Ix corridor of status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 That’s leisure . . . . . . . . 21 The Literary international . . . . . . . . . . fifty seven at the Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 round the apartment . . . . . . . . . . 109 History’s Mysteries . . . . . . . . . 123 Roam that will . . . . . . . . . a hundred and fifty five Holy issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . one hundred sixty five enterprise relatives . . . . . . . . . 171 The wearing items . . . . . . . . . a hundred seventy five Scientifically talking . . . . . . 187 Wild nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Introduction O H, yet simply how lifeless is lifeless? There, as Shakespeare observes in Act III, Scene I, of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, is the rub. for example, the scoop that flamingos can purely devour with their heads the wrong way up, whereas of greater than passing curiosity to a feminine flamingo educating her fledglings to consume up their shrimp, is of little use to a person knowledgeable to sit up straight at a desk and hire a knife and fork. but believe somebody made one a gift of a flamingo, and it endured in consuming with its head the other way up. you may lay our a fortune on vet accounts sooner than studying that, in flamingo circles, that's the approach it's performed. So we need to tread conscientiously. There need to be exams and balances. At our dead info Society summit conferences, we've those within the type of our bold resident beadle, the prestigious jazz musician Kennie Clayton. If Mr. Beadle Clayton judges that an merchandise should be x creation placed to exploit locally, he solemnly bangs his ceremonial employees and it really is governed out of order. there is not any charm, even though barracking and cries of “Rubbish! ” are authorized. An exception is typically made up of fabric that could be of use to a biographer. hence, whilst I discovered from a newspaper slicing that Marilyn Monroe had six feet, I eagerly produced this nugget on the subsequent lifeless details soirée within the confident trust that, with such a lot of Marilyn biographers nonetheless trawling, it can get lower than the internet. So it proved. What I hadn’t bargained for used to be that considered one of our extra pedantic members—and now we have a couple of— might search to have the thing barred on merely arithmetical grounds, at the foundation that during overall she should have had 11 ft a minimum of. the one different transgression is that of being uninteresting. on the society’s earliest conferences, a number of individuals misunderstood the character of uselessness and got here up with such conversation-stoppers as that the Mississippi is 1,171 miles lengthy or, in the event you like it, 1,884 kilometers. We lifeless info aficionados aren't attracted to the size of rivers, a indisputable fact that is usually conveyed to the criminal with difficult yawns and shouts of “Boring! ” let us know, even though, that during the Nuuanu Valley of Honolulu there's a river that flows upward, and our eyes remove darkness from. Mr. Gradgrind, within the similar quantity because the Bard’s “There’s the rub” gag, observes, “Facts on my own are sought after in lifestyles. ” that's the coverage of The lifeless info Society. it can be our motto. advent xi yet there are evidence and evidence. lifeless info, as can be judged from this modest quantity, isn't really within the related type as trivialities, as in Trivial Pursuit.