I collect the National Geographic magazine. I have every single issue, with their maps, if any, from 1914 to the present. Before 1914 I have some issues, but not too many. The price starts going way up for before 1910 issues. My goal is to own an issue from before 1900. I do have a 19th century map though.
You know, I don’t think any of my hobbies are arcane, anymore. As Zyada said, bellydancing is pretty mainstream now. I’m one of three bellydancers I know who dances at goth clubs- not professionally, just for fun.
I like to spin, and I can do handweaving, although I think I’d like knitting better. It would be fun to have a Bronze Age hanging loom, though.
I can speak some Ojibway from a three-year obsession with Anishnaube language and culture, although I’m losing it now. That was also when I learned to do Woodlands and Plains applique beading and tried to learn Luneville tambour beading.
My husband used to do Filipino fire-spinning and capoeira.
That sounds great, I’ve only heard of how to make paneer at home. Are you interested maybe in starting an ‘Ask the cheese maker’ thread?
Aw, cool! I know I suggested British Isles as a source for these (as it’s a favorite part of the world for me–never visited and don’t work there, but the place-names and scenery and history trip me out, and I want to visit sometime), but anywhere that I’ve never been would be awesome: regional (as well as chronological) eccentricities are what I yearn for. I’ve never landed in Alaska, but I’ve flown over it (“WOW” doesn’t begin to describe…).
I’m envisioning an entire chapter on whale blubber recipes…which I can’t get where I live, but I’m guessing de-meating bacon would work. Pigs are, after all, the whales of the Midwest.
I see that at some point I blocked my email here. Don’t remember when or why, but it is now in my profile, too. Shoot me info, and I’m there!
And “Thank You!” too!
I’ve got some extra !!!'s if anybody needs them!!!11!!one!!eleven!!
:rolleyes: at self. 
Since I think I inspired this question, I thought I would answer: I don’t know. I haven’t done the research, or the math, but it seems clear that there would be an answer(s) to your question(s). That is part of what drives me (however lackadaisically) to explore notational systems: how we present info affects how we understand it.
[I have, in all fairness, tried to use the Scientific Calculator in Windows to enter a decimal expansion of PI and convert it to binary, octal, and hexadecimal. It truncates everything after the decimal point, which is pretty much useless.]
A good example of my interest is sound. I have several “nature” cds that are nothing but sounds collected in the wilderness: thunderstorms, birdcalls, whale songs, insect noises, etc. I also have a visualization option on Windows Media Player called “Ice Crystals,” which has (I haven’t counted) about 40-50 frequency response bars to illustrate the sound. As each new spectrum sample is taken, the previous ones stack up behind it at a 45ish degree angle, so you get a perspective-driven 3D view of the sounds themselves.
What’s fascinating about this is the patterns that show up. Sounds start having geometry. Birdcalls have recognizable shapes, and insect noises (which sound to the ear like chaotic but constant buzzing) have embedded regular oscillations which I can’t hear, but I can see. Honestly, it’s better than television.
I wish I had a better program to show this stuff, but it is amazing what is there that we do not perceive until it’s put into a form that we can recognize.
Mathematics can do the same thing (as with my example of putting a recognizable number in other terms, and totally obscuring their significance). I also believe in the contrary principle: that numbers (or language, or for that matter anything) that don’t seem to make sense to us–even though they’re demonstrably right–might suffer from an inadequate depictional context. That if we could present them properly, things like prime numbers (to take an example) could be blatantly obvious, and no longer need to be calclulated.
Holy cow, I’m more of a geek than I thought!
Baker: You do know that the entire run of NG is out on cd-rom (or possibly dvd now), right? I realize that collecting the hard-copy issues is cool (and if that’s what you’re into, good for you), but if you’re just trying to get a look at the content, they’re all out there fairly cheap if you’ve got a computer.
On the other hand, if you want the hard copies, I wish you luck. I just picked up the hard-bound set of the year 1940 a few weeks ago for a dollar. I’m not a collector, but it’s always been one of my favorite magazines. My parents had a few decades of them at home. I was fascinated by them.
Omg! I thought I was the only one! o/ Treat yo momma right o/
Oh the horror, the horror!
Bippy, that would be a bit fraudulent wouldn’t it, since I only do it as an amateur and not professionally? Oh, add bovine colostrum pudding to that list. It’s not exactly cheese but it’s another one of my dairy-based adventures.
Are you interested in taking it up? If so, I suggest googling for the Fankhauser cheese pages and proceeding with his recipes.
Not at all, and there are plenty of cheese heads around here who would also be interested, I’m sure.
“bovine colostrum pudding” is something I would leave to [B}Mangetout** to try eating.
Until recently, I was an amateur competitive ballroom dancer, and I coached the MIT Ballroom Dance Team. (Charlotte Jorgensen, who danced with John O’Hurley in the first season of Dancing with the Stars, was my coach for the last few years that I danced.)
I’m pretty knowledgeable about esoterica of US patent law, but that’s professional, rather than a hobby. I have “guru” status around the office, though.
Fetchund, I did two science fair projects on owl pellets in my youth. The second one was probably publishable, although I was too lame to actually do it - a comparison of the diets of a male and female great horned owl, and a group of barn owls, all living in the same area (but roosting separately, which is how I could actually compare diets).
I played the bassoon in high school.
Heraldry, especially coats of arms of cities. I have several hundred postcards bearing municipal coats of arms, mostly from Germany, Britain and Spain. The most beautiful ones are from Scandinavia and The Netherlands.
I also collect US Army distinctive insignia. These are small, colorful cloissonne pins depicting the coat of arms of a particular regiment, battalion or other unit. I have about a thousand of these.
I collect 78rpm records, mostly from the 1930s, chiefly from the early-to-middle 1930s, and especially stuff that hasn’t been considered fit to reissue.
I also maintain and play a collection of vintage saxophones and clarinets from the 1920s-50s era.
I also probably know more about television before it became a mass medium than anyone who is not an engineer.
Hmm, a lot of cool answers here. So cool that I have been too timid to post until now. But I’ll be brave…
I collect seashells.
Back in the states, a number of my friends looked at me funny when I said this. Until I told them:
Live seashells.
Some from the Kwajalein reefs, some while snorkeling, some while Scuba diving.
Sometimes at night.
The crowbar is to help you turn over rocks, anchor you when the tide/current gets a little strong, and also to push the sharks away when they get too curious. If that fails, it’s great for bopping them on the nose.
Also remember that some of those seashells can KILL your ass.
And you have to watch out for stonefish, crown-of-thorn starfish, and the like, and avoid annoying the moray eels unnecessarily.
So, given the circumstances under which I collect the seashells, I think my hobby might meet the standard.
I’ve read obits since about the age of 8.
I guess this qualifies as a hobby, and it’s arcane for me anyhow.
A couple of times a month I like to draw a magic circle in my livingroom and do spells and stuff. It’s partly stuff I learned from spending two years in a cafeteria-style Wiccan “coven”. (The coven was mostly just a bunch of people getting together every Friday night and chanting and meditating and making energy balls between their hands and glass-gazing, etc. Sometimes we’d have guest speakers who would instruct or lecture on other things related. Then we’d have a potluck. It was actually really nice. My best recipe for the potluck was Kraft macaroni and cheese, Spam, and peas for color. I’m serious, it was good. Everybody seemed to enjoy it.)
The other part of my “arcane knowledge” comes from what I’ve seen in movies and read in trade paperbacks about the “Black Arts”.
Anyhow, I light candles and put them North, South, etc., call the spirits, take the knife and a stick of lighted sage and draw the circle. So far I’ve tried seeing stuff in a crystal ball, making it rain, getting an ectoplasmic manifestation, seeing my selves from former lives appear to me in a mirror, going out of my body, and assorted other things.
I haven’t been able to do any of them, but it’s fun after a few glasses of wine on a Friday night. I may be having trouble because the cat keeps messing up the circle because she wanders in and out and meows.
(Actually, the one time I actually *did * go out of my body I was on acid. I thought I lost my soul in a TV set, but it doesn’t bear discussion here.)
I count mullets. I keep a tallied list with categories for age, gender, hair color. Brown mullets on males in their 20s/30s are most common in my experience. Mullets are funny.
I play disc golf. Perhaps, the sport has grown enough to where it may not be arcane any longer. The premise is similar to regular golf; players throw a disc into a metal basket instead of hitting a ball into a hole. I am an excellent ‘driver’ and can throw a disc up to 400 feet. OTOH, I still kinda suck at ‘putting.’
I play sitar. This is an unusual interest given my location.
I am currently composing a rock opera with the intention to begin recording in about 3-4 years from now.
I collect antique hand tools. Wooden handled tools like hacksaws and planes and rasps and the like. Find me an old barn or workshop to pillage and I almost wet myself. One saw I have seems like it is paper thin from being sharpened a hundred times.
Power tools make 99% of the jobs go faster and easier, I just love the history of the old stuff I hardly ever use. I just found some chistles and gouges at an estate sale that are beat to shit. I could sharpen them up good as new, but a Black and Decker router will do the job in a fraction of the time.
Home improvement books from Popular Mechanics or Better Homes and Gardens from the '40’s and '50’s are a hoot. Half the skills and methods are outdated and obsolete because of newer and better materials but I can curl up on the couch and read these books cover to cover. The pictures of “Dad” in a sweater vest with a pipe and a hat painting are worth scouring all the garage and estate sales
Oddly enough, one of my newer interests is hand carpentry. I’m into it partly because I can’t justify the expense and lack of mobility of power tools and partly because I like doing things the old fashioned way. Most of my woodworking skills, acquired when I was a kid, depended on power tools. But, with a couple of false starts, I succeeded in making a leaning bookcase of my own design (it deliberately derives some of its strength from leaning against the wall), and I have another, with a new and better design, in the works.
I do Japanese martial arts, but not the more commercial and high-profile ones that you’re probably familiar with. I’m currently learning a school of kenjutsu that has only a handful of practitioners. I like the older, often more practically-oriented forms of martial arts the best. Sport forms like kendô and judô in my opinion have lost a lot of their value. They do stuff in * kendô* that would get them killed if they were using swords, and take ukemi in * judô* that is deliberately bad to prevent their opponent from getting points in a match, instead of doing it smoothly to prevent injury.
I’d like to get involved in some of the recreations of medieval martial arts from old manuscripts that are starting to get some recognition now. I first heard of these several years ago but due to living in Japan participation has been obviously out of the question. I’m actually interested in all things related to warfare, from stone age up to around the Renaissance. I like learning about modern warfare too, but I’m not as into it as I am the old stuff. I’ve learned quite a bit about ancient arms and armor, and I’d love to start up a forge to do some knife and sword making. Maybe one of these days I’ll have a place I can do that.
I also like learning about (and occasionally practicing) survival and primitive living skills. I like my computer, electricity, and especially books, but I also like knowing how to live without depending on all of that.
None of these are particularly obscure, or all that weird by the standards of this board, but they get plenty of weird looks from “normal” people when I talk about what my interests are.
I have had a life-long interest in falconry. I’ve never flown a bird, but since I first read “My Side of the Mountain” at about age 8, I’ve read and studied the art. In America to do it legally, you first have to apprentice to a licensed falconer.
StG
I collect different illustrated editions of Moby Dick. The differences in style are fascinating to me.
I have 6,400 beer bottlecaps and 14 pairs of Oakley sunglasses.
'Course, there are dozens of websites dealing with both these hobbies, so perhaps they aren’t esoteric or arcane at all.