James Marshall's Miscellaneous Page

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a great fit for every item in the number of areas I decided to include on my site, so I had to add a miscellaneous page to cover the other assorted items. If you couldn't find something elsewhere, hopefully it will be here. If not, contact me, and I'll see if I still have the information around. The sections currently here are: my lists, my hats, high IQ societies, other.

My Lists

I've compiled a few lists including Smiley, Abbreviation/Acronym and Astronomical Abbrev/Acro lists. These were recognized as canonical by the Wrecked Humor Collection site, which is now gone. I also put together a list of interesting professor quotes from my years in school.

My Hats

I always kind of liked hats, but didn't wear them much until I found a more formal style that I liked and looked good on me. I finally did, buying fedora hats over the past few years, and now wear them regularly. At the moment, my collection contains the following hats (in order of purchase): Wilsons Leather black leather fedora, four from Macy's: an American Rag tan straw fedora, and a Sean John tan paper/straw fedora, followed by an American Rag black straw fedora and an American Rag gray pinstripe linen/rayon fedora. While these short/stingy brim fedoras (around 1.5") that might be called trilby hats are nice, I wanted to get some wider brimmed fedoras as well and in more traditional materials, so I went for those next. My first one was by Stetson: a Downs felt fedora that was purchased from Hatman Jack's (actually a gift from my wife), then I got a Retro straw fedora/Panama hat from Hats by Haber; later I bought a second, with a somewhat different color, from Amazon. I also have a J.Crew Panama Hat (despite J.Crew's listing, a band decoration on the left means this is a men's hat), and a Stetson Temple felt fedora (another gift from my wife). All of these hats have brims around 2.5" wide -- I prefer these over the shorter brimmed ones I have -- and the Panamas are authentic, both being labeled as such. These are generally higher quality than my others, and while not the best hats money can buy, they are nice hats of good quality and should serve me well. Now that I have cool and warm weather hats in traditional materials and wider brims, I'm generally satisfied. If you need a portable hat hook/hanger of some kind, I'd suggest trying the PortaFedora available on Etsy in medium (up to 3.125" brims) and large (up to 4.25" brims) sizes. If you know of other similar items that are in-stock and readily available, let me know, because I'd be interested in passing it along here. If you're interested in Bringing Back the Hat, then The Perfect Hat for Your Ugly Mug might help you choose one (both of these links go to articles at The Art of Manliness, a good site for a variety of information).

FYI, there are some general etiquette rules you're supposed to follow when wearing hats, though things may be more flexible now than in the past. All You Need to Know About Hat Etiquette from The Fedora Lounge is a long discussion about hat etiquette. I'd say it's basically hat on outdoors / in public spaces, hat off indoors / in private spaces, and hat off to show respect. Tipping your hat seems to be used to say hello, goodbye, excuse me, thank you, you're welcome, etc., almost the way a head nod can be used, but it seems to happen so infrequently that I usually don't worry too much about it. The general on/off rules seem to cover things well enough normally. A few other tips I try to follow: hold the hat so that the inside is not visible to others, don't rest the hat on its brim (or the brim may lose its shape), handle the hat by the brim rather than the crown or pinch (to avoid damaging those areas), let a wet hat dry naturally making sure it's shaped the way you want it (so generally watch out for water). BTW, The Fedora Lounge site isn't just about hats, and for general information on men's fashion, I'm partial to Real Men Real Style, but there are a number of similar good sites out there.

High IQ Societies

The most famous high IQ society is probably Mensa, which accepts people whose IQ places them in the top 2% of the population. There are also a number of other societies, and you can find some information about them at this Polymath Systems page. Many of the less exclusive societies will accept ACT, SAT, and GRE scores, which is rather convenient. Here is a sample of some of the societies that are free to join if you qualify for them: High Potentials Society (HPS) and Mysterium (98 percentile = top 2%; site down?), Top One Percent Society (TOPS) (99 percentile = top 1%), Colloquy (99.5 percentile = top 0.5%), Infinity International Society (IIS) (99.63 percentile = top 0.37%), Cerebrals (99.7 percentile = top 0.3%), ISI-Society (99.93 percentile = top 0.07% for full membership). Wikipedia's High IQ Societies page can lead you to more societies and other information. There's also a World Intelligence Network (WIN), a society of high IQ societies. No, I haven't taken IQ tests available on the web. BTW, I don't care a lot about any of this because I can't do much about my own scores and there will always be better and worse people than myself. Besides, what you do with what you've got is more important than how well you score on some test. I do think it's nice to know at least roughly where I rank though, and taking tests and such can be good mental exercise and stimulation, so I list this stuff mainly as references for satisfying my own curiosity.

Other

Here are a few other links and info I wanted to save, because I thought they might be of some interest. Encyclopedia of Tie Knots by Thomas Fink, describing 85 ways to tie a tie with a simple notation scheme, and Random Tie Knots by Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson which covers even more options. The Art of Manliness blog has a lot of interesting information on various topics. I always carry a Swiss Army Knife with me, and Victorinox makes some great ones. I now use a MiniChamp II in place of my old Signature II, which had replaced a Classic SD. The Signature is still works fine, but I wanted a few more tools, hence the upgrade. At this point, I don't think I'd go with anything smaller than the Manager, which I have, too. I also own a SwissChamp that I bought many years ago. It's too big to carry around daily, but is great to have when I need it; it's my miniature toolkit. :) Wenger is another great choice, but I tend to stick with Victorinox mainly because they have pens. A good site for more info about the knives by these two companies is SAKWiki.com, or for some help choosing a knife, try this Swiss Army Knife Selector. Mostly for fun, a list of pangrams, sentences containing all letters of the alphabet, as well as a nice article (by someone else) on Why I Two-Space.

Site navigation links:

Direct links to major sections:

Direct links to specific pages:
[Abbreviations] [Astronomy Abbreviations] [Ballroom Books] [Ballroom Combos] [Ballroom Dancing] [Ballroom Steps] [Chivalry] [Desiderata] [Dissertation (@UMD)] [Gamebook Blurbs] [Jelly Belly Recipes] [Nikoli Puzzle Rules] [Pocky] [Professor Quotes] [Smileys] [Spanish Gypsy Dance] [Tai Chi Forms] [VLSBG Catalog] [Wedding]

Search this site with a Google custom search engine:

This page was last updated on December 9, 2018.
This page has been visited times since September 27, 2009. Free counter courtesy of PHPJunkYard.com.
View my standard disclaimer or site map.