Pipistrello's Commonplace Book

There are three things no man but a fool lends, or, having lent, is not in the most hopeless state of mental crassitude if he ever hope to get back again. These three things are - Books, Umbrellas and Money.  Douglas Jerrold

It may help to recall the bon mot I heard from a Russian physicist: 'Proofs in physics follow the standards of British justice and hold the accused innocent until proved guilty. Proofs in mathematics follow the standards of Stalinist justice and hold the accused guilty until proved innocent.' A footnote from T. W. Körner's The Pleasures of Counting,  1996

  Coups neatly executed  Deserving cases preferred  Nothing sordid, vulgar or plebeian  Police no object! Mr. Albert Campion's business card

  Oxymoron 1: Apple Genius

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existance, and they think they have seen something. Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

"And now for a more traditional waltz, where I would ask that you please take a partner and dance joyfully and enthusiastically around the carriage as we play." Buskers on the Tube at Sloane Square, circa 1993

The first cup moistens my lips and throat; The second cup breaks my loneliness; The third cup searches my barren entrails but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores; At the fifth cup I am purified; The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither. "The Seven Cups of Tea", Lu Tong (795-835 AD)

INGREDIENTS LISTS: "B" Bed Bug Exterminator Kerosene                 90 Clovel                       5 Cresol                       1 Pine Oil                    4 Bitter, English Benedictine Herb          10 gm. Gentian Root                 20 gm. Orange Peels                100 gm. Calamus Root                40 gm. Lesser Centaury             50 gm. Orris Root                      50 gm. Wormwood                    20 gm. Cinnamon          ...

"Hullo, would you like to have a roll in the hay? It's fun! Roll, roll, roll in the hay! Roll, roll, roll in the hay ..." Inga, Young Frankenstein , 1974

Sobolev was in the very best of health! He hunted bears with a forked pole and bathed in a hole in the ice on the river! Boris Akunin, The Death of Achilles, 1998

It used to be said, keep a thing seven years and you will find a use for it; if not, turn it and keep it another seven. True, but in townhouses the rust and moth do corrupt, to say nothing of thieves, and if a thing is not in use, it is sure to spoil or disappear. Mary Eliza Haweis, The Art of Housekeeping: A Bridal Garland, 1889

"You know, it's not very nice to discover a body." "No." "I shall have to write a lot less screaming in future." Ariadne Oliver to Hercule Poirot, "Mrs McGinty's Dead"

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. Heraclitus

If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference. Clive James

Remember Ladies, Spandex is a Privilege not a Right. Plan accordingly for Casual Friday. Advice given at friend Craft Queen's Californian workplace

Men have No Time for Sickly NERVY WOMEN Win Admiration! Regain Thrilling New Vitality! Build up strong, healthy nerves ... have new, rich blood coursing through your veins ... be well--always! BIDOMAK "The Tonic of the Century" For Nerves, Brain and that Depressed Feeling ... If You Suffer from these Disorders, Start Taking BIDOMAK Now! Nerves, Listlessness, Languor, Headaches, Nervous Dyspepsia, Anaemia, Lack of Confidence, Tight, Screwed-up Feeling in the Brain, Neuralgia, Nerve Pains, "Depressed Feeling" MONEY BACK GUARANTEE &c. &c. Advertisement in Truth (Sydney Scandal Sheet and precursor to Sunday Mirror) , 6th October, 1940

What starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement. Marcus Tullius Cicero per Robert Harris, Dictator, 2015

The mesmerism of high numbers is perfectly illustrated in Military Tattoos. Huge crowds will come from great distances in the middle of the night to see a thousand men doing at once what nobody would walk across the road to see one man do by himself. If one man wants to swing an Indian club that is his own business and nobody will be sufficiently interested even to try to stop him, but if a thousand men should swing Indian clubs together, then large sums can be charged for the pleasure of seeing them. Denis Constanduros, My Grandfather, 1948

INGREDIENTS LISTS: "A" Absinthe, Swiss No. 1 Oil Angelica               5  gm. Oil Anise                   10 gm. Oil Fennel                  10 gm. Oil Cardamom             3 gm. Oil Coriander             10 gm. Oil Marjoram             10 gm. Oil Star Anise            12 gm. Oil Wormwood          15 gm. 95% Alcohol              10 kilos Arrack Ethyl Acetate             100 gm. Black Balsam Peru    130 gm. Vanilla                         16 gm. Oil of Neroli                  5 gm...

Certa Bonum Certamen / Fight The Good Fight Et Discendo Et Adiuvando / Learning & Helping Nunc Tempus Adest / Now Is The Time Manners Maketh Man Thought With Action Five School Mottos the Pipistrello Family were meant to Aspire to

For anyone who is tired of life, the thrilling life of a spy should be the very finest recuperator. Chief Scout, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, My Adventures as a Spy , 1915

Dr. JAEGER'S Sanitary Woollen System IS HIS NOW FAMOUS DISCOVERY THAT 1. Health depends on an active Skin. --2. The Skin will only act properly when the covering is pervious throughout. --3. The only pervious covering is porous Animal Wool, other materials, especially linen and cotton, being Impervious to the vapour exhaled by the skin, the repression of which is most injurious. Health is Ensured on Common Sense Principles, BY USING DR. JAEGER'S SANITARY WOOLLEN CLOTHING & BEDDING. COOL IN SUMMER, WARM IN WINTER. (Highest Award of Gold Medal, Health Exhibition, London, 1884.) Dr. Jaeger's Wool System Catalogue, 1886

Servants in decently-conducted houses are seldom over-worked. The men-servants in particular, very commonly suffer in health from the want of out-door exercise, and of anywhere to go, and anything to do, when they are off duty. Quarrelling, smashing china, flirting, with sudden and inconvenient changes soon after ... [B]etter do without the charwoman. She is more irresponsible than a house-servant, and less easy to supervise. She breaks, and leaves the blame on others. She not seldom brings in diseases, and carries away soap and candle-ends, and odd tea-cups ... Mary Eliza Haweis, The art of housekeeping: a bridal garland, 1889

Pythagoras as a mater of fact is at the root of all geom. Instead of growing grapes figs dates and other produce of greece Pythagoras aplied himself to triangles and learned some astounding things about them which hav been inflicted on boys ever since. Whenever he found a new thing about a triangle Pythagoras who had no shame jumped out of his bath and shouted 'Q.E.D' through the streets of athens its a wonder they never locked him up. To do geom you have to make a lot of things equal to each other when you can see perfectly well that they don't. This agane is due to Pythagoras and it formed much of his conversation at brekfast. PYTHAGORAS ( helping himself to porridge) : Hmm. I see the sum of the squares on AB and BC = the square on AC. WIFE: Dear dear. PYTHAGORAS: I'm not surprised, not surprised at all. I've been saying that would come for years. WIFE: Yes dear. PYTHAGORAS: Now they'll have to d o something about it. More tea plea...

That we lie successfully to each other is natural; that we successfully lie to ourselves is a natural wonder. And that the three sciences central to human understanding - psychology, anthropology, and sociology - successfully and continually lie to themselves, lie to each other, lie to their students, and lie to the public at large, must constitute a paramount wonder of a scientific century. Were their condition generally known, they would be classified as public drunks. ... Molecular biology lies far from the humanistic sciences that I indict. Yet all scientists must accept the responsibility for hiding from public view, so that scientific infallibility may be preserved, the picture that many know so well. It is the picture of cultural anthropology, behaviourist psychology, and environmentalist sociology like three drunken friends leaning against a lamppost in the enchantment of euphoria, all convinced that they are holding up the eternal light when in truth they hold up noth...