“Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think creation’s.” — E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951
“Sometimes an admirer spends more talent extolling a work than the author did in creating it.” — Jean Rostand, De la vanité, 1925
In 2008, the occupants of a Zagreb apartment building proposed converting it into a condominium. The only resident who failed to agree was Hedviga Golik, a former nurse who had once occupied a one-room apartment in the building’s attic. Withdrawn, temperamental, and alienated from her family, Golik had not been seen in decades and was thought to have left the area. A dispute among the other tenants had prevented any of them from laying claim to the apartment.
When three representatives broke open the door that May, Golik’s body was lying on the bed, wrapped in blankets, a teacup by her side. She had died in 1966 and lain there for 42 years. The building superintendent, a former boyfriend, had been providing the unit rent-free, and the building’s architect had routinely paid the electricity bill.
She was buried the next day. A police spokesperson said, “So far, we have no idea how it is possible that someone officially reported missing so long ago was not found before in the same apartment she used to live in.”
Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?
— Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, 1658
Surveying the American South in the 1980s, University of Florida linguist Thomas Pyles found so many unusual personal names that he managed to make a poem of them:
Yerdith, Virtus, Frow, LaDonna,
Nishie, Alderine, Zollie, Conna;
Garalene, Methalene, Ethelyne, Fal,
Bennilene, Gatsey, Ripsie, Ral.
Dolliree, Jetteree, Mauderie, Flem,
Nubit, Wogan, Omria, Kem;
Pheriba, Yuba, Twylah Jo,
Ovidetta, Zava Roe.
Leos, Cubie, Dicie, Metha,
Shi, Revonie, Sag, Uretha;
Arsie, Kissie, Bussie, Missie,
Yada, Telka, Clell, Elissie.
Ozena, Madula, Oleta, Zippie,
Ozella, Schiley, Florine, Rippie;
Amorus, Onan, Coeta, Pasco,
Reion, Merkin, Jeline, Vasco.
Incia, Phenis, Phalla, Icy,
Idlene, Birdene, Ala, Nicy.
Rectus, Dilly, Dally, Nil;
Mosco, Oco, Rumbo, Zill.
Stobo, Chlorine, Bamma, Floyce,
Willamane, Voncile, Thair, La Voice;
O’Leita, La Gita, Ludille, La Coy,
Arnetta, Loonis, Fanida, Hoy.
Shira, Reva, Terrayne, Aslean,
Etrelle, Mardelle, La Nan, Rudine.
Zazzelle, Glathu, Lavora, Troy,
Colonys, Wylodean, Cy, La Joy.
Alfa, Alto, Shyne, Arveta,
Pledger, Mortis, Cance, La Nita;
Anys, Cyrese, Bink, Eloyde,
Verdine, Merdine, Pink, La Void.
Raysal, Quintelle, Raz, Zerene,
Estyl, Bytha, Bevelene;
Boysy, Lugen, Lavator, Lake,
Eskaleen, Lueverine, Voline, Flake.
La Vada, La Voime, Donrue, La Nelle,
Kartaleen, Avalene, Zan Jamelle;
Ronalene, Darlene, Denna Fo,
Japnel, Oynel, Wynell, Bo.
Vivett, La Carl, La Bruce, La Don,
La Vondus, Burtis, Joette, Lavon;
Zedro, Velpo, Bryna Lee,
Zefferine, Windell, Zim, La Mee.
Oklahoma’s Hoyette White named her daughters Norvetta, Yerdith, Arthetta, Marlynne, and Wilbarine. “I wanted names no one had ever had and names nobody would ever want,” she said. “So I made them up.”
(Thomas Pyles, “Bible Belt Onomastics or Some Curiosities of Anti-Pedobaptist Nomenclature,” in Kelsie B. Harder, ed., Names and Their Varieties, 1986.)
Martin Gardner wrote a poem called “Simplicity”:
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He wrote, “No one can say my poem does not have a point.”
After last week’s post on Morton’s fork, reader Nick Hare sent three items. Rather than levy taxes, Athens used to task each of its wealthiest citizens to perform a liturgy, essentially a duty to finance a public project voluntarily. A citizen who was assigned this duty could avoid it by naming a citizen who was supposedly richer than he and thus better qualified to perform it. If the second man disputed this claim, the two would exchange their entire estates. The first man could hardly object to this, as by his own claim he would gain by it. This had the effect of discouraging spurious claims. The practice was known as antidosis, literally “an exchange.”
Virtue ethics meets consequentialism on Sesame Street:
And a trolley problem:
The trolley is hurtling toward Alice. Bob is on the other track.
Alice says, “Please, I don’t want to die, divert the trolley so Bob dies instead.”
Bob says, “Yes, divert the trolley onto my track — I don’t mind sacrificing myself so someone else can live.”
Should you divert the trolley?
(Thanks, Nick.)
If we heard it said of Orientals that they habitually drank a liquor which went to their heads, deprived them of reason and made them vomit, we should say: ‘How very barbarous!’
— La Bruyère, “Of Opinions,” Characters, 1688
In Dante’s Purgatorio, souls are surprised to see that their visitor casts a shadow and thus is not dead:
When they perceiv’d that through my body I
Gave way not for the rays to pass, their song
Straight to a long and hoarse exclaim they chang’d;
And two of them, in guise of messengers,
Ran on to meet us, and inquiring ask’d:
“Of your condition we would gladly learn.”
That’s a bit of a puzzle, note Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh. “To be visible, supernatural entities must reflect light (if they do not emit it). But as a consequence they must be opaque to at least some light, and thus they should cast shadows.”
(Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh, The Visual World of Shadows, 2019. Related: Why do ghosts wear clothes?)
From the Strand, December 1903: These tracks were left by a man in flight leading a child. “In order to throw his pursuers off the trail the man changed his means of locomotion at each of the places marked in numbers on the diagram. The problem consists in discovering the manner of locomotion between each of these stations and the next; what vehicles the man took; what happened to him in the course of his flight; and what he did with the child at the different stages of the journey.”
Full text of a memo from Winston Churchill to his War Cabinet, Aug. 9, 1940:
To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.
I ask my colleagues and their staffs to see to it that their Reports are shorter.
(i) The aim should be Reports which set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.
(ii) If a Report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors, or on statistics, these should be set out in an Appendix.
(iii) Often the occasion is best met by submitting not a full-dress Report, but an Aide-memoire consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.
(iv) Let us have an end of such phrases as these: ‘It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations …’, or ‘Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect …’. Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.
Reports drawn up on the lines I propose may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.
W.S.C.
He followed this up in November 1951:
BREVITY
Official papers are too long and too diffuse. In 1940 I called for brevity. Evidently I must do so again. I ask my colleagues to read what I wrote then (it is reproduced overleaf) and to make my wishes known to their staffs.
I also invite attention to the Foreign Secretary’s recent despatch to Heads of Missions about the length of telegrams.
W.S.C.