it was to be pasted in layers.

We take paper for granted and waste so much of it that many people have predicted the "paperless office" as a useful byproduct of computerizing data. Hasn't happened yet, though. Computers need back-up, and printing is now a sort of back up, besides which it fits humans better. At one time, people didn't waste paper. Sometimes they used to write at right angles across a page already written on to save paper (cross-writing). They might even turn the paper a third time to write at 45 a degree angle; very hard to read. Here is an example of paper turned once, though mostly written in the margins.

GRASS SHOPPING

Mike Sykes says:

Interestingly, you could 'shop' someone on the Internet by revealing their criminal activities. As in "A MUGGER was jailed...after being shopped by his mother." Is that UK usage? Though 'grass' seems to be displacing it these days, as in 'supergrass'.

According to my reading, you can "shop" someone anyplace, meaning to rat them out. It's a British expression, and I've never read or heard "grass" used that way, much less "supergrass" which here would mean a very high grade of marijuana. An online British slang dictionary says it may be from British rhyming slang:

Possibly from the rhyming slang grass in the park ~ 'nark', meaning informer. E.g. "Don't tell John about this, he's a grass and I don't want to get into trouble."

Mike also wrote on the British astronomer:

I don't know quite what John Gribbin was getting at, but mathematicians recognise more than one infinity. There are infinite sets you could count, i.e. enumerate the members in such a way that you would, if you lived for ever, get through all of them, to the one named omega by Cantor; for example, the integers, or even rational fractions. But you can't do that with the real (or irrational) numbers. The infinities are denoted by aleph, the first, omega, being also known as aleph-zero (or nought), the others being aleph-one, two &c. I'm not sure whether more than two have been defined.

It really is quite mind boggling ~ a distinguished mathematician called Hilbert liked to tell stories about a hotel with omega rooms, it's simplest property being that there was always room for one more guest....

Notice also that you could, given the time, travel an infinite distance on the surface of the Earth, though its surface area is finite.

I saw a short film on TV called Hotel Infinity (2004) about a hotel that always had one more room.

As for the trip around the world, that would take infinite time and I'm thinking it's not exactly distance but the imagined trajectory of a human body through time.

I still say if you say infinite, you should mean infinite.

WAR SLANG

This is really the last time I'm going to mention bolo, probably. I bought a book called War Slang by Paul Dickson, which is organized by American wars beginning with the Civil War, and even including the Cold War and the post-9/11 world. Bolo is first listed under the Spanish-American War (1898): a bolo squad was composed of bad shots. Dickson quotes from Army Talk:

Over in the Philippines, in the days of the empire, the soldiers had rifles and knew how to use them well, but the Filipinos were short on rifles, only their best shots had them; the others swung bolos.

MOLLY IVINS

Another good political satirist died, Molly Ivins. I enjoyed reading her even though I didn't always agree with her. Characteristically, she said, "Using satire against the weak is like kicking a cripple." This is a principle most of us agree with, yet it is flawed. Are only the rich and powerful capable of wrong-doing? Or if the weak do wrong, must we assume they are not responsible for their behavior? Do we not respect the poor enough, for instance, to think they are capable of moral decision-making? Does the paradigm of "poor but honest" no longer exist? I recently discovered an ancient teaching that surprised me because it seems to contradict our inclination to be especially compassionate toward poor people: Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in judgment. You can guess what book this is from (Exodus 23). The Bible exhorts us to be charitable toward the poor, which is why this passage is so surprising, but here we are told that justice must be independent of the circumstances of the accused. Blind, in other words. Favoritism toward a class of people is not what justice means. Charity or mercy toward suffering is a different matter.

BROADLY PRESUMPTUOUS FOR THE PARTICULARLY SUSCEPTIBLE

Remember my complaint about a local graduate student in art who whined that artists deserve a paycheck for "interrogating the crap out of society" (PO 175)? CityBeat, the local indy paper that published that article, has redeemed itself somewhat with a piece on a newish art form: "Me, You and Art" by Bob Woodiwiss (1/31/07). Woodiwiss is a "conversation artist". A sample of his supposed conversational output:

Today, anything, any creation, invention or output, any activity or process, even a dubious ability or gross but replicable error, can be elevated to the level of art. Art is simply a contract between the broadly presumptuous and the particularly susceptible.

~ "Rehearsed Utterance at Another Artist's Opening," Jackson Hole, Wyo., 1991. Medium: English, fully modulated, 60 dB.

I like the way he annotates his medium.

Woodiwiss stands out among artists because he seems to be interrogating the crap out of himself, though he did throw in an obligatory coarse joke about Jesus Christ. How come so few artists are mining the vast Mohammed humor resource? Anyway, he takes credit cards.

FRIM FRAM SAUCE

I was indulging a new Internet hobby (anything to get me through the winter), watching Ysabella Brave on YouTube, when I found her singing Frim Fram Sauce, another silly song from the greatest generation (by Redd Evans, 1945, recorded by Nat King Cole and others). The important lines go:

I want the frim fram sauce with the ausen fay

With chafafa on the side.

What do you suppose it is? If I owned a restaurant, I'd serve it.

DAVE DaBEE

Constant Reader Dave DaBee has cancer, but the good news is that he's getting excellent treatment and is required to laugh*, sing vigorously in his chorus, and eat more. For details, go to CaringBridge - Be There ~ Helping friends and family sttay in touch and informed. Even if you don't know Dave, reading his journal will help you if you have to deal with cancer in yourself or in your family. I also ask you to pray for him. Experiments have shown that prayer is effective, even from a distance, even from people who don't know you, even if you or they don't exactly believe in the same thing. Did you know that the word pray ultimately comes from Sanskrit, meaning ask, and also later from Anglo-Saxon frignan and fricgan? It can't hurt to ask.

*As prescribed by Norman Cousins' book, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient.

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NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

THIS IS REALLY NEW! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at www.sonnyrobertson.com and www.youtube.com/rondaria.

Check out the new "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" shirts in the Parvum Opus CafePress shop, plus a new Parvum Opus mouse pad! Now you can buy neat products with the Parvum Opus / KeithOps Catti logo at CafePress.com/parvumopus.

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

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