Outreach

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Dean_Howells_in_1866.jpg

In 1880 Mark Twain invited William Dean Howells to join him in a club in which “the first & main qualification for membership is modesty.”

“At present,” he wrote, “I am the only member; & as the modesty required must be of a quite aggravated type, the enterprize did seem for a time doomed to stop dead still with myself, for lack of further material; but upon reflection I have come to the conclusion that you are eligible.”

Howells responded, “The only reason I have for not joining the Modest Club is that I am too modest: that is, I am afraid that I am not modest enough. … If you think I am not too modest, you may put my name down, and I will try to think the same of you.”

| Literature

Exit Strategies

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1353560

The Roman senator who dies as a result of plunging a dagger into his heart commits suicide. He kills himself. But what about the twentieth-century suicide who places his head on the railway line and is crushed to death by the train he normally catches each morning to the office? Wasn’t he killed by the train? Then did he kill himself into the bargain too? Exactly what was it that killed him? What do you have to have done in order to count as having killed yourself?

— T.S. Champlin, Reflexive Paradoxes, 1988

| Death · Science & Math

Gunslinger Chic

http://www.google.com/patents?id=bxduAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

With Mark L. Winn’s shampooing apparatus, “a person may have his hair washed, brushed, showered with water, and, lastly, dried while retaining an easy and comfortable sitting position.” That would be impressive today, but Winn patented this in 1871. Essentially it consists of a watertight helmet in which the hair is washed and then rinsed with a detachable sprinkler, with the dirty water discharged through a pipe; there’s no need for a sink.

The drier is “heated by caloric introduced through pipes, or by a flame from a spirit-lamp.” I wonder whether he tested this …

| Technology

This Scepter’d Isle

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Death_of_Nelson.jpg

English history as reported by American schoolchildren in 1887, from Caroline Bigelow Le Row, English as She Is Taught: Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools:

  • “England was named by the Angels.”
  • “The Celts were driven out of England into Whales.”
  • “Julius Caesar invaded England 400 years B.C. The English condition was in a rude state.”
  • “The Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius Caesar.”
  • “The Britains conquered Julius Caesar and drove him ignominiously from his dominions.”
  • “The Britons founded the Druids. They ust to hold religious services out of doors.”
  • “The Druids were supposed to be Roman Catholicks.”
  • “The Crusaders were fanatics who fought in tournaments.”
  • “The Habeas Corpus Act said that a body whether alive or dead could be produced in court.”
  • “Alfred the Great reigned 872 years. He was distinguished for letting some buckwheat cakes burn and the lady scolded him.”
  • “Rufus was named William on account of his red hair. He established the curfew fire bell.”
  • “William the Conqueror was the first of the Mormons.”
  • “Edward the black Prince was famous for founding chivalry.”
  • “Chivalry is a fight on horseback between two horsemen in an open plain.”
  • “A night errant is a man who goes around in the night in search of adventures.”
  • “The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity.”
  • “The War of the Roses was between the white and the red.”
  • “Henry Eight was famous for being a great widower having lost several wives.”
  • “Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin and was beheaded after a few days.”
  • “Queen Mary married the Dolphin.”
  • “Elizabeth was called the Virgin queen because of her many accomplishments and she had a great many fine dresses.”
  • “The unfortunate Charles First was executed and after he was beheaded he held it up exclaiming Behold the head of a trater!”
  • “Cromwell was only a parallel with Bonaparte.”
  • “Queen Victoria was the 4th son of George Third the Duke of Kent.”
  • “John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.”
  • “Lord James Gordon Bennett instigated the Gordon Riots.”
| History

“Stealing the Bell Ropes”

A puzzle by Henry Dudeney:

A robber broke into the belfry of a church, and though he had nothing to assist him but his pocket-knife, he contrived to steal nearly the complete lengths of the two bell-ropes, which passed through holes in the lofty boarded ceiling. How did he effect his purpose? Of course, there was no ladder or aught else to assist him. It is easy to understand that he might steal one rope and slide down the other, but how he cut the two, or any considerable portion of them, without a bad fall, is perplexing.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

The Arrow Paradox

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arrow_(PSF).png

At any given instant, an arrow in flight is where it is, occupying a space equal to itself. It cannot move during the instant, for that would require the instant to have parts.

This seems to mean that motion is impossible. Aristotle writes, “If everything, when it is behaving in a uniform manner, is continually either moving or at rest, but what is moving is always in the now, then the moving arrow is motionless.”

Bertrand Russell adds, “It is never moving, but in some miraculous way the change of position has to occur between the instants, that is to say, not at any time whatever. … The more the difficulty is meditated, the more real it becomes.”

| Science & Math

Unquote

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lion_tamer_(LOC_pga.03749).jpg

“I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat.” — George Bernard Shaw

| Quotations

Progress

http://books.google.com/books?id=UeIvAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

From an 1891 Strand article on curious inventions:

  • To combat seasickness, “The passenger’s chair is attached to a balloon, the chair being connected to the deck by a ball and socket joint; to keep the balloon from swaying too much, it is attached to a rod above.”
  • A four-poster bed that can be converted into a bath. “The canopy above forms the vessel for the shower bath, the water being pumped up through a pipe in one of the four uprights.”
  • Below, a military cloak that doubles as a close tent. “The cloak can be suspended by the hood, holes can be made in the lower edge of the cloak for the passage of pegs, and the cold may be kept out by means of the customary buttons and buttonholes.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=UeIvAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

“On the first blush this sounds rather a good idea, and almost practicable, till the thing is looked into more closely. We then find that the cloak must either be very, very large for the wearer, or, on the other hand, the tent must be very, very small for the occupant. … We are not told what happens to the sleeves when used as a tent; perhaps one is stuffed with straw to keep out the cold, the other being used as a chimney or ventilator!”

| Technology

Achilles Recalled

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tortoise_(PSF).png

A fragment from Lewis Carroll, Nov. 22, 1874:

A. And thus your favourite paradox, my dear D., is finally disproved of, and Achilles and the Tortoise will walk off hand in hand. No argument of any sort can be maintained, which would prove him not to overtake it.

D. No mathematical argument, you mean; for, if you permit me a classical one, I will contend that the Tortoise was nothing but the “Testudo” of the ancients, a machine of common use in Sieges — that it was at that moment moving against the walls of Troy — and that the true reason why Achilles did not overtake it was simply that he was sulking in his tent and never went near it.

S. I beg to limit this discussion to mathematical argument.

D. Be it so. And the mathematical argument you dispose of, as I understand you, by the assertion that we find ourselves at last among indivisible distances and indivisible periods of time, and thus you propose to plunge us, however reluctant we may be to take the leap, into the dark abyss of the Inconceivable?

S. That is my solution of the paradox.

D. Granting, for argument’s sake, that the paradox is thus finally disposed of, let me ask you a question or two. These indivisible distances — are they equal, or unequal?

S. Am I bound to choose one or other of these categories?

D. I fear I can offer you no third.

S. Well then, as I do not clearly see what you are aiming at, I will, for the present, say “unequal,” reserving to myself however the right of substituting “equal” should I see reason to do so.

D. The privilege is an unusual one, but I will not object to your exercising it. Let them then be: unequal. Now take two of these unequal distances: lay them side by side, so as to coincide at one end: will they coincide at the other end also?

S. Surely not.

D. There will therefore be a difference between them: and this difference, being homogeneous with the things differing, will itself be a distance?

S. I cannot deny it.

D. Divisible, shall we say? Or indivisible?

S. (laughing) Indivisible, of course. You would not wish me to imagine a divisible distance less than an indivisible one?

D. You shall please yourself in that matter. Let me now add together these two lesser indivisible distances. Will their sum total be divisible or indivisible, think you?

S. (after a pause) It occurs to me that I would rather take the other horn of your dilemma, and say that these indivisible distances are all equal.

D. With all my heart. They shall now be all equal. And we will suppose that Achilles has just passed over one of the indivisible distances. What time would you say that he occupied in doing so?

S. An indivisible time, clearly.

D. But the Tortoise had previously passed over the same indivisible distance: how long do you suppose he took to do it?

S. As he travelled at only half the pace of Achilles, it is evident that he required two of our indivisible periods of time.

D. No doubt. But now tell me — at the end of the first of these indivisible periods of time, where had the Tortoise got to?

S. I will trouble you to pass the wine. I think I should like another half-glass of sherry.

| Science & Math

Two Chess Problems

In a chess game, White plays 1. f3 2. Kf2 3. Kg3 4. Kh4. Black’s fourth move checkmates White. What is the game?

1. f3 e5 2. Kf2 Qf6 3. Kg3 Qxf3+! 4. Kh4 Be7#

suicide chess problem

White’s play is so suicidal that the task sounds easy, but “this problem is almost impossibly difficult because Qxf3+ is such a horrible move by normal chess standards,” writes former U.S. champion Stuart Rachels. “It is hard for a competent player to consciously consider it.”

Here’s another problem by Sam Loyd:

loyd mate in 2

White to mate in two moves. In 1907 J.H. Blackburne chose this as one of his all-time favorite problems. “It was first published in this country about fifty years ago, and greatly puzzled the solvers of that day, the idea then being entirely new.”

It’s a perfectly fair two-mover — there’s no trickery.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles