Temporary rules adopted by London’s Richmond Golf Club during the Battle of Britain:

I had my doubts about this, but the rules are acknowledged by the club itself. While we’re at it: In A Wodehouse Handbook, N.T.P. Murphy notes two unusual tournament rules at the annual Bering Sea Ice Classic in Nome, Alaska:

• If a player hits a polar bear, he is penalized three strokes.
• If a player hits a polar bear and retrieves his ball, he is awarded five strokes.

Apparently those are local rules: In Extreme Golf, Duncan Lennard notes that officials of the World Ice Golf Championship actually wrote to the game’s governing body, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, to ask what to do about polar bears, and received the ruling that “in the event of a polar bear wandering onto the ice golf course, the same safety procedure should be followed as for rattlesnakes and ants elsewhere in the world” — a free drop out of harm’s way.

This illusion was discovered by University of California psychologist Diana Deutsch. Listen first with the left and right channels in balance, then isolate each ear. Though the pattern in each channel jumps around in pitch, when they’re combined we tend to hear two smooth scales. Why?

“It is as though the sounds gravitate towards neighbours, where ‘neighbourhood’ is defined not by the physical proximity of the causative events, but by adjacent places on the pitch spectrum,” writes philosopher Roger Scruton. “Yet the sequences as heard are played into neither ear, and represent no causally unified process in the physical world. The auditory Gestalt is not merely incongruous with the physical events that produce it. It is organized according to principles that are intrinsic to the world of sounds, and which would be operative even if there were no physical events that could be identified as the causes of the individual sounds.”

(Roger Scruton, “Thoughts on Rhythm,” in Kathleen Stock, ed., Philosophers on Music, 2007.)

Reader Colin Brown sent this in: In the Harvard Libraries in 2008 he checked out a history of Tillamook County, Oregon, and of cheesemaking in particular, issued in the 1930s by the Oregon Journal. There were two volumes: Volume One was a book titled Cheese Cheddar, and in place of Volume Two he found a note taped to the inside cover:

Note for the Cataloguer:

Vol. II of this work was a two pound piece of Cheddar Cheese. The Librarian can attest to its excellent quality and to the fact that it no longer exists. Sic transit gloria caseii.

A.C.R.

Dec. 31, 1933

“The book was noted as a personal gift of Charles H. Taylor, Jr., but it was unclear whose initials those were on the added sheet,” Colin writes. “When I checked the book out in 2008, it had only been checked out one other time since its donation (in 1944).”

He adds, “I informed the library and they have archived it in their protected section of the Widener Depository for unusual addenda or marginal notes.”

(Thanks, Colin.)

A British officer in the 44th regiment, who had occasion, when in Paris, to pass one of the bridges across the Seine, had his boots, which had been previously well polished, dirtied by a poodle Dog rubbing against them. He in consequence went to a man who was stationed on the bridge, and had them cleaned. The same circumstance having occurred more than once, his curiosity was excited, and he watched the Dog. He saw him roll himself in the mud of the river, and then watch for a person with well polished boots, against which he contrived to rub himself. Finding that the shoeblack was the owner of the Dog, he taxed him with the artifice; and, after a little hesitation, he confessed that he had taught the Dog the trick in order to procure customers for himself. The officer being much struck with the Dog’s sagacity, purchased him at a high price, and brought him to England. He kept him tied up in London for some time, and then released him. The dog remained with him a day or two, and then made his escape. A fortnight afterwards he was found with his former master, pursuing his old trade on the bridge.

— Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Tales of Animals, 1835

A conundrum by Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit:

In several years, a young Russian will inherit vast estates. Because he has socialist ideals, he intends, now, to give the land to the peasants. But he knows that in time his ideals may fade. To guard against this possibility, he does two things. He first signs a legal document, which will automatically give away the land, and which can be revoked only with his wife’s consent. He then says to his wife, ‘Promise me that, if I ever change my mind, and ask you to revoke this document, you will not consent.’ He adds, ‘I regard my ideals as essential to me. If I lose these ideals, I want you to think that I cease to exist. I want you to regard your husband then, not as me, the man who asks for this promise, but only as his corrupted later self. Promise me that you will not do what he asks.’

She agrees. In time the Russian’s ideals fade, and when he inherits the land he asks his wife to revoke the document, declaring that he releases her from her earlier commitment. What is her obligation here? She had made her promise to her earlier husband, but is that a different person from the man before her now? In her view, the man to whom she made her promise no longer exists, and so cannot release her from her obligation. Is this right? If a person is a succession of earlier and later selves, does a promise attach to a person or to a self?

(Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 1984. See The Ulysses Contract.)