Wada
This is a great opportunity, so I have something I’d like to say. In Punch-Out!!, the game gives you a lot of hints about effective timing of punches. There is a big boxer called Bald Bull in the NES version as well and a light flashes to the right in the audience when he charges. If you punch when it flashes you will land a body blow.
Tanabe
What? Really?
Wada
No one has known about that for about 22 years…
Everyone
(laughter)
Wada
I was wondering when I would have a chance to tell people that.
Iwata
You’ve been holding that information for 22 years since the release. (laughs)

In a recent interview of the creators of Punch-Out for the NES. Unbelievably, even Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata didn’t know about this little quirk. I’m totally going to check this out.

To be fair, most of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

The Troy of history was a dirty little town in Asia Minor, full of quarrelsome and small people living in mean and dark and inconvenient houses. But the Troy of poetry is a city of topless walls, of splendid men and women doing splendid deeds of strength and tenderness, a shining city that has actually built better cities over the face of the earth. The geographic Troy is not the real one. The Troy of literature is the real one. That is what literature means.

From “General aspects of literature” in this monolithic single-volume library I just got.

Vocabulary: Lean Horse Edition

From the last hundred pages or so of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

obtruncate: to deprive of a limb (makes sense).
indissoluble: perpetual or incapable of being dissolved or destroyed. I love double negatives within words.
oedematous: of or pertaining to the edema (obviously). Edema: interstitial cellular fluid.
sententious: given to pithy or moralizing sayings.
ratiocination: the process of logical reasoning.
aposiopetic: (aposiopesis) breaking off a sentence in the middle, as if unable to proceed
parallelogramical: parallelogram-shaped (clearly; I just liked the word).
radix: the base of a numerical system, or the root of a plant (interesting).
jactitation: a boast that causes harm to another, also extreme restlessness in bed?
delectation: enjoyment (knew it).
saturnine: sluggish, melancholy, or bitter in temperament.
farthingal: hoops used to expand women’s skirts at the time of the book.
palfry: (palfrey) a woman’s saddle, smaller and softer.
placket-hole: the hole that goes into a pocket (!).
concupiscence: sexual lust, or more generally, passion.
windlass: a sort of crank-based lifting machine (no idea).
geniture: birth.
costive: constipated, slow to act, or stingy (very versatile word!).
impuissance: (impuissant) weak, feeble.
captious: of a disposition to point out faults, or ensnaring and perplexing when referring to argument.
farrago: a mixture or medley.
pannier: a basket or bag (i.e. breadbasket), or again hoops to expand skirts.
basilicon: an ointment made of wax, pitch, resin, and oil or lard.
ecliptic, trine, and sextil: all terms to do with astrological positions.
argute: shrewd or subtle (I assume it has roots in the hundred-eyed god Argus).

Every thing in this world is big with jest,–and has wit in it, and instruction too,–if we can but find it out.

Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

I’m so controversial!

My watch. Took a picture to show some people. Isn’t it a beautiful little object?

A winner is you!