Precocious

Though she died at age 8, Marjory Fleming (1803-1811) had the soul of a mature writer. Her diary became hugely popular in Victorian London:

I am now going to tell you the horrible and wretched plaege that my multiplication table gives me; you cant conceive it. The most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7; it is what nature itself cant endure.

And she was rumored to be the favorite poet of Walter Scott, who reportedly told her aunt, “Her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.”

Of summer I am very fond,
And love to bathe into a pond;
The look of sunshine dies away,
And will not let me out to play;
I love the morning’s sun to spy
Glittering through the casement’s eye,
The rays of light are very sweet,
And puts away the taste of meat;
The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,
And makes us like for to be living.

In her last illness she offered to recite a poem for her father; when he asked her to choose one, she startled him with Burns’ “Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?”

See also An Unacknowledged Genius and Child’s Play.

| Literature

You’re Welcome

You’d pay $1,000 to witness my mastery of the black arts, wouldn’t you? Of course you would.

  1. Buy a brand-new deck of cards.
  2. Discard the jokers, cut the deck 13 times, and deal it into 13 piles.
  3. Now stand back … Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
  4. Look at the cards. Presto! They have magically grouped themselves by value — all the aces are in one pile, kings in another, etc.

You owe me $1,000.

| Entertainment · Science & Math

Applied Chemistry

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxyphenbutazone.png

Oxyphenbutazone is a metabolite of phenylbutazone.

It’s also the biggest goldmine in Scrabble — play it across three Triple Word Score squares, joining eight tiles that have already been played and extending seven existing words, and you’ll earn 1,780 points with a single play.

See also Mouthful and Downsized.

| Language

Time Is Money

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nicolas_de_Largilli%C3%A8re_003.jpg

Claude Sanguin, a French poet, who died at the close of the last century, having had his house consumed by lightning, sent the following ingenious card to Louis XIV on the occasion. The monarch at once felt the delicacy of the poet’s verses, and the distress of his situation, and cheerfully ordered him the one thousand crowns which were the object of his demand.

To engage in your matters belongs not to me,
This, Sire, inexcusable freedom would be;
But yet, when reviewing my miseries past,
Of your majesty’s income the total I cast;
All counted, (I’ve still the remembrance quite clear,)
Your revenue’s one hundred millions a year;
Hence one hundred thousand per day in your pow’r,
Divided, brings four thousand crowns to each hour,
To answer the calls of my present distress,
Which lightning has caused in my country recess,
May I be allow’d to request, noble Sire,
Of your time fifteen minutes, before I expire?

— I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1866

| Poems · Society

Playing Favorites

A tied football match in southern Congo came to an unexpected conclusion on Oct. 28, 1998, when a lightning bolt struck and killed all 11 members of the visiting team.

“The athletes from [home team] Basanga curiously came out of this catastrophe unscathed,” reported the Kinshasa newspaper L’Avenir.

“The exact nature of the lightning has divided the population in this region, which is known for its use of fetishes in football.”

| Death · Entertainment · Oddities

Orwell That Ends Well

Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy, rendered in Newspeak by J.A. Lindon:

Person or unperson. Query.
Unbellyfeel Ingsoc, oldthink, ownthink,
(PLUSUNGOOD THOUGHTCRIME. PENALTY: UNLIFE)
Or Ingsoc foolthink doubleplusungood
Own unlife bellyfeel, make self unlifer,
Unperson, unofficial. (PENALTY: JOYCAMP)
Only unwake: become unlifer. (FOOLTHINK)
Unwake, and thusby unperform our Ingsoc duty
(GOODWISE NOTE: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU)
Seems goodthink (DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD THOUGHTCRIME).
Unwake: become unlifer.
Unwake — ungoodwise dream (PLUS-CERTAINFUL
SELF-BRINGED RESULT) —
Yes, there is the unsmoothness —
Correctful treatment in the Miniluv,
Post fail-maked self unlifer with a cord,
Is allsuch stopful — yes, there is the reason
We still goodwise perform our Ingsoc duty
Until we’re vaporized, although (CRIMETHINK)
Unbellyfeeling Ingsoc and Big Brother,
The Junior Anti-Sex League, rationed goods,
Sternness of Inner Party and its just
And ungood “watch and query” note on us,
We seemcould oldthink “free” perhaps become
With a bigneedle. (FOOLTHINK) Who would work,
Prolewise and sweatful, doubleplusunfresh,
For Ingsoc if he bellyfeeled to know
Correctful treatment in the Miniluv
That joyful place from which so few return,
And those how bigwise changed? Plusgooderwise
We live goodthinkful til some Spy reports us,
For IGNORANCE is STRENGTH, FREEDOM is SLAVERY,
And WAR (against the Party) brings NO PEACE
Inside the Miniluv till we become
Unpersons (now OFFICIAL). But unhard!
The clingful and face-crimewise-good-to-see
Ophelia! Joysexful girl, forget
My many faults in your Two Minutes Hate!

See also Hamlet in Klingon and GRKTRGDY.

| Language · Literature

The Pup Tent Problem

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

In 1980 the Educational Testing Service offered this question on an aptitude test:

In pyramids ABCD and EFGHI shown above, all faces except base FGHI are equilateral triangles of equal size. If face ABC were placed on face EFG so that the vertices of the triangles coincide, how many exposed faces would the resulting solid have?

(A) Five (B) Six (C) Seven (D) Eight (E) Nine

Which is correct?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Three-Sided Story

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

Thomas Tresham spent 15 years in prison for his Catholicism, and when he got out in 1593 he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Rather than convert to Protestantism, he designed the Rushton Triangular Lodge to reflect his belief in the Holy Trinity.

Each of the three-sided building’s three walls is 33 feet long and sports three gables, three-sided windows, a trio of gargoyles, and a 33-letter Latin inscription. Even the chimney is triangular.

Lest anyone miss the point, Tresham had the front door inscribed Tres testimonium dant. It means “The number three bears witness.”

| Oddities · Religion

Pan King

Excerpts from the reviews of James William Davison, music editor of the London Times from 1846 to 1878:

  • “Perhaps a more overrated man never existed than this same Schubert.”
  • “[Schumann is] the very opposite of good.”
  • “We should rather be inclined to class [Berlioz] a daring lunatic than as a sound, healthy musician.”
  • “Never was a writer of operas so destitute of real invention, so destitute in power or so wanting in the musician’s skill [as Verdi].”
  • “The entire works of Chopin present a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and excruciating cacophony.”
  • “[Wagner] is such queer stuff that criticism would be thrown away upon it.”
  • “He who imagines that, at any time within the last half century Franz Liszt was a musical composer must entertain either very odd notions of art or must be, qua music, an absolute ignoramus.”

But: “[William Sterndale Bennett] lives with us in his works. The music he created conquered, in some sense, the power of death.”

| Art · Society