Imagine the advantages of always having an encyclopedia, the entire works of Shakespeare, Flann O'Brian and anything else you can conceive, engraved in micro script on your fingernails. These would be viewed using a super slim, powerful magnifying device. Entire art galleries could be "at hand" and the "thumbnail sketch" could take on a new meaning as the Sistine Chapel revealed its splendour on the corner of an index finger nail. The possibilities are endless. The information would naturally need regular refreshing, but such is the way of all printed matter. As a deterrent to nail biting, what could be better than confining the last pages of any publication to the outer edge of the nail that is usually the preferred snack of the nervous and ill at ease.-- xenzag, Sep 25 2005 http://www.passionn...els/print/print.php just found this.... [xenzag, Apr 03 2011] Long Nails http://www.digitalb...ils/man-long-nails/masses and masses of data, until he clips those ugly buggers off. [fischerman, Apr 03 2011] You've like, so nailed that pun xen dude. Cuticle.-- ConsulFlaminicus, Sep 25 2005 I don't know much about the size of micro script, I'm guessing rather small, but shirley the complete works of Shakespeare still wouldn't fit?-- hidden truths, Sep 25 2005 Lots of exam takers, nonchalantly checking their cuticles rather too regularly...
One of our lecturers (Doug Hainline) let us take a 5"x3" card in to our 1st year exams. He was a genius really. He knew that in order to make the notes fit onto the card (and you could!) you had to par-away all the rubbish and compact the pure info... That's normally called revising. Almost everyone took him up, and almost everyone passed! Hardly anyone referred to their cards. Like I said, genius.-- Dub, Sep 25 2005 "Billy, don't bite your nails!" "I'm editing, Miss."-- moomintroll, Sep 25 2005 [Dub] - that is very good!.-- gnomethang, Sep 25 2005 //engraved in micro script on your fingernails// sorry, but a thumb is a thumb not a finger. please change the title to fingernail library. or be PUNished!-- schmendrick, Sep 27 2005 you'd have to get it re-inscribed after every nail- clipping. unless you were one of those guinness world record guys who grew their fingernails absurdly long, in which case you'd have tremendous amounts of information at your fingertips, provided you could find it in the tremendous heaps of fingernail that you have flopping from your hands <link>-- fischerman, Apr 03 2011 The Imperial Chinese aristocracy was renowned for its dedication to scholarship, and also notable for the length of its fingernails. As all the world knows, under that system, one rose to high office by sitting for examinations on classical texts. Cheating was rife, and ingenious techniques were used to smuggle cribs into the exams. How they must have sniggered at the gullible Europeans who believed that line about "The long fingernails show I do no manual labor."-- mouseposture, Apr 03 2011 This was actually one of the first ideas I ever posted here.-- xenzag, Apr 03 2011 So, I'm out in the field doing some welding repairs on a customer's bulldozer. Using my recently-purchased- surgically-implanted Thumbnail Library, I call up the orginal design schematics of that model and year of bulldozer, discover that the steel gusset I have just tack- welded into place is slightly out of alignment. How handy is that? I could have spent hours flipping through page after page of service manuals to find that out. Delighted over the time I've saved and congradulating myself over having wisely invested in such a useful device, I hold the gusset steady with one hand and raise my hammer...-- Alterother, Apr 04 2011 random, halfbakery