Anagrams of “Toblerone”

Nobody know what it means in Swiss, so we spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what they were trying to say.

• Elbo Trone
• Noble Rote
• Robot Lene
• Robo ‘n’ leet

My favorite is Bone Trole.

Alternatively, perhaps it was taken from a Swiss street sign: To Blerone →

A new term

I hope that someday I am credited with being the inventor of the term sneeze cultivation.

It’s when you almost sneeze, and you don’t, but you search for bright lights or the proper concentration or the correct dust configuration for your nasal passages. A sneeze brought about by such artificial means is thought of as cultivated.

When someone asks why you weren’t listening to whatever they were saying, you can tell them you were cultivating a sneeze.

Practicality

I just read a short, humorous article by Lore Sjöberg called Space, the Unfashionable Frontier (Wired magazine):

My reaction to the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft that held John Glenn as he orbited the Earth: “My God, to enter the vastness of space in this tiny craft, this bead of metal, alone as any human can be. To gain a unique perspective on the world at the risk of death in the fatal grip of nothingness. What a beautiful, terrifying achievement.”

Also, in the same article:

In essence, the better something works, the worse it looks. Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches for air vehicles are lovely to look at, but they’re about as practical as leaping from the roof with a red towel tied around your neck. At the other end of the scale, SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to reach space, looks like a dollar-store space toy, the kind that’s merely disappointing if you find it in your Christmas stocking, but that leads to tears and bad high school poetry if it’s your real present.

What sobering thoughts. Once upon a time, space travel was entirely inconceivable as a practical goal; it was the stuff of the craziest science fiction only. Even today we take it for granted, despite the fact that such a tiny percent of the human population has ever made it out of the atmosphere. I really wonder what it was like for John Glenn, being the first to orbit the earth in his sad little can — the same can that came into existence solely as a practical device, with no frills and no racing stripes. And so it is today — only science fiction’s spacecraft can afford the frivolousness luxuries of pretty design and aesthetic.