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God, wrote Augustine in Confessions, "fashioned hell for the inquisitive." Ever since, curiosity has struggled to gain favor. "Curiosity" started a synonym for "fastidious," note the editors of the journal Common-place in a special issue on curiosity and curiosities in history. "Now, to be curious is to seek knowledge, but that knowledge, because acquired through curiosity, can been seen as illicit," they write. "It is a virtue to be curious, but curiosity killed the cat, and left Curious George locked up at the zoo." Still, curiosity is the engine of discovery, both minor and marvelous. As the editors put it: "Curiosity links a world of ideas with the social worlds in which men, women, and ideas circulated."

Common-place's collection of curiosities includes articles on the decline of Old Curiosity Shops, the connection between curiosity and cartography, and how curiosity drove the study of sleepwalking. Noting that "men and women who are curious are themselves sometimes turned into curiosities," the editors introduce articles on an 18th Century man who became a celebrity for evidently changing races and a 19th Century missionary surgeon who presented portraits of patients' tumors.

The issue is mostly devoted to these kinds of spectacles, equating "curiosity" with "exotic object of attention" rather than the more general quality of being inquisitive about the world. It should be noted that the latter takes on particular importance today as an antidote to commercial culture, which eschews contemplation and elevates our acquisitive impulses above our analytical ones. Although the editors do not put it this way—nor do they mention the Yiddish word luftmensch, meaning "an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income"—it is heartening when they conclude their introduction with this Yiddish proverb: "[One] should go on living, if only to satisfy his curiosity."

Related: Curiosity as the root of learning and journalism, from NBierma.com

From Sports Illustrated:

Part tournament, part powwow, part youth festival, part cultural showcase, the annual Lakota Nation Invitational … in Rapid City, South Dakota, defies nutshell description. At its heart it's a highly competitive 16-team high school boys' basketball tournament—and starting this year, a 16-team girls' tournament as well—made up mostly of schools from the state's nine Lakota reservations. There's also a wrestling tournament [and] three competitions that test students' knowledge in general academics, Lakota culture and the Lakota language … The LNI's most spectacular moment is … the Grand Entry under the spotlights in the Civic Center on Friday night. Tribal chiefs and ceremonial dancers don headdresses, hairpipe (bone) vests, leather pants and moccasins and, moving to a drumbeat, lead the athletes and other participants in a colorful procession around the hardwood before the semifinals. By incorporating ceremonies such as this, LNI organizers have helped revive interest in the Lakota Nation.

Many years have passed at Dodgertown since a Dodgers player last ate mess hall grub off a Navy-issued, trisected metal serving tray or climbed trees to avoid the night watchman enforcing curfew. At the team's spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., however, time … flutters like a soft breeze through the azaleas, palmettos, royal palms and scrub pines in a baseball training facility disguised as an arboretum. … Dodgertown [is] otherwise known simply as Vero or colloquially as "the base." Indeed, the tract served as a U.S. Naval air base before the Dodgers moved their spring headquarters there from Havana, Cuba, in 1948 … to train all of the organization's players in the same complex. … More than 600 players moved into what were built as temporary barracks for servicemen and included wood-plank flooring and three bunk beds to a room. Dodgers of the '50s and '60s were awakened at six each morning by a shrill whistle, hustled to the mess hall to eat breakfast off their metal trays, then drilled on fundamentals all day.

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