A Cabinet for the Curious

March 21, 2007 11:33 AM

The Queer, the Quaint, the Quizzical (1882). A Cabinet for the Curious.
posted by stbalbach (18 comments total)

This is really cool. Unwieldy for quick dipping into, unless I haven't yet found the way. The search stickies are kinda cool, but again, a bit unwieldy.


There's a great bill on page 63.
posted by OmieWise at 11:59 AM on March 21, 2007

Ooo, this is full of great fun. Thanks!
posted by steef at 12:29 PM on March 21, 2007

Wondrous fine!
posted by fish tick at 3:06 PM on March 21, 2007

This is right up my street—quite reminiscent of D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature—thanks, stbalbach.
posted by misteraitch at 3:30 PM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Love it.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 3:36 PM on March 21, 2007

It's MetaFilter for the Victorian Age! Judge for yourselves. From page 14:

After the horn-book, the children of the incipient United States were furnished with primers, among the most noted of which was "The New England Primer," ... [which] had in it the alphabet, syllables of two letters, and many a pious distich, such as—

Young Timothy / Learn'd sin to fly.

Whales in the sea / God's voice obey.

In Adam's fall / We sinned all....

These puritanic verses were accompanied with illustrations fully as bad as the rhymes...

Is that olde-time snarke, or what?!

Other examples of parallel posting: page 38's Puritan Surnames (e.g. Repentance Avis, Kill-sin Pimple, and Meek Brewer) and Double-Entendre, describing a Revolutionary War-era poem with elaborate hidden agendas (p. 39).
posted by rob511 at 4:30 PM on March 21, 2007

I get a blank page. Emperor's new clothes, in web form?
posted by Eideteker at 4:33 PM on March 21, 2007

Delightful. And although we don't throw witches in the water to see if they float...or not; we still throw salt over our left shoulder if we spill it. (Not we MeFi's...but now that they say it's especially inauspicious to spill salt on a Friday...well, I might reconsider, especially if I'm dining at TGIF's, something I do every decade or two.)
posted by kozad at 5:02 PM on March 21, 2007

Cool find, thanks!

The title sounds like a great soap opera...
posted by owhydididoit at 6:24 PM on March 21, 2007

This is for real, right? It's not some kind of fakery?
posted by DenOfSizer at 6:35 PM on March 21, 2007

Oh, marvelous - thank you so much.
posted by faineant at 8:08 PM on March 21, 2007

This is really fun.
posted by honeydew at 8:57 PM on March 21, 2007

It's MetaFilter for the Victorian Age!

Yeah that's what it seemed like. The unusual, interesting and curious in 1 minutes pieces.
posted by stbalbach at 6:18 AM on March 22, 2007

Wonderful! Thank you!
posted by WPW at 7:02 AM on March 22, 2007

This is awesome.
posted by unknowncommand at 8:35 AM on March 22, 2007

Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.2.1, open source for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:31 AM on March 22, 2007

Dave Faris, that is incredibly useful, thanks a lot for the link!
posted by stbalbach at 9:57 AM on March 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've been using it for a couple days. I notice that sometimes, it temporarily locks up my machine while the magnifying glass loads up, especially if I haven't called it for awhile. I also wish would have more mouse cursor behavior and let me scroll my browser without dismissing it. But, considering it's free and open source, I can't expect or complain too much.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:53 AM on March 24, 2007