Mercury Pendulums

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercury_pendulum.png

This is just a detail that I found interesting — early regulator clocks tended to slow down as their pendulums lengthened in warm conditions. One solution, offered by George Graham in 1721, was to attach two vials of mercury to the pendulum — as the pendulum warmed and expanded, so did the mercury, creeping upward in its vials and, at least in theory, preserving the pendulum’s center of mass.

One difficulty is that the mercury tends to warm more slowly than the pendulum itself, but the system worked well enough to persist into the 20th century.

| Science & Math

Order

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/a2naxk/the_way_france_was_almost_divided_after_the/

From the MapPorn subreddit:

In 1789 political theorist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès proposed dividing France into an egalitarian checkerboard of departments, cantons, and communes, following a plan conceived in 1780 by royal cartographer Robert de Hesseln.

The assembly rejected the proposal and adopted one that more closely followed the natural boundaries formed by geography and established by historical precedent.

| History

Cross Words

https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffleboy/25098716017
Image: Flickr

Binghamton University English professor Michael Sharp has been blogging about the New York Times crossword puzzle every day since 2006 under the name Rex Parker. He downloads each puzzle when it becomes available at 10 p.m. and typically solves it in 3-10 minutes.

His blog, Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle, has become so popular that there’s now a metric website that analyzes his opinions:

  • “Rex doesn’t like Sundays”
  • “Rex doesn’t like April”
  • “Rex doesn’t like the year 2017”

“It’s like a little present,” he told the Chronicle of Higher Education last year. “You have no idea what’s in there. And if you’re lucky, something weird or strange or funny is in there. And you get to unwrap this little present every day that will make your brain light up in weird ways if it’s done right.”

(Thanks, Laura.)

| Entertainment

All Together Now

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AxialTiltObliquity.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

A neat astronomy fact: At the equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west at every latitude on Earth (except at the poles, where east and west are undefined).

The celestial equator is the great circle writ on the sky above our own equator. For any point on Earth (except the poles), due east and due west mark the intersection of that circle with the horizon. At the equinox the sun is on the celestial equator, so it rises due east and sets due west, not just on our equator but everywhere.

(Thanks, Sanford.)

| Science & Math

Warning

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Below the Japanese village of Aneyoshi, a 4-foot stone has stood since 1933. “Do not build your homes below this point!” it reads. “High dwellings ensure the peace and happiness of our descendants.” The village had already been devastated by a tsunami in 1896, and after a second blow the residents erected a permanent warning to those who would follow them.

It worked. A record-setting tsunami in 2011 destroyed hundreds of miles of the coast but stopped 300 feet below the Aneyoshi stone. “They knew the horrors of tsunamis,” village leader Tamishige Kimura told the New York Times, “so they erected that stone to warn us.”

| Society

Riposte

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_at_the_entrance_to_the_Palazzo_Vecchio_(67945932)_(5).jpg
Images: Wikimedia Commons

When Michelangelo’s David was unveiled in 1504, it was seen to symbolize the civil liberties of the Republic of Florence in the face of the surrounding city-states and the powerful Medici.

A Medici duke commissioned Cellini’s Perseus With the Head of Medusa, which was unveiled 50 years later. Composed of bronze, it was situated opposite the David — so that Medusa’s gaze seemed to turn it to stone.

| Art · History

Podcast Episode 273: Alice Ramsey’s Historic Drive

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Ramsey_ggbain.03065.jpg

In 1909, 22-year-old Alice Huyler Ramsey set out to become the first woman to drive across the United States. In an era of imperfect cars and atrocious roads, she would have to find her own way and undertake her own repairs across 3,800 miles of rugged, poorly mapped terrain. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow Ramsey on her historic journey.

We’ll also ponder the limits of free speech and puzzle over some banned candy.

See full show notes …

| History · Podcast · Society · Technology

In a Word

jouisance
n. use or enjoyment

Barmecidal
adj. giving only the illusion of plenty

cacœconomy
n. bad management

furibund
adj. irate

The residents of the parking-challenged Hampshire town of Farnborough were delighted in 2016 to learn that a fully equipped car park had been lying unused for five years. The bad news: It could be reached only on foot. It resides on a roof above a gym complex.

Under the plan, motorists would reach the facility via a bridge from an adjoining property. But that site was still under development.

“We have a massive problem with car parking in Farnborough,” councillor Gareth Lyon told the Independent. “To have had this huge car park lying empty defies belief. It is ridiculous.”

(Thanks, Charlie.)

| Language · Oddities

The Fog of War

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Franklin K. Young worked out a way to apply battlefield principles to the chessboard. Unfortunately, his description is incomprehensible:

The normal formative processes of a Logistic Grand Battle consist, first, in Echeloning by RP to QR4 and then in Aligning the Left Major Front Refused en Potence by the development of QKtP to QKt5, followed by Doubly Aligning the Left Major Front Refused and Aligned by developing QRP to QR5.

The final and decisive development in the formative process of a Logistic Grand Battle is the transformation of the Left Refused Front Doubly Aligned into a Grand Left Front Refused and Echeloned by the development of QRP to QR6.

Chess historian Edward Winter quotes a 1909 parody by P.H. Williams in Chess Chatter & Chaff:

White here takes the opportunity of duple deployment of bolobudginous hoplites, by mutual transposition of kindred hypothetics — the one in enfilade, the other in marmalade. This example of Tyntax involves duodecimal parabaloidic curves, whose radii are in strict parallelism with the dyptic hypotenuse. (Note: These terms will be elucidated when the author has discovered meanings for them, in a glossary of 457 pages.)

The system was still obscure when Young died in 1931, but perhaps you can make sense of it: His works are here.

| Entertainment · Literature

Sums and Sums

lee sallows self-descriptive magic square

Something new from Lee Sallows: a self-descriptive magic square. Each row, column, and long diagonal adds up to 20, and every letter used is correctly counted.

“You may notice that the square includes a fox. But don’t be foxed by the fox. Just enjoy him. For this is not merely any old fox. No, it is our old friend the quick brown fox that jumped over that lazy dog!”

(Thanks, Lee!)

| Language · Science & Math