{"id":1586,"date":"2012-03-16T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=1586"},"modified":"2012-03-16T13:11:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T19:11:00","slug":"spinelessness_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=1586","title":{"rendered":"Spinelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing I&#8217;m going to miss about the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, now that it&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/13\/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses\/\">consigned<\/a> to the dumpster of history, is the spines &#8211; all 45 of them, ranked across the shelf like stoic beefeaters.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"brits.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.roughtype.com\/images\/brits.jpg?resize=400%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re handsome things, somehow managing to be imposing and inviting at the same time. But the best part is that each one is branded with a pair of index words, there to tell you where the volume begins and where it ends. You thus get a bunch of almost-random two-word phrases to conjure with. Some don&#8217;t rise above their functionality: <b>India Ireland<\/b>, for instance, or <b>Accounting Architecture<\/b>. But others open up new and unexpected territory to wander in. Here, for the record, are some of my favorites:<\/p>\n<p><b>Freon Holderlin<\/b> (a man I&#8217;d like to meet, despite his reputation for coldness)<\/p>\n<p><b>Menage Ottawa<\/b> (a perfect oxymoron)<\/p>\n<p><b>Chicago Death<\/b> (Jack White&#8217;s new side project)<\/p>\n<p><b>Light Metabolism<\/b> (what the Theory of Everything, once discovered, will be called)<\/p>\n<p><b>Excretion Geometry<\/b> (a field understood by only seven people in the world)<\/p>\n<p><b>Arctic Biosphere<\/b> (Freon Holderlin lives here, according to rumor)<\/p>\n<p><b>Krasnokamsk Menadra<\/b> (when I take up meditation, this will be what I chant)<\/p>\n<p>And my favoritemost of all:<\/p>\n<p><b>Decorative Edison<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing I&#8217;m going to miss about the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, now that it&#8217;s been consigned to the dumpster of history, is the spines &#8211; all 45 of them, ranked across the shelf like stoic beefeaters. They&#8217;re handsome things, somehow managing to be imposing and inviting at the same time. But the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}