tsundoku
n. the practice of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them
Author: Greg Ross
The Cat Gap
The first “true cat,” Proailurus, or “Leman’s Dawn Cat,” appeared about 30 million years ago. But from 25 to 18.5 million years ago, strangely few catlike fossils are found in North America. Biologist Luke Hunter writes:
Following the appearance of the dawn cat, there is little in the fossil record for 10 million years to suggest that cats would prosper. In fact, although Proailurus persisted for at least 14 million years, there are so few felid fossils towards the end of the dawn cat’s reign that paleontologists refer to this as the ‘cat gap’. The turning point for cats came about with the appearance of a new genus of felids, Pseudaelurus.
The gap may be due to changes in climate and habitat, the rise of competing doglike species, an unsustainable “hypercarnivorous” dietary specialization, or some other factor. Modern cats descended from Pseudaelurus.
Out of the Way
Point Nemo, the point in the ocean farthest from land, lies in the southern Pacific Ocean at 48°52.6’S 123°23.6’W.
R’lyeh, the fictional city that imprisons the entity called Cthulhu in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, lies at 47°9’S 123°43’W. (August Derleth, a correspondent of Lovecraft, placed it at 49°51’S 128°34’W.)
Lovecraft’s story was written 66 years before Point Nemo was discovered.
Overhead
The Spanish town of Setenil de las Bodegas extends along the course of the Rio Trejo.
Some of its buildings are set into the walls of the gorge itself — which can add a startling ceiling to an ordinary street.
Kitchen Aid
Three male offspring, aged 9–14 years, of one of the authors were observed to experience visual problems profound enough to imply functional blindness. The visual deficit was evident on almost every occasion when any one of the children of this physician went to the refrigerator and opened the door. The acute visual problem encountered was noted to be part of a consistent behaviour pattern, wherein a few seconds after the fridge door was opened a cry would be heard from the affected child of ‘Mum, where’s the milk?’
— Andrew J. Macnab and Mary Bennett, “Refrigerator Blindness: Selective Loss of Visual Acuity in Association With a Common Foraging Behaviour,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dec. 6, 2005
Unquote
“In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.” — Alfred North Whitehead
Saying Goodbye
Leyland Kirby’s composition Everywhere at the End of Time depicts the progression of Alzheimer’s disease through six hours of successively degraded ballroom music:
STAGE 1: Here we experience the first signs of memory loss. This stage is most like a beautiful daydream. The glory of old age and recollection. The last of the great days.
STAGE 2: The second stage is the self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in.
STAGE 3: Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages.
STAGE 4: Stage 4 is where serenity and the ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror. It’s the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements, repetition and rupture.
STAGE 5: More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar. Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation.
“Stage 6 is without description.”
Made to Order
Arrange the digits 0-9 into a 10-digit number such that the leftmost n digits comprise a number divisible by n. For example, if the number is ABCDEFGHIJ, the number ABC must be divisible by 3, ABCDE must be divisible by 5, and so on.
Podcast Episode 358: The Radium Girls
In 1917, a New Jersey company began hiring young women to paint luminous marks on the faces of watches and clocks. As time went on, they began to exhibit alarming symptoms, and a struggle ensued to establish the cause. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of the Radium Girls, a landmark case in labor safety.
We’ll also consider some resurrected yeast and puzzle over a posthumous journey.
“Forgotten Words Are Mighty Hard to Rhyme”
Quoth I to me, “A chant royal I’ll dite,
With much ado of words long laid away,
And make windsuckers of the bards who cite
The sloomy phrases of the present day.
My song, though it encompass but a page,
Will man illume from April bud till snow —
A song all merry-sorry, con and pro.”
(I would have pulled it off, too, given time,
Except for one small catch that didn’t show:
Forgotten words are mighty hard to rhyme.)
Ah, hadavist, in younghede, when from night
There dawned abluscent some fair morn in May
(The word for dawning, ‘sparrowfart,’ won’t quite
Work in here) — hadavist, I say,
That I would ever by stoopgallant age
Be shabbed, adushed, pitchkettled, suggiled so,
I’d not have been so redmod! Could I know? —
One scantling piece of outwit’s all that I’m
Still sure of, after all this catch-and-throw:
Forgotten words are mighty hard to rhyme.
In younghede ne’er a thrip gave I for blight
Of cark or ribble; I was ycore, gay;
I matched boonfellows hum for hum, each wight
By eelpots aimcried, till we’d swerve and sway,
Turngiddy. Blashy ale could not assuage
My thirst, nor kill-priest, even. No Lothario
Could overpass me on Poplolly Row.
A fairhead who eyebit me in my prime
Soon shared my donge. (The meaning’s clear, although
Forgotten words are mighty hard to rhyme.)
Fair draggle-tails once spurred my appetite;
Then walking morts and drossels shared my play.
Bedswerver, smellsmock, housebreak was I hight —
Poop-noddy at poop-noddy. Now I pray
That other fonkins reach safe anchorage —
Find bellibone, straight-fingered, to bestow
True love, till truehead in their own hearts grow.
Still, umbecasting friends who scrowward climb,
I’m swerked by mubblefubbles. Wit grows slow;
Forgotten words are mighty hard to rhyme.
Dim on the wong at cockshut falls the light;
Birds’ sleepy croodles cease. Not long to stay …
Once nesh as open-tide, I now affright;
I’m lennow, spittle-ready — samdead clay,
One clutched bell-penny left of all my wage.
Acclumsied now, I dare no more the scrow,
But look downsteepy to the Pit below.
Ah, hadavist! … Yet silly is the chime;
Such squiddle is no longer apropos.
Forgotten words are mighty hard to rhyme.
— Willard R. Espy