The Athanasius Kircher Society is a wonderful sister site to Boing Boing. The founder, "AK," says:
Kircher, if you don't know, was the 17th century jesuit polymath behind such fantastic inventions as the sunflower clock, the cat piano, the vomitting statue, the speaking trumpet, and the automatic organ. He was also the proprietor of one of the greatest 17th century wonder cabinets, and is often referred to as the last man to know everything about his culture.
For now, the Kircher Society is nothing more than a blog, "The Proceedings," which focuses on all things wondrous, curious, and esoteric–anything that would have fascinated Kircher if he were alive today.
(Shown here: Shea Zellweger's Logic Alphabet, "in which a group of specially designed letter-shapes can be manipulated like puzzles to reveal the geometrical patterns underpinning logic.") Link
Reader comment: Bob Rossney says: "I think it extremely likely that the 'AK' behind the Society is one of two people: David Wilson, who runs the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, or Lawrence Weschler, who wrote Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder (about the Museum), among many other books. The MJT is presently hosting an exhibition called 'The World Is Bound With Secret Knots: The Life And Works of Athanasius Kircher.' And when I saw Ricky Jay interview Weschler at City Arts & Lectures in San Francisco last week, Weschler was very big on Kircher, saying that one of the symposia he ran last year at NYU (I think) was entitled 'Athanasius Kircher: Coolest Guy Who Ever Lived, Or What?'"
