Visitors to the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences in Budapest are greeted by a perpetual book with leaves of water.
See Stairs of Knowledge.
Literature
The Copenhagen Faustparodie
In The Roots of Coincidence, Arthur Koestler mentions that the participants at a 1932 conference on nuclear physics put on a parody of Goethe’s Faust in which Wolfgang Pauli played Mephistopheles. “His Gretchen was the neutrino, whose existence Pauli had predicted, but which had not yet been discovered.”
MEPHISTOPHELES (to Faust):
Beware, beware, of Reason and of Science
Man’s highest powers, unholy in alliance.
You’ll let yourself, through dazzling witchcraft yield
To weird temptations of the quantum field.Enter Gretchen; she sings to Faust. Melody: ‘Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel’ by Schubert.
GRETCHEN:
My rest-mass is zero
My charge is the same
You are my hero
Neutrino’s my name.
There’s more here, including a link to the original script (in German).
Near Miss
I just bumbled into this: In 1978 Isaac Asimov judged a limerick contest run by Mohegan Community College in Norwich, Conn. He chose this as the best of 12,000 entries:
The bustard’s an exquisite fowl,
With minimal reason to growl:
He escapes what would be
Illegitimacy
By grace of a fortunate vowel.
It was written by retired Yale official George D. Vaill. Asimov said, “The idea is very clever and made me laugh, and the one-word fourth line is delightful.”
Podcast Episode 263: Memories of Proust
Confined in a Soviet prison camp in 1941, Polish painter Józef Czapski chose a unique way to cope: He lectured to the other prisoners on Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe Czapski’s ambitious project and the surprising importance of literature to the prisoners of oppressive regimes.
We’ll also race some lemons and puzzle over a woman’s birthdays.
First Principles
The Five Laws of Library Science, proposed by University of Madras librarian S.R. Ranganathan in 1931:
- Books are for use.
- Every person his or her book.
- Every book its reader.
- Save the time of the reader.
- Library is a growing organism.
In 1998 Michael Gorman, past president of the American Library Association, added five modern tenets:
- Libraries serve humanity.
- Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.
- Use technology intelligently to enhance service.
- Protect free access to knowledge.
- Honor the past and create the future.
“If you have a garden and a library,” wrote Cicero, “you have everything you need.”
Procurement
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we’re told explicitly that the creature is “gigantic”; at his birth at Ingolstadt he’s described as 8 feet tall. Where did Victor Frankenstein get a skeleton large enough for a giant?
For that matter, how does the creature clothe himself? He takes some “dress” of Victor’s to wear, yet he “exceeds the height of a man.” How is this possible?
(From John Sutherland, Frankenstein’s Brain, 2018. Dracula has his own puzzles.)
Podcast Episode 259: The Astor Place Riot
The second-bloodiest riot in the history of New York was touched off by a dispute between two Shakespearean actors. Their supporters started a brawl that killed as many as 30 people and changed the institution of theater in American society. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of the Astor Place riot, “one of the strangest episodes in dramatic history.”
We’ll also fertilize a forest and puzzle over some left-handed light bulbs.
House Debate
On seeing two women screaming at one another across an Edinburgh alley, Sydney Smith paused.
“Those two women will never agree,” he said. “They are arguing from different premises.”
Wisdom
Proverbs of the 11th century, from Egbert of Liège’s The Well-Laden Ship:
- Not every cloud you see threatens rain.
- A boy is consumed by envy, an old man by anger.
- A reasonable sufficiency is more righteous than dishonorable riches.
- One does well to distrust a stream, even one that is calm.
- Sometimes an old dog growls the truth.
- It is a hard cheese that the greedy man does not give to his dogs.
- He who cannot conceal, ought not to become a thief.
- Whose bread I eat, his songs I sing.
- All the gold that a king has does not equal this rain.
- No thief will be hanged, if he himself is the judge.
- What earned this one praise gets that one a beating.
- Smoky things appear by day, and fiery things by night.
- The living husband is incensed by praise of the dead one.
- A stupid person who is corrected, immediately hates his admonisher.
- It is not the lowliest of virtues to have placed a limit on your wealth.
- No mother-in-law is pleasing to her daughter-in-law unless she is dead.
- A frog on a throne quickly gives up the honor.
- When you trade one fish for another, one of them stinks.
- Whoever hates his work, surely hated himself first.
- To a man hanging, any delay seems too long.
And “One way or another, brothers, we will all pass from here.”
“Which?”
Submitted by Joseph Hall for Life magazine’s 1915 short story contest:
They were two women, one young, radiant, the other gently, beautifully old.
‘But, Auntie, it’s such fun.’
The older rose.
‘Wait.’
In a moment she had returned. Two faded yellow letters lay upon the young girl’s lap.
‘Read them.’
Wonderingly the girl obeyed. The first read:
Dearest:
I leave you to John. It is plain you care for him. I love you. Just now it seems that life without you is impossible. But I can no longer doubt. If you cared, there would be no doubt. John is my friend. I would rather see you his than any other’s, since you cannot be mine. God bless you.
Will.
The other:
Beloved:
I am leaving you to the better man. For me there can never be another love. But it is best — it is the right thing — and I am, yes, I am glad that it is Will you love instead of me. You cannot be anything but happy with him. With me — but that is a dream I must learn to forget.
As ever and ever,
John.