Finders’ Fees

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knuth-check2.png

Donald Knuth is so revered among computer scientists that they won’t cash his checks.

Knuth offers a standard reward of $2.56 (one “hexadecimal dollar”) to the first finder of each error in his published books. Since 1981 he has written more than $20,000 in checks, but most of the recipients have simply framed them as points of pride.

“There’s one man who lives near Frankfurt who would probably have more than $1,000 if he cashed all the checks I’ve sent him,” Knuth said in an October 2001 lecture. “Even if everybody cashed their checks, it would still be more than worth it to me to know that my books are getting better.”

| Science & Math

Epimenides Soused

Somebody had told me of a dealer in gin who, having had his attention roused to the enormous waste of liquor caused by the unsteady hands of drunkards, invented a counter which, through a simple set of contrivances, gathered into a common reservoir all the spillings that previously had run to waste. … It struck me, therefore, on reviewing this case, that the more the people drank, the more they would titubate, by which word it was that I expressed the reeling and stumbling of intoxication. … [T]he more they titubated, the more they would spill; and the more they spilt, the more, it is clear, they did not drink. … Yet, again, if they drank nothing worth speaking of, how could they titubate? Clearly they could not; and, not titubating, they could have had no reason for spilling, in which case they must have drunk the whole–that is, they must have drunk to the whole excess imputed, which doing, they were dead drunk, and must have titubated to extremity, which doing, they must have spilt nearly the whole. … ‘And so round again,’ as my lord the bishop pleasantly expresses it, in secula seculorum.

— Thomas de Quincey, Essays on Philosophical Writers, 1856

| Science & Math

The Value of a Dollar

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inflaci%C3%B3_utan_1946.jpg

You might have had trouble making change in postwar Hungary — the national currency, the pengo, was plunging so quickly in value that prices doubled every 15 hours.

To simplify calculations, the government eventually introduced a banknote worth 100 quintillion pengo. It was worth 20 American cents.

Things only got worse. By July 1946, the monthly inflation rate had reached 41,900,000,000,000,000 percent, and, unbelievably, the combined value of all Hungarian banknotes equaled one-thousandth of a U.S. dollar.

In desperation the government gave up and introduced a new currency, the forint. In the end you could get 1 new forint by trading in 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (400 octillion) pengo.

That’s the all-time record for hyperinflation — but modern Zimbabwe is not far behind. In fact, because Hungary couldn’t fit all 20 zeroes on that banknote, the 2006 Zimbabwean bill below holds the record for depicted zeroes on a national currency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zimbabwe_$100_trillion_2009_Obverse.jpg

| History · Society

Reunited

In 1719 a body, preserved from corruption by the vitriolic water with which it had been saturated, was found in an abandoned part of the Fahlun mines [of Sweden]. When it had been brought up to the surface, the whole neighbourhood flocked together to see it; but nobody could recognise a lost friend or kinsman in its young and handsome features. At length an old woman, more than 80 years of age, approached with tottering steps, and casting a glance on the corpse, uttered a piercing shriek and fell senseless on the ground. She had instantly recognised her affianced lover, who had mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years previously, but whose image she still bore in her faithful memory. As he was not employed in the mines, no search had been made for him underground at the time. Most probably he had fallen, by some accident, into one of the numerous crevices by which the surface of the mines is traversed. Thus the tottering woman, weighed down with the double burden of infirmity and age, saw once more the face of her lover as she had looked upon it in the days of her youth.

— Georg Hartwig, The Subterranean World, 1871

| Oddities

Special Delivery

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

This is the Flammarion woodcut, so named because it first appeared in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’Atmosphère. No one knows who created it; it’s thought to depict a medieval pilgrim who discovers the point where earth and sky meet.

Flammarion’s book itself seemed touched by magic. As the astronomer was completing a chapter on the force of the wind, a sudden gale blew the last few pages out the window and off in a whirlwind among the trees. Then a downpour started, and Flammarion gave them up as lost.

He was astonished, then, a few days later when his printer delivered the full chapter, with no pages missing.

It seems the porter who normally brought Flammarion’s proof sheets had been returning to his office when he noticed the sodden manuscript leaves on the ground. He assumed that he himself had dropped them and so had collected them and carried them to the printer without telling anyone.

“Remember,” Flammarion writes, “it was a chapter on the strange doings of the wind.”

| Art · Literature

Unquote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ravel_bolero_drum_rhythtm2.png

Ravel’s Bolero I submit as the most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music. From the beginning to the end of its 339 measures it is simply the incredible repetition of the same rhythm … and above it the blatant recurrence of an overwhelmingly vulgar cabaret tune that is little removed, in every essential of character, from the wail of an obstreperous back-alley cat.

— American Mercury, 1932

| Quotations

Hands Up?

Beginning poker players are often shown a table like this:

"poker frequencies - no wild cards

It’s straightforward enough, assigning a hierarchy to the hands based on the likelihood of their appearance. But a strange thing happens when wild cards are introduced. Suppose we add one wild joker:

poker frequencies - one wild joker

Now three of a kind is more likely (and thus less valuable) than two pair. Well, can we just reverse their places in the table? No, we can’t, because the wild card permits some players to reinterpret their hands. If you’re holding 6♠ 6♥ 7♣ 10♦ plus the joker, and we change the table, you’ll simply decide you’re holding two pair rather than three of a kind. So will everyone in your position. In fact, if we recalculate the odds with this expectation, we find that two pair has again become the more likely hand (13:1 vs. 34:1).

This can go on all day. Whenever a hand is declared “rare” it becomes popular — and thus not rare. The bottom line is that when wild cards are allowed, it becomes impossible to rank hands based on frequency.

From Julian Havil, Impossible?, 2008.

| Science & Math

Crossing the Line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crossing_the_Line_Ceremony,_USS_Blue_Ridge_(LCC_19)_on_16_May_2008.JPG

In the navy, you’re not a true sailor until you’ve crossed the equator. So whenever a ship makes the crossing, it holds a ceremony in which a sailor representing “King Neptune” challenges “pollywogs” for invading his domain, and there follow two days of general hazing from which the newbies emerge “shellbacks.”

In the centuries since this started, there has emerged a kind of graduate school of advanced crossings. Cross the equator at the international date line and you become a golden shellback; cross it at the prime meridian, near West Africa, and you’re an emerald shellback.

This becomes an exercise in spherical geometry. Presumably a member of the Order of Magellan (a sailor who has circled the globe) automatically joins the Order of the Golden Dragon (for crossing the international date line) unless he’s also joined the Orders of the Blue Nose and the Red Nose (for crossing the Arctic and Antarctic Circles). There must be a chart somewhere.

| Oddities · Society