Commitment

“Deddicacion” of Scottish philologist James Elphinstone’s 1786 proposal on spelling reform, Propriety Ascertained in Her Picture:

To’ dhe KING.

Sir,

Augustus found hiz Language ripe for immortallity: hiz smiles bade Roman Lerning ascertain Propriety in her Picture. A LEO’s goolden days gave rizing Tempels to’ ring widh hightened harmony; gave, not onely a Raphael to’ paint, but a Vida to sing. Reviving Art and Science danced down hand in hand. LEWIS, fostering Genius, and founding Accademies, rendered France dhe admiracion ov dhe World, and her Language dhe Diccion ov it. YOOR MADJESTY, emmulous no les ov preceding, dhan ov contemporary Glory; and finding Glory, onely in dhe improovment ov mankind; haz dained, not merely by pattronage ov dhe sublimest Muzic, and by dhe institucion ov a Brittish Acaddemy, to’ raiz rivals to’ dhe moast exquizite Artists ov Anticquity; but, by fixing Inglish Speech in Inglish Orthoggraphy, to’ secure dhe unfading luster ov Truith, and dhe unfailing succession ov a Horrace, a Boileau, and a Pope.

If an umbel individdual haz prezumed to’ attempt a task, hiddherto’ held arduous for Acaddemies; he hopes for pardon, onely az he shal be found to’ hav performed it: nor wil, in such case, dhe Smile be regretted, hwich constitutes him, widh so dutifool venneracion,

SIR,

YOOR MADJESTY’S

moast devotedly zellous,

az peculiarly onnored, Servant;

JAMES ELPHINSTONE.

| Language

Training

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederich_August_Moritz_Retzsch.jpg

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. …

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. …

My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture, a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win — and I should accept it as an image of human life.

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.

— Thomas Huxley, “A Liberal Education and Where to Find It,” 1868

| Society

Census Trouble

A curious puzzle by Stanley Rabinowitz, from the Spring 1984 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal:

In the little hamlet of Abacinia, two different base systems are used, and everyone speaks the truth. One resident said, “26 people use my base, base 10, and only 22 people speak base 14.” Another said, “Of the 25 residents, 13 are bilingual and 1 is illiterate.” How many people live in Abacinia?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Providence

In 1805, New England missionary Jacob Cram proposed to evangelize among the Seneca of Western New York. Chief Red Jacket responded:

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why are not all agreed, as you can all read the Book?

Brother, we do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and His red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied.

“Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.”

| Religion

Noted

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Straight_tusked_elephant_Eemian_landscape.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

J.M. Roberts’ 1987 Hutchinson History of the World contains this arresting sentence:

At one site in Spain the mind of what one scholar called a ‘primitive Archimedes’ has been seen at work three hundred thousand years ago, directing the removal and use of the tusks of slaughtered elephants as levers to shift the carcasses for cutting up.

The scholar seems to be archaeologist François Bordes, who had written in his 1968 book The Old Stone Age that the Acheuleans of Torralba-Ambrona had killed elephants half engulfed in mud, “and that a primitive Archimedes had the idea of using their tusks as levers for shifting their enormous bulk and making it easier to cut them up.”

From what I can understand, the evidence for butchery at these sites is now thought to be ambiguous, but it’s a striking image nonetheless.

Completely unrelated, but similarly notable: In Days With Bernard Shaw, his 1948 memoir of his friendship with George Bernard Shaw, Stephen Winsten remembers Shaw remarking, “Leonardo da Vinci ruled his notebooks in columns headed fox, wolf, bear and monkey and made notes of human faces by ticking them off in these columns.” I can’t confirm this either, but it seems worth recording.

| Art · History · Science & Math

Conway’s 99-Graph Problem

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:33-duoprism_graph.svg

In this network of 9 points, any two points that are linked have 1 linked point in common, forming a triangle. Any two points that aren’t linked have 2 linked points in common, forming a quadrilateral. Is such a pattern possible in a network of 99 points? In 2014 Princeton mathematician John Horton Conway offered $1000 for the answer to this question; so far the prize is unclaimed.

| Science & Math

A Little Help

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jack_London_young.jpg

Jack London used to buy story ideas from the young Sinclair Lewis. He blamed his “damnable lack of origination”: “I’m damned if my stories just come to me,” he wrote. “I had to work like the devil for the themes.”

Of the 55 plots that Lewis sent him, London bought 27, paying $137.50. Of these, London used five: three for published short stories (“When the World Was Young,” “Winged Blackmail,” and “The Prodigal Father”), one for a novelette (The Abysmal Brute), and one for a novel that he never finished (The Assassination Bureau).

He once wrote to Elwyn Hoffman, “expression, you see — with me — is far easier than invention.”

| Literature

Upstream Contamination

This is surprising: When water is poured from one container into another, floating particles can climb upstream, like inanimate salmon, into the higher container. Argentine physicist Sebastian Bianchini first noticed the phenomenon while making tea during his studies at the University of Havana. His paper inspired further work at Rutgers, which has confirmed the effect, but exactly what’s happening isn’t fully understood.

| Science & Math

Track Record

A problem from the October 1964 issue of Eureka, the journal of the Cambridge University Mathematical Society:

“At noon precisely, a train leaves A for B, and another leaves B for A. They pass after 51 minutes. Each train stays 27 minutes at its destination and then returns by the same route. The trains from A and B travel throughout with constant speeds of 23 m.p.h. and 39 m.p.h., respectively. At what time do they pass for the second time?”

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Self-Assessment

Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, would like you to remember how he fared against the Elamites in 691:

At the command of the god Ashur, the great Lord, I rushed upon the enemy like the approach of a hurricane. … I transfixed the troops of the enemy with javelins and arrows. … I cut their throats like sheep. … My prancing steeds, trained to harness, plunged into their welling blood as into a river; the wheels of my battle chariot were bespattered with blood and filth. I filled the plain with the corpses of their warriors like herbage. … As to the sheikhs of the Chaldaeans, panic from my onslaught overwhelmed them like a demon. They abandoned their tents and fled for their lives, crushing the corpses of their troops as they went. … They passed scalding urine and voided their excrement into their chariots.

He claimed that the Elamites lost 150,000 men. This is likely an exaggeration, but in The Might That Was Assyria (1984), H.W.F. Saggs observes that, “even if arbitrarily scaled down by a factor of as much as ten … this would still leave enormous casualties for an engagement of a few hours.”

| History