"Dr. Rutherford Quiglesby has invited you to join a right merry affair of Facebook."

The New York Times Bits blog reports that ProQuest archivist Bryan Benilous found a article from 1902 titled "Face Book The New Fad". The "face book" the article mentions is a sort of party game of drawing silly faces... in a book. Moreover:

The Face Book article is not the first quirky relic that Mr. Benilous and his colleagues have excavated from old news articles. In addition to discovering what appears to be an emoticon in a transcript of a speech by Abraham Lincoln, they’ve uncovered a 1942 Washington Post article titled "Think Before You Twitter" about gossiping and a 1903 article referring to the first "pocket telephone."

Bush and the press

Last month, just before the inauguration WNYC's On The Media aired a farewell piece about George W. Bush's special relationship with the press:

BOB GARFIELD: The Bush Administration ridiculed the press, ignored the press, stonewalled the press, bullied the press, maneuvered around the press, co-opted the press, censored the press, jailed the press, fabricated for the press, lied to the press and, for example, when caught illegally wiretapping Americans without a warrant, blamed the press.

BUSH: It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war.

In short, the Bush Administration perniciously used the press as the screw in their vice made to flatten Americans' heads. The piece is a nice bit of catharsis, listen to it here.

"I like to f*ck my wife on top of the sports page!"

Comedy gold, people. Comedy gold.