Mnemonic

English history 1066-1154 as depicted by Mark Twain:

https://books.google.com/books?id=BW4yAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3

He had discovered that taking notes using pictures helped to fix details in his memory, and in an 1899 essay he recommended the practice to children. An explanation of the diagram, starting at the bottom:

21 whales heading west: These represent William I, whose reign lasted 21 years (1066-1087). “We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William’s begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw.”

13 whales heading east: William II, 1087-1100. The change in direction marks a change in leaders. “Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that would be confusing and a damage.”

35 hens going west: Henry I, 1100-1135. “That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.”

19 steers going east: Stephen of Blois, 1135-1154. “That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen’s name. I choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for history.”

The essay was published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in December 1914, four years after Twain’s death.

| History · Humor · Literature

Plain Enough

In Jewish Bankers and the Holy See (2012), León Poliakov cites a joke current in 12th-century ghettos to justify usury between Jews.

“It consisted, it is said, of reciting Deuteronomy 23:20 in interrogative tones to make it mean the opposite of its obvious sense:

“‘Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury?'”

| Humor · Religion · Society

Noted

Letter to the Times, June 26, 2000:

Sir, Travelling near Washington DC about 24 years ago, I saw a large billboard by the roadside. Beautifully painted in letters a foot high, was the legend: ‘DISREGARD THIS SIGN’.

Really and truly,

Ernest Spacey
Bradford, West Yorkshire

| Humor

Notice

Letter to the Times, June 23, 2000:

Sir, The shortest ambiguous sentence I have come across is a road sign found everywhere in New York. It consists of three words: ‘Fine for Parking.’

But I would not like to argue the point with a New York traffic cop.

Yours faithfully,

Millett
House of Lords

10/16/2023 UPDATE: From reader Brieuc de Grangechamps:

schrödinger's dumpster

| Humor · Language

Never Mind

https://openclipart.org/detail/216179/messy-desk

In a 1961 contribution to Analog, Maurice Price explained that, while a new engineer might arrive to a clean desk, a “cycle of confusion” quickly begins as papers pile up so deeply that the engineer can do little more than fish old technical journals from the pile and read them (this is known as “keeping up with the state of the art”). Eventually the engineer resolves to clean the desk, but that only returns the system to the start of the cycle. The key equation is

C = K1 exp (K2t).

“In this equation K1 is the constant of confusion and K2 is the coefficient of chaos. These may vary from desk to desk and from engineer to engineer, but the general form of the curve is not altered. Note that the amount of work to be done does not affect the curve at all. This is because the amount of work expands to overflow the available desk area.”

The only way to break the cycle is to promote the engineer, but that only restarts the cycle at a new desk. And productivity and concentration actually increase with clutter. So the best solution is for the engineer to “bring his desk to the state of stagnation as soon as possible. From then on, the desk should be ignored completely. All work must be carried out by telephone.”

(Maurice Price, “An Introduction to the Calculus of Desk-Clearing,” Analog Science Fact & Fiction, British edition, 1961, 68-72.)

| Humor · Science & Math

Pen and Ink

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jay_%26_Trey_Cartoon_Swearing.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1980, after 30 years of drawing Beetle Bailey, comic artist Mort Walker published The Lexicon of Comicana, a lighthearted meditation on the many conventions that a reader of comic strips is expected to understand. He calls it a lexicon because he’s made up names for all of them:

  • A grawlix (above) is a string of symbols representing profanity.
  • Emanata are lines surrounding a character’s head to indicate surprise or shock.
  • A lucaflect is the distorted image of a window in a shiny object.
  • Blurgits are blurs of motion within a single panel, to denote frenzied action.
  • Sphericasia are lines tracking motion: a throwatron is a line following a football, a sailatron follows a wandering paper airplane, and a dashed staggeratron follows an intoxicated person. If the motion is particularly fast, these might begin with a dust cloud, called a briffit.
  • Plewds are flying droplets of sweat to indicate stress, hard work, or nerves.
  • An indotherm is a series of wavy lines to indicate rising heat.
  • Vites are fine vertical lines to indicate a shine on a floor. Strangely, a window or mirror bears dites, which are diagonal.

More: a light bulb represents an idea, Zs (or a saw cutting a log) represent snoring, distant birds are inverted Ws, patches denote poverty, all bones are the same shape, all new things have price tags, all injuries require bandages, all paint cans bear drippings. Who invented all these conventions, and how did we all learn to observe them?

| Humor · Language

Southern Exposure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Alan_Lascelles.jpg

I forgot to mention that I donned a kilt for the Highland Ball at Glenferness. It was anxious work at first, as it is a garment with no notion of privacy, and delights in giving all present tantalising glimpses of things unseen. However, with careful manipulation and a pair of drawers, I got through the evening tolerably. It is quite comfortable to dance in, but should be a godsend to mosquitoes.

— Sir Alan Lascelles, diary, September 15, 1907

| Humor

Everything Must Go

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microcosm_of_London_Plate_032_-_Drury_Lane_Theatre_(colour).jpg

When the Drury Lane theater was closed in 1709, Joseph Addison published a fanciful list of the properties for sale:

  • Spirits of right Nantz brandy, for lambent flames and apparitions.
  • Three bottles and a half of lightning.
  • One shower of snow in the whitest French paper.
  • Two showers of a browner sort.
  • A sea, consisting of a dozen large waves; the tenth bigger than ordinary, and a little damaged.
  • A dozen and a half of clouds, trimmed with black, and well-conditioned.
  • A rainbow, a little faded.
  • A set of clouds after the French mode, streaked with lightning, and furbelowed.
  • A new moon, something decayed.
  • A pint of the finest Spanish wash, being all that is left out of two hogsheads sent over last winter.
  • A coach very finely gilt, and little used, with a pair of dragons, to be sold cheap.
  • A setting-sun, a pennyworth.
  • An imperial mantle made for Cyrus the Great, and worn by Julius Caesar, Bajazet, King Harry the Eighth, and Signor Valentini.
  • A basket-hilted sword, very convenient to carry milk in.
  • Roxana’s night-gown.
  • Othello’s handkerchief.
  • The imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once.
  • A wild boar, killed by Mrs. Tofts and Dioclesian.
  • A serpent to sting Cleopatra.
  • A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.
  • Another of a bigger sort, by Mr. D—-s’s directions, little used.
  • Six elbow-chairs, very expert in country dances, with six flower-pots for their partners.
  • The whiskers of a Turkish Bassa.
  • The complexion of a murderer in a band-box; consisting of a large piece of burnt cork, and a coal-black peruke.
  • A suit of clothes for a ghost, viz. a bloody shirt, a doublet curiously pinked, and a coat with three great eyelet-holes upon the breast.
  • A bale of red Spanish wool.
  • Modern plots, commonly known by the name of trapdoors, ladders of ropes, vizard-masks, and tables with broad carpets over them.
  • Three oak-cudgels, with one of crab-tree; all bought for the use of Mr. Penkethman.
  • Materials for dancing; as masks, castanets, and a ladder of ten rounds.
  • Aurengezebe’s scymitar, made by Will. Brown in Piccadilly.
  • A plume of feathers, never used but by Œdipus and the Earl of Essex.

“Mr. D—-” is John Dennis, a critic. Elsewhere Addison wrote, “If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.”

| Humor