I turn off the light when I leave the room and I turn it on again when I come back in a moment later. Is the shadow of the statue on the table the same one before and after the light is off? If we say it’s the same, then we accept the existence of strange, intermittent entities (in the same family as the flashing of the turn-signal light on a car). If we don’t like that idea, then we have to say that there are two different things: the shadow that was present before I turned off the light and the shadow present after I turn it on again. What’s different about them?

— Roberto Casati, The Shadow Club, 2003

(We might distinguish the two by observing that different photons are hitting the statue, but this seems to mean that a new shadow is produced every instant, and that doesn’t sound right either.)

From a 1915 examination of Darkie, a blind New Zealand terrier who barked answers to his master’s queries:

From the local Lyttelton Times, June 12:

Apparently the dog was also clairvoyant:

Further questions successfully answered: “How many roods in one acre? How many furlongs in one mile? How many ounces in one pound avoirdupois? How many troy ounces? How many lbs. in one stone? What is the day of the month? What is the month of the year? What is the year over 1900?”

The Society for Psychical Research raised the prospect that the dog was merely continuing to respond until it received a cue to stop, as other performing animals had been discovered to do. It asked its New Zealand correspondent to test this hypothesis, but as far as I can tell he never did.

In the illuminated manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries, the margins are often decorated with images of armed knights fighting snails. “This has created a good deal of puzzlement amongst art historians and book historians, wondering just what do they mean?” University of York scholar Kenneth Clarke told the BBC.

“The basic idea is the overturning of existing or expected hierarchies,” suggested University of Chicago art historian Marian Bleeke. “It is supposed to be surprising and even funny — I think we get that implicitly today,” she says. Art historian Lilian Randall found 70 examples in 29 books, most printed between 1290 and 1310, commonly in France.

Perhaps the fight represents a struggle between classes, or illustrates cowardice. Possibly it’s political comment whose meaning has been lost. It may even represent the Resurrection. The meaning is still a matter of debate.

The British Library has a gallery.

(Thanks, Carsten.)

‘The tree from which these pieces were taken was recently cut down and broken up for firewood, when at six and a half inches below the bark the carving was found in the solid timber. About fifty or a hundred years ago the letters and other figures were cut in the bark, with the usual result in the death of a thin layer of the exposed wood, which became surrounded by brown colouring matter. In time the bark grew over this, and finally covered it with fresh wood.’ — Prof. Stewart, of the Royal College of Surgeons, has been good enough to supply us with this interesting photograph.

— Strand, July 1903