Niven’s Laws

By science fiction author Larry Niven:

1.a. Never throw shit at an armed man.
1.b. Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.
2. Never fire a laser at a mirror.
3. Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re having fun.
4. F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa.
5. Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
6. It is easier to destroy than create.
7. Any damn fool can predict the past.
8. History never repeats itself.
9. Ethics change with technology.
10. There ain’t no justice.
11. Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.
12. There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.
13. The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.
14. The world’s dullest subjects, in order:
a. Somebody else’s diet.
b. How to make money for a worthy cause.
c. Special Interest Liberation.
15. The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently. (Niven’s corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you’re talking to isn’t necessarily one of them.)
16. Never waste calories (i.e., don’t eat food just because it’s available, or cheap; only eat food you’ll enjoy, because you have to limit overall calorie intake).
17. There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
18. No technique works if it isn’t used.
19. Not responsible for advice not taken.
20. Old age is not for sissies.

See Lessons Learned.

| Literature · Quotations · Society

Practical Philosophy

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Immanuel Kant held up his stockings using suspenders of his own devising. From his friend Ehregott Wasianski:

On this occasion, whilst illustrating Kant’s notions of the animal economy, it may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he never would wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute, which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a watch-pocket, but occupying pretty nearly the same situation as a watch-pocket on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking.

“As might be expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system of the heavens, to occasional derangements; however, by good luck, I was able to apply an easy remedy to these disorders which sometimes threatened to disturb the comfort, and even the serenity, of the great man.”

(Ehregott Andreas Wasianski, Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren, 1804, via Thomas De Quincey, “The Last Days of Immanuel Kant,” 1827.)

| History · Literature · Technology

Also-Ran

Arthur Conan Doyle tells us little about James Moriarty, the criminal mastermind in the Sherlock Holmes stories. But he does mention one intriguing accomplishment in The Valley of Fear:

Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?

Mathematicians Alain Goriely and Simon P. Norton have both pointed out that in 1887 King Oscar II of Sweden offered a bounty for the solution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics. Doyle’s story was set in 1888, so it’s possible that Moriarty had intended his book as his entry in this contest.

If he did, he was disappointed — the prize went to Henri Poincaré.

| Literature · Science & Math

Signifying Nothing

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If … we were asked to select one monument of human civilization that should survive to some future age … we should probably choose the works of Shakespeare. In them we recognize the truest portrait and best memorial of man. Yet the archæologists of that future age … would misconceive our life in one important respect. They would hardly understand that man had had a religion. …

Shakespeare could be idealistic when he dreamed, as he could be spiritual when he reflected. … It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that we should have to search through all the works of Shakespeare to find half a dozen passages that have so much as a religious sound, and that even these passages, upon examination, should prove not to be the expression of any deep religious conception. If Shakespeare had been without metaphysical capacity, or without moral maturity, we could have explained his strange insensibility to religion; but as it is, we must marvel at his indifference and ask ourselves what can be the causes of it.

— George Santayana, “The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare,” in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900

| Literature · Religion

To the Point

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In 1755 Samuel Richardson published an index of the “moral and instructive sentiments, maxims, cautions and reflexions” in his novels Pamela, Clarissa, and The History of Sir Charles Grandison, so you can receive all the edification without actually reading them:

Courage.

One of the characteristics of a good man, is, to be studious to avoid danger, and to be unappalled in it, iv. 104. [276].
In a case of inevitable danger, the way to avoid it, is not to appear to be intimidated. One man’s fear gives another man Courage, v. 289. [vi. 267].
Courage is a glorious quality when it is divested of rashness, and founded on integrity of life and manners, v. 296. [vi. 274].
But otherwise founded, it is rather to be called savageness and brutality, than Courage, ibid.
See Challenges. Duelling. Good Man. Magnanimity.

The whole thing is here. See Asides.

| Literature

“A Man of Principle”

During a shower of rain the Keeper of a Zoölogical garden observed a Man of Principle crouching beneath the belly of the ostrich, which had drawn itself up to its full height to sleep.

‘Why, my dear sir,’ said the Keeper, ‘if you fear to get wet you’d better creep into the pouch of yonder female kangaroo — the Saltatrix mackintosha — for if that ostrich wakes he will kick you to death in a moment!’

‘I can’t help that,’ the Man of Principle replied, with that lofty scorn of practical considerations distinguishing his species. ‘He may kick me to death if he wish, but until he does he shall give me shelter from the storm. He has swallowed my umbrella.’

— Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables, 1899

| Literature · Society

Worldly Wisdom

Proverbs from around the world:

  • Gray hair is a sign of age, not wisdom. (Greek)
  • A smiling face is half the meal. (Latvia)
  • Fear has big eyes. (Russia)
  • Adversity makes a man wise, not rich. (Romania)
  • The child tells what is in the house. (Albania)
  • Love makes time pass; time makes love pass. (France)
  • The seeds of the day are best planted in the first hour. (Dutch)
  • It is easier to criticize art than to create it. (Spain)
  • A house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman. (Mexico)
  • All fear is bondage. (England)
  • Nature is better than a middling doctor. (China)
  • The miles are longer at night. (German)
  • Respect is given to wealth, not to men. (Lebanon)
  • If everyone swept in front of his house, the whole town would be clean. (Poland)
  • Even the handsome are divorced. (Egypt)

“With art and knavery we live through half the year,” the Italians say. “With knavery and art we live through the other.”

| Literature · Society

101

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Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules of writing:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

“The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor. She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”

(From his introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box. Thanks, Sharon.)

| Literature

Nonsense Cookery

Edward Lear’s recipe for amblongus pie, 1872:

Take 4 pounds (say 4 1-2 pounds) of fresh Amblongusses, and put them in a small pipkin.

Cover them with water, and boil them for 8 hours incessantly; after which add 2 pints of new milk, and proceed to boil for 4 hours more.

When you have ascertained that the Amblongusses are quite soft, take them out, and place them in a wide pan, taking care to shake them well previously.

Grate some nutmeg over the surface, and cover them carefully with powdered gingerbread, curry-powder, and a sufficient quantity of Cayenne pepper.

Remove the pan into the next room, and place it on the floor. Bring it back again, and let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Shake the pan violently till all the Amblongusses have become of a pale purple colour.

Then, having prepared the paste, insert the whole carefully; adding at the same time a small pigeon, 2 slices of beef, 4 cauliflowers, and any number of oysters.

Watch patiently till the crust begins to rise, and add a pinch of salt from time to time.

Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as fast as possible.

| Literature