Insights

la rochefoucauld

Maxims of La Rochefoucauld:

  • “Jealousy is in some sort rational and just; since it only aims at the Preservation of a Good which belongs, or which we think belongs, to us: Whereas Envy is a Frenzy that cannot bear the Good of others.”
  • “Good Sense should be the Test of all Rules, both ancient and modern; whatever is incompatible therewith is false.”
  • “Avarice is more opposite to Economy than Liberality.”
  • “We ought to be able to answer for our Fortune, to be able to answer for what we shall do.”
  • “The most violent Passions have their Intermissions; Vanity only gives us no Respite.”
  • “‘Tis more difficult to conceal the Sensations we have, than to feign those we have not.”
  • “We should have but little Pleasure were we never to flatter ourselves.”
  • “We love much better those, who endeavour to imitate us, than those who strive to equal us. For Imitation is a Sign of Esteem, but Competition of Envy.”
  • “Whatever Difference may appear in Men’s Fortunes, there is nevertheless a certain Compensation of Good and Ill that makes all equal.”

And “The common Foible of old People who have been handsome, is to forget that they are no longer so.”

| Literature · Quotations

Aha!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rostocker_Pfeilstorch.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1822, when Europeans were still searching for an explanation for the annual disappearance of some bird species, a white stork appeared bearing a central African arrow in its neck. This helped to show that some birds migrate long distances for the winter.

The stuffed stork can be seen today at the University of Rostock, where it bears the magnificent name Rostocker Pfeilstorch (“arrow stork from Rostock”).

| Science & Math

Kjeragbolten

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_man_standing_on_Kjeragbolten.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

During the last glacial period, at around 50,000 B.C., a 5-cubic-meter boulder became wedged into a crevasse in Scandinavia, just southwest of the village of Lysebotn in western Norway.

The boulder is accessible to tourists, but be careful: There are no fences, and the abyss below is 984 meters deep.

| Oddities

Contact at a Distance

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During daylight hours on the Western Front, soldiers in World War I regularly inspected the no-man’s-land that lay between the trenches. To do this they used either telescopes slid between the sandbag defenses or periscopes, which could be raised above the parapet to give a view of the field via a pair of reflecting mirrors. Normally there was nothing to see, but Brigadier Philip Mortimer of the 3rd Meerut Divisional Train had a start one day while peering through a telescope:

I actually saw as clear as daylight, the reflection in the top mirror of his periscope, a German officer’s head as he searched our trenches through his periscope, a most uncanny sight — the grey peaked cap and face as he looked down into the bottom mirror could be clearly seen.

“It was decided to ‘strafe’ the periscope with a Maxim which after being trained on it carefully was let off to the tune of about 15 rounds. The periscope immediately disappeared.”

(From Richard van Emden, Meeting the Enemy, 2013.)

| Technology

Do Your Best

Rules of the ill-understood East Anglian pub sport known as dwile flonking:

A “jobanowl,” or referee, is chosen (preferably a “dull-witted person”), and the two teams toss a sugar beet to decide who flonks first. The jobanowl begins play by shouting, “Here y’go t’gither!”

The flonker stands in the center with the “driveller,” a three-foot hazel pole topped with a dwile, or cloth. While the opposing team joins hands and dances in a circle around the flonker (“girting”), the flonker spins in the opposite direction and, at a chosen moment, flonks the dwile at them. He scores 3 points for a “wanton” (a direct hit on a girter’s head), 2 for a “morther” (a hit to the body), and 1 for a “ripper” (a hit to the leg). 1 point is deducted from either team for each person who remains sober at the end of the game.

If the dwile hits no one (known as a “swadge”), the girters (well, the opponents, who have now ceased girting) pass the dwile from hand to hand chanting “pot pot pot” while the flonker drinks from an ale-filled chamber pot.

The game ends when each team has had a chance at flonking the dwile (an interval known as a “snurd”). During play the jobanowl can choose to change the direction of the girters and can order any player to drink who is judged not to be taking the game seriously enough.

The Lewes Arms sponsors an annual match between its regulars and the thespians of the Lewes Operatic Society. “The rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested.”

| Entertainment

Proof

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When inventor Guy Otis Brewster offered his Brewster Body Shield to the soldiers of World War I, he demonstrated its efficacy by standing before a Lewis machine gun firing bullets at full velocity, about 2,700 feet per second.

All that energy heated the breastplate, but Brewster said he felt “only about one tenth the shock which he experienced when struck by a sledge-hammer.”

Unfortunately the armor weighed 40 pounds, which made it cumbersome in the field.

(Bashford Dean, Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare, 1920.)

| Technology

“Money Is Not Advice”

Proverbs of Latin America:

  • Of the doctor, the poet, and the fool we all have a small portion. (Mexico)
  • Each of us bears his friend and his enemy within himself. (Costa Rica)
  • The mother-in-law does not remember she was a daughter-in-law. (Venezuela)
  • Halfway is 12 miles when you have 14 miles to go. (Panama)
  • Diligence is the mother of good fortune. (Peru)
  • Face to face respect appears. (Ecuador)
  • You may believe every good report of a grateful man. (Guatemala)
  • Many go for wool and come back shorn themselves. (Dominican Republic)
  • He who marries prudence is the brother-in-law of peace. (Bolivia)
  • Nothing is so burdensome as a secret. (Colombia)
  • The vulgar keep no account of your hits, but of your misses. (Paraguay)
  • Grief shared is half grief; joy shared is double joy. (Honduras)
  • A “no” in time is better than a late “yes.” (Uruguay)
  • When you mourn, you cannot sing; when you sing, you cannot mourn. (Argentina)

(From Guy Zona, Eyes That See Do Not Grow Old, 1996.)

| Literature

Imagination

In particular it is what might be called ‘comparative originality’ that is so awful. If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man’s soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.

— Quentin Crisp, “The Genius of Mervyn Peake,” 1946

| Art

A Simple Plan

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuboid_abcd.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

You have three identical bricks and a ruler. How can you determine the length of a brick’s interior diagonal without any calculation?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles · Science & Math

Reversals

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mozart_Trio_from_Wind_Serenade_K388.png

The trio section of Mozart’s Serenade for Wind Octet in C, K. 388 (audible here at 14:30), is a double mirror canon: The second oboe introduces a line and after two bars the first oboe joins it playing the same line “upside down”; then the first bassoon starts its own line and the second bassoon enters playing that upside down. Now all four parts are exploring the same theme, but they’re offset by two bars apiece and two of them are inverted.

Pianist Erik Smith called this “the visual image of two swans reflected in the still water,” “a perfect example of Mozart’s use of academic means, canon, inverted canon and mirror canon, to a purely musical and emotional end.”

| Art