[looking glass spectacle]

Originally Posted by pbradley

Umberto Eco: The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists -- the shopping list, the will, the menu -- that are also cultural achievements in their own right.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...659577,00.html

i hate making top ten lists... but you reminded me of borges' Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, so...

top ten types of animals:

1. those that belong to the Emperor
2. embalmed ones
3. those that are trained
4. suckling pigs
5. mermaids
6. fabulous ones
7. stray dogs
8. those included in the present classification
9. those that tremble as if they were mad
10. innumerable ones
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
12. others
13. those that have just broken a flower vase
14. those that from a long way off look like flies