Russell Whitaker (Survival Arts) reports:

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ pioneering flight. On the same day that a hobb[yi]st at Kill Devil Hills was trying unsuccessfully to replicate that flight, the real news of the day went mostly unnoticed:

Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company’s private, non-government effort.

Leonard Dickenson (Unruled) on Lockean claims in cleared parking spaces. Cited by Will Wilkinson (The Fly Bottle).

For Dad‘s birthday I got him a brass sextant. “Thank you, a GPS unit is one gadget that I didn’t have!”

This morning I watched a five-way conversation in sign language, in which two of the participants were blind: the blind ‘listener’ rests a hand loosely around one of the speaker’s hands. I was surprised at how little touch was apparently needed.

I often hear it argued (usually by tax cranks) that where the law says something like

As used herein, the term “United States” includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other territories and possessions

it means that the law does not apply to Illinois. I wonder whether any of the twenty people who read these humble rantings can point me to any ruling in which the word include was held to be exclusive.

I’ve occasionally seen this language in contracts and/or regulations:

The masculine includes the feminine, and the singular includes the plural.

Am I to understand that such a clause redefines he to mean only the feminine they?

C. Northcote Parkinson: The Law and the Profits (1960)

It is also usual in works of learning to refer, sooner or later, to ancient Athens. This book will be no exception, difficult as it is to maintain for long the reverent attitude associated with classical scholarship. The Athens admired in the classical VI Form is, of course, purely imaginary, the invention of classical philologists in whom any sense of history (or of reality) is almost completely lacking. It is well, however, to bring it in occasionally, thus lending tone to the whole book and hinting that the author went to the right sort of school (as in fact he did). Now, Athens* provides an early example of what is called democracy. . . .

*Athens became an example of democratic government at some period in the middle of the nineteenth century when that form of rule was becoming fashionable in Britain and the United States. . . .

At a restaurant, I was briefly puzzled by an advertising card that read

ルービロポッサ

ruubiropossa?? No, sapporobiiru!