Reading Snapshots

Pages worth spreading.

Randall Munroe’s how to explores the shifts in “trending names” in America at five-year intervals. It has a bunch of other freewheeling thought experiments, but I thought this was really neat:

The History of Coined Words by Ralph Keyes covers a lot of lexical history, including this cartoon, which is tied to the origin of the term gerrymander. Elbridge Gerry wasn’t the first to get creative with redistricting to influence vote tallies, but he was first to get called out like this for it…in 1812, so the practice is probably older than you think.

This semi-recent Questionable Content strip put me in mind of The Journal of Wordplay. I would certainly publish a study of bullshit.

Tomorrow: Crosswords 1923! The debut of a nonsense poet, and Margaret Petherbridge’s comedy stylings.