Retrofuture from 1923: When we all have pocket telephones

 

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Daily Mirror, England, January 23, 1923
Image © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

H/T Messy Nessy

Cookie Monster’s famous cookie recipe

This Cookie Monster recipe is similar but not identical to the original Toll House (wiki) recipe which I carry in my head (and which can be found on the back of almost any brand of chocolate chips you find in the grocery store (see bottom of post for the recipe).

Larger version here.

The original:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks, 1/2 pound) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated [white] sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups (12-ounce package) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
1 cup chopped nuts

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake in preheated 375-degree [Fahrenheit] oven for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

PAN COOKIE VARIATION: Prepare dough as above. Spread into greased 15"x10" jelly-roll pan. Bake in preheated 375-degree [Fahrenheit] oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack.

FOR HIGH ALTITUDE BAKING (>5,200 feet): Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups; add 2 teaspoonfuls water with flour; reduce both granulated sugar and brown sugar to 2/3 cup each. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, drop cookies for 8 to 10 minutes and pan cookies for 17 to 19 minutes.

Related: Bake the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies by Knowing What to Tweak.

August 13 is the anniversary of the death of Genghis Khan: founder of the Mongolian Empire, prolific spreader of DNA, Conan the Barbarian inspiration, and climate change hero

Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail
Our lion will now foreign foes assail.
~John Dryden (Astraea Redux)

Heaven has abandoned China owing to its haughtiness and extravagant luxury. But I, living in the northern wilderness, have not inordinate passions. I hate luxury and exercise moderation. I have only one coat and one food. I eat the same food and am dressed in the same tatters as my humble herdsmen. I consider the people my children*, and take an interest in talented men as if they were my brothers. We always agree in our principles, and we are always united by mutual affection. At military exercises I am always in front, and in time of battle am never behind. In the space of seven years, I have succeeded in accomplishing a great work, and uniting the whole world in one empire. 

The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses, and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.**

John Wayne as Genghis in The Conqueror

One arrow alone can be easily broken, but many arrows are indestructible.

~Genghis Khan (variously attributed) 

Today is the anniversary of the death of Genghis Khan (wiki) (ca. 1162-1227), the founder and emperor of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history. Born in the Khenti Mountains of modern-day Mongolia, Genghis rose to power amid a grouping of warring tribes in northwest Asia and eventually united them into a powerful nomadic army that conquered most of the Chin empire of northern China (1213-15). Subsequently, from 1218 through 1224, he subjugated Turkistan, Transoxonia, and Afghanistan and raided Persia and eastern Europe. (For a generation after his death, his sons and grandsons pushed the Empire even farther, but ultimately, it fractured into several khanates and faded away.) Genghis Khan was one of history's most inspired - and ruthless - military leaders, yet he is buried in an unmarked grave at some unknown location (Why Genghis Khan’s tomb can’t be found). At one point in his ascendancy he is said to have remarked, 

"Conquering the world on horseback is easy: it is dismounting and governing that is hard."

Conan, not Ghengis

**This is the origin of the similar line in Conan the Barbarian (musical version here): when Conan is asked what is best in life, he responds. "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

*Many of the people, as it turns out, were his children. Here is an interesting article about the latter-day demographics that resulted from the Mongol conquest:

Genghis Khan, the fearsome Mongolian warrior of the 13th century, may have done more than rule the largest empire in the world; according to a recently published genetic study, he may have helped populate it too.

An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or roughly 16 million descendants living today.

Mother Nature Network considers him a climate change hero, based on the fact that he killed lots of people (and people are a scourge upon the earth):

"Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests."

Not sure why they left out Stalin and Mao.

This map from Wikipedia shows the growth of the Mongol Empire:

Cardboard UFO

The experiment involves a cardboard flying saucer and 25K wooden matches.

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Seneca on insult vs Injury

Ancient bust of Seneca

For much of posterity, Seneca the Younger (ca. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65) (wiki), the second son of Seneca the Elder, has vied with Cicero (wiki) for the title of "the most noble Roman of them all."  He was taken to Rome as a boy and educated there, but his brilliant debut at the bar so aroused the jealousy of the emperor Caligula that Seneca withdrew from law and devoted himself to the study of Stoic philosophy. 

Under Claudius, Seneca was exiled to Corsica for immorality but was brought back in A.D. 49 to become the tutor of the young Nero and later became one of the emperor's most trusted advisors.*

However, in 65, he was implicated in the Piso conspiracy and forced by his former pupil to commit suicide (Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death).**

Today, Seneca is best remembered for the psychological acumen and lofty humanitarianism of his moral essays, and he exerted a great influence on subsequent writers, notably Montaigne. Moreover, his nine tragedies served as models for those of Calderón, Camoëns, and Corneille.   

On insult and injury: (translation via the always interesting sententiae antiquae) :            

Manuel Domínguez Sánchez, The suicide of Seneca (1871)
 Museo del Prado

“Serenus, if it seems apt to you, we need to distinguish injury from insult. The first is more serious by its nature and the other is lighter and an issue only for the overly sensitive because people are not wounded but offended. Some spirits are nevertheless so fragile and vain that they believe nothing is more bitter. For this reason you will find an enslaved person who would prefer lashes to fists and believes death and beatings more tolerable than insulting words.

The situation has gone to such a point of ridiculousness that we are harmed not just by pain but by opinion about pain like children whom dark shadows and the appearance of masks or changed appearances terrify! We are people moved to tears by somewhat painful words touching our ears, by rude signs with fingers, and other things which the ignorant rush from in panicked error.

Injury means to do someone evil; but wisdom allows no space for evil because the only evil it recognizes is debasement, which is incapable of entering anywhere virtue and truth already live.”

Dividamus, si tibi videtur, Serene, iniuriam a contumelia. Prior illa natura gravior est, haec levior et tantum delicatis gravis, qua non laeduntur homines sed offenduntur. Tanta est tamen animorum dissolutio et vanitas, ut quidam nihil acerbius putent. Sic invenies servum qui flagellis quam colaphis caedi malit et qui mortem ac verbera tolerabiliora credat quam contumeliosa verba. Ad tantas ineptias perventum est, ut non dolore tantum sed doloris opinione vexemur more puerorum, quibus metum incutit umbra et personarum deformitas et depravata facies, lacrimas vero evocant nomina parum grata auribus et digitorum motus et alia quae impetu quodam erroris improvidi refugiunt. Iniuria propositum hoc habet aliquem malo adficere; malo autem sapientia non relinquit locum, unum enim illi malum est turpitudo, quae intrare eo ubi iam virtus honestumque est non potest.

~ Seneca, De Constantia 5

* N.B.  Seneca's long and intimate relationship with Nero - which led to his accumulating enormous wealth - has long been the subject of significant confusion: How could such a staunch proponent of the Stoic virtues play so central a role in Nero's malignant reign? This contradiction is the subject of one of the best books I've read yet on the Roman imperium: James Romm's 2014 Dying Every Day - Seneca at the Court of Nero.

** It is to Tacitus that we owe the most detailed account of the death of Seneca - in Book 15 of his Annals. 

Parts of the text above are adapted from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email - leave your email address in the comments if you'd like to be added to his list. Ed is the author of Hunters and Killers: Volume 1: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1776 to 1943 and Hunters and Killers: Volume 2: Anti-Submarine Warfare from 1943.