KUSA ZURIBIKI, Shaking Hands Act.

Or as the Japanese name cannot be properly translated into an English equivalent, we might as well call it the "Glad hand."

In order to secure a sudden advantage over an opponent, it is often best to resort to strategy and take your man wholly by surprise.

As a mode of attack, this act is one of the neatest, completest surprises known to the Gentle Art.

(1) A approaches B, holding out his right hand as if he were going to shake hands, grasps B's right hand as in ill. 1, and stepping back quickly, gives B's hand a violent pull, causing B to lose his balance and start forward, while A rushes back in the opposite direction, past B's right side, still holding B;s right hand, and stoops, grasping B's right ankle with the left hand, whirls B about and tips him over; or letting go with the right hand, sends him headlong with the left ankle, see ill. 2.

This is very simple and effective when you get it right.

From Jiu-jitsu: A Comprehensive and Copiously Illustrated Treatise (1904), p. 111-112, by Harry Hall Skinner.

ARRESTING A POLICEMAN.

Some time it may become necessary to arrest a policeman; and in that event, all you have to do is to carry out the following instructions with celerity and precision.

Get on his left side, a little at the rear, (1) with your right hand catch hold of the lower end of his club which hangs in his belt at the left side, and turn it outward to the left and upward, so that it will bear across his left arm just above the elbow; while you are doing this with the right hand, catch hold of his left wrist with your left hand, holding his arm back against his club, to keep it straight, and with your right hand push the top end or handle of the club against his left side, just above, and slightly in front of the pelvis bone on No. 11, ill. A., as per illustration. This hurts terribly in two places; the middle of his arm and at the end of the club in his flank. Be careful of the latter point. It is one of the knock-outs of JIU-JITSU and apt to cause collapse.

The writer asked permission to try this experiment, just for practice, on a New York policeman, and after grasping his left wrist and turning up the club in the above manner, as if it were one motion, the officer was asked what there was for him to do in a case like that. He replied, between gasps of pain, that there was nothing he could do without breaking his arm or killing himself.

From Jiu-jitsu: A Comprehensive and Copiously Illustrated Treatise (1904), p. 63-64, by Harry Hall Skinner.

OYA UBI SHIME or Thumb Grip.

Suppose you catch B's right thumb round the waist, just below the first joint, holding it tightly well down in the crotch between your right thumb and first finger, pull and press the ends of your fingers down into the base of his thumb at the back of the hand, he will probably drop to his knees, to save his thumb. See illustration.

Remember that in a rough-and-tumble fight or scuffle, when you can get one of these grips on your man, he is helpless. Always "look pleasant" and keep cool. This is often half the battle.

From Jiu-jitsu: A Comprehensive and Copiously Illustrated Treatise (1904), p. 13, by Harry Hall Skinner.

No. 1.—AN OPPONENT THREATENS TO START A FIGHT WITH ME

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Aquasorbitiveness large.
George Morland, a talented painter, who died as he had lived, a great drunkard.

The 1871 book A New Physiognomical Chart by Joseph Simms, M.D. presents an original physiognomic classification system based on over 100 faculties -- such as characterioscopicity, computationumericality, and physiœlpidicity -- discernable by a combination of body types and facial features.

Each faculty is given an entry that includes a descriptive physiognomic characteristic; a grading scale from 1 to 12; methods to increase or decrease ones grade, should one choose; and illustrations of individuals who exemplify the faculty, positively or negatively.

While some of the faculty names are still in usage (e.g. "ambitiousness" and "credulousness" -- which Simms conveniently considers a faculty worthy of promotion), most are all but lost to the Internet (The Phrontistery doesn't even have a list!)

So, for the sake of huntatative types who wish to expand their linguastiveness, find grist for their salitive mill, or are just trying to tell their temporinaturalitiveness from their temporimechanicality, here's a glossary of select physiognomic faculties (those with high degrees of both amicitiveness and ordinimentality, please feel free to add these words to Wiktionary to edify future generations of physiognomicists):

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There was a story on Evening Magazine last night about "The Northwest's 10 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries". Besides yet again bringing up D.B. Cooper -- whom you should all just forget you ever heard about -- it had one topical mystery I had somehow missed: the details surrounding a prototype monorail built on the Tacoma tideflats in 1910 or 1911.

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As previously mentioned, Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss is an unauthorized 1898 sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Unauthorized by Wells, that is. It was authorized by Thomas A. Edison, and the story reads like an Edison promotional vehicle (which it essentially was):

Edison reveals his inventions to the assembled leaders of Earth, including the insufferable Kaiser Wilhelm -- curse his handlebar moustache!

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Little Known Secret Weapons of WWII: An elite contingent of the USO made up of specially equipped pin-up girls was created in order to protect Iowa from miniature Imperial Japanese poison-gas fighters -- primitive forerunners of modern black helicopters.

UPDATE: More details about this image and what happened to the modeled spray-attack-bags after the war...

Looking for some content for your iPod-Stereoscope? Here's an illustration from Lord Kelvin's 1894 paper "On Homogeneous Division of Space":

Stereoscopic photo of an orthic tetrakaidecahedron, constructed out of soldered wire.

Cross your eyes to see cutting-edge 19th century scientific imaging technology! I have exchanged the images left for right from the original since I find crossing my eyes easier than forcing them apart. The original presumably would have been viewed using a stereoscope, a common gizmo for the Victorian-era techno-hipster...

Since it took an inordinate amount of time to make the above image, I'll have to put off retyping Kelvin's paper till later. It's an interesting one, with some nice illustrations of tessellations. Until then, busy yourself with making your own tetrakaidecahedra. See how many rooms of your house you can fill!

UPDATE: "On Homogeneous Division of Space" is online.