We detect that a rhododendron flower is odorless by smelling it. But do we smell its odorlessness? We detect that tofu is flavorless by tasting it. But do we taste its flavorlessness?
— Roy Sorensen, Seeing Dark Things, 2008
Author: Greg Ross
Turnabout
In central Panama, the sun rises in the Pacific and sets in the Atlantic.
What Dreams May Come
Hallucinations reported in a 1955 study of alcohol withdrawal in which subjects were allowed to drink heavily for up to 87 days, then abruptly cut off:
- “During the first night he saw a disembodied head which was shrunken and had the appearance of heads prepared by a tribe of South American Indians. The eyes of this head followed the patient as he moved in bed. On closing his eyes, he saw a dwarf who would disappear whenever he opened his eyes.”
- “During the second night he began to hear men’s and women’s voices outside his window but was unable to distinguish what these voices were saying. He heard baseball games on the radio and television, although these instruments were not turned on.”
- “When it became dark, on the evening of the fourth day, the patient became extremely agitated and screamed at other patients: ‘Get out of the way! You are standing where they are coming up!’ On being questioned he stated that snakes were coming up out of the floor and attempting to attack him.”
- “Also, during the fifth night, he gave a dramatic description of his bed flying through the air, going through dark tunnels, and so forth. … During the following morning he was still hallucinating and at times appeared to think he was in Brooklyn. He described being attacked by an imaginary animal which spat acid in his face. He would strike at the animal with his pillow and said that he had caught it several times.”
- “He thought he heard a man screaming and that the man was being killed. He jumped up and ran out into the hallway to see about this event. When it was suggested that he had misinterpreted the sound of a cow lowing, he accepted this explanation and went back to bed.”
- “He felt that members of a Sicilian gang were trying to kill him with guns that could shoot curves around corners. He insisted that he had been cut with knives and he was constantly attempting to escape from his pursuers.”
Somewhat related — from a sleep-deprivation study in 1965:
- “During the fourth day he became irritable and uncooperative; he developed memory lapses, difficulty concentrating, the feeling of a tight band around his head, and saw fog around the street lights. About 0300 that night he experienced the illusion that a street sign was a person. A short time later he imagined he was a great Negro football player and resented statements made about his ability and the Negro race. By the fifth day his equilibrium was normal, but he had intermittent hypnogogic reveries, such as seeing a path running through a quiet forest and plants in a garden.”
Isbell, H., et al. “An Experimental Study of the Etiology of Rum Fits and Delirium Tremens.” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 16, no. 1 (March 1955): 1-33.
Ross, John J. “Neurological Findings After Prolonged Sleep Deprivation.” Archives of Neurology 12, no. 4 (April 1, 1965): 399–403.
(Thanks, Bob and Patrick.)
Unquote
“I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one western you’ve seen the lot, but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.” — Katharine Whitehorn
Rolling
I drove this car 20,000 miles and used five tires equally in accumulating the mileage. How many miles’ wear did each tire sustain?
Pen Pals
“Guess whose birthday it is today?” Franklin Pierce Adams asked Beatrice Kaufman.
“Yours?” she guessed.
“No, but you’re getting warm,” he said. “It’s Shakespeare’s!”
Mid-Shipman
“Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.
“It is not painted to the life,
For where’s the trowsers blue?
Oh Jones, my dear!–Oh dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?”
“Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,–
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!
“Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I’ve been bit in two.
“You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass–for now, to you
I’m neither here nor there.”
“Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me!
“Don’t fear my ghost will walk o’ nights
To haunt, as people say;
My ghost can’t walk, for, oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!
“Lord! think when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a half,
Without ‘a quarter’s notice.’
“One half is here, the other half
Is near Columbia placed;
Oh! Sally, I have got the whole
Atlantic for my waist.
“But now, adieu–a long adieu!
I’ve solved death’s awful riddle,
And would say more, but I am doomed
To break off in the middle!”
— Thomas Hood, “Sally Simpkin’s Lament,” 1834
Misc
- Most Muppets are left-handed.
- The largest prime number in the Bible is 22273 (Numbers 3:43).
- SEE, HE, and IS are spelled identically in Morse code (ignoring spaces).
- Maine is the only one-syllable state name.
- “More things grow in the garden than the gardener sows.” — Spanish proverb
Fritz Zwicky referred to his colleagues at the Mount Wilson Observatory as “spherical bastards” because they were bastards whichever way one looked at them.
Complaint
Giuseppe Verdi received this letter in May 1872:
Much-honoured Signor Verdi, — The 2nd of this month I went to Parma, drawn there by the sensation made by your opera Aida. So great was my curiosity, that one half-hour before the commencement of the piece, I was already in my place, No. 120. I admired the mise en scène, I heard with pleasure the excellent singers, and I did all in my power to let nothing escape me. At the end of the opera, I asked if I was satisfied, and the answer was ‘No.’ I started back to Reggio, and listened in the railway carriage to the opinions given upon Aida. Nearly all agreed in considering it a work of the first order.
I was then seized with the idea of hearing it again, and on the 4th I returned to Parma; I made unheard-of efforts to get a reserved seat; as the crowd was enormous, I was obliged to throw away five liri to witness the performance in any comfort.
I arrived at this decision about it: it is an opera in which there is absolutely nothing which causes any enthusiasm or excitement, and without the pomp of the spectacle, the public would not stand it to the end. When it has filled the house two or three times, it will be banished to the dust of the archives.
You can now, dear Signor Verdi, picture to yourself my regret at having spent on two occasions thirty-two liri; add to this the aggravating circumstance that I depend on my family, and that this money troubles my rest like a frightful spectre. I therefore frankly address myself to you, in order that you may send me the amount. The account is as follows:–
Hoping that you will deliver me from this embarrassment, I salute you from my heart.
Bertani.
My address: Bertani Prospero, Via San Domenico, No. 5
Verdi asked his publisher to reimburse the man’s expenses, except for his supper (“He might very well take his meals at home”), in return for a written acknowledgment “undertaking to hear my new operas no more, exposing himself no more to the menaces of spectres, and sparing me further traveling expenses.”
A Guilty Face
One morning in 1727, York pubkeeper Hannah Williams found that her writing desk had been opened and a sum of money stolen. As waiter Thomas Geddely disappeared at the same time, there was little doubt as to the robber.
Twelve months later, a man calling himself James Crow arrived in York and took a job as a porter. The townspeople immediately accosted him as Geddely, but he insisted that he didn’t know them, that his name was James Crow, and that he was new to York.
Williams was called for, instantly identified him as Geddely, and accused him of robbing her. The man protested his innocence before a justice of the peace but had no alibi and admitted to a history as a vagabond and a petty rogue. At the trial a servant testified that she had seen him at the robbery scene with a poker in his hand. He swore again that his name was James Crow but was convicted and executed.
Some time later Thomas Geddely was arrested in Dublin on a robbery charge. While in custody he confessed to the robbery at York. A York resident who was visiting Ireland at the time declared that the resemblance between the two men was so great “that it was next to impossible for the nicest eye to have distinguished their persons asunder.”
See Mistaken Identity.