A Perfect Alphabet

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1518_Thomas_More_Utopia_(Alphabet_November_edition)_(Biblioteca_nacional_de_Portugal).jpg

Thomas More’s Utopia gives us not only a description of that imaginary land but the actual alphabet used there: More’s friend Peter Giles wrote an addendum to the book that presents the letters and gives an example of the Utopian writing system:

Vtopos ha Boccas peu la chama polta chamaan.
Bargol he maglomi Baccan foma gymno sophaon.
Agrama gymnosophon labarembacha bodamilomin.
Voluala barchin heman la lauoluola dramme pagloni.

This is translated into Latin as

Utopus me dux ex non insula fecit insulam.
Una ego terrarum omnium absque philosophia
Civitatem philosophicam expressi mortalibus
Libenter impartio mea, non gravatim accipio meliora.

And in English this becomes

The commander Utopus made me into an island out of a non-island.
I alone of all nations, without philosophy,
Have portrayed for mortals the philosophical city.
Freely I impart my benefits; not unwillingly I accept whatever is better.

Working backward, this makes it possible to divine the meaning of a few Utopian words: boccas is commander, chama is island, voluala is willingly, and gymnosophaon is philosophy. You couldn’t really talk about much beyond perfect societies, but maybe that’s the point.

| Language

With All Speed

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Talbot_-_The_Footman.jpg

The earliest photograph of a human figure on paper is “The Footman” by William Henry Fox Talbot, from 1840. Footmen came in several varieties; an early breed that quickly went extinct was the running footman, who would advance as a herald before his master’s carriage and also deliver urgent dispatches. In What the Butler Saw, E.S. Turner gives some amazing examples:

  • As the table was being laid for dinner in his castle at Thirlstane, the Duke of Lauderdale was informed that there was a shortage of plate, so he sent a running footman over the Lammermuir Hills to his other castle at Lethington, near Haddington, 15 miles away. The man returned with the additional plate in time for dinner.
  • In his Recollections of 1826, the writer John O’Keeffe remembers a running footman he saw in his youth in Ireland: “He looked so agile, and seemed all air like a Mercury; he never minded roads but took the short cut and, by the help of his pole, absolutely seemed to fly over hedge, ditch and small river. His use was to carry a message, letter or dispatch; or on a journey to run before and prepare the inn, or baiting-place, for his family or master who came the regular road in coach-and-two, or coach-and-four or coach-and-six; his qualifications were fidelity, strength and agility.”
  • One evening the Earl of Home sent a running footman from his Berwickshire castle to Edinburgh on important business. On going downstairs the following morning he found the man asleep in the hall. He was about to chastise him when the man told him he’d already been there and back, a distance of 35 miles each way. (If we allow 12 hours for this that’s 6 mph, allowing for a few breaks to eat and rest. That seems accurate — Turner says that a footman running before his master’s coach “was prepared to cover sixty miles and more in a day, at an average of six to seven miles an hour.”)

“In London the fourth Duke of Queensberry (‘Old Q’) continued to employ running footmen until his death in 1810. He would try out applicants in Piccadilly, lending them his livery for the occasion, and then stand watch in hand on his balcony to time their performance. There is a story that he said to one candidate: ‘You will do very well for me.’ The reply was, ‘And your livery will do very well for me,’ with which the runner bolted.”

| History · Society · Technology

A Welcome Outcome

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Bayer_1877_LMU.jpg

Just a charming little anecdote: When German chemist Adolf von Baeyer achieved a long-sought result, he tipped his hat to it:

Eventually, however, even Baeyer was supersaturated with these hydrogenations, and the sorely tried assistants hailed with deep relief the transference of his interest to succinylsuccinic ester and diketocyclohexane. By means of a dodge (‘Kunstgriff’) of which Baeyer was very proud (treatment with sodium amalgam in presence of sodium bicarbonate), the diketone was reduced to quinitol. At the first glimpse of the crystals of the new substance Baeyer ceremoniously raised his hat!

It must be explained here that the Master’s famous greenish-black hat plays the part of a perpetual epithet in Prof. Rupe’s narrative. As the celebrated sword-pommel to Paracelsus, so this romantic hard-hitter or ‘alte Melone’ to Baeyer: the former was said to contain the vital mercury of the mediaeval philosophers; the latter certainly enshrined one of the keenest chemical intellects of the modern world. … Baeyer’s head was normally covered. Only in moments of unusual excitement or elation did the Chef remove his hat: apart from such occasions his shiny pate remained in permanent eclipse.

(From his colleague John Read’s 1947 book Humour and Humanism in Chemistry.)

| Science & Math

Easy Does It

https://patents.google.com/patent/US1011683

Inventor J.F. Webb proposed this curious safety device in 1910: If your flying machine fails, you release a domelike “air anchor,” which pulls open three parachutes beneath it. These will “sustain the machine sufficiently to break its fall, thereby permitting the machine to descend at a safe speed.”

In The Big Umbrella, his 1973 history of the parachute, John Lucas writes, “Whether Webb’s device worked or not is unknown, but eighteen years later a single parachute 84 feet in diameter and strong enough to support a loaded plane was developed by the U.S. Air Corps.”

| Technology

Unquote

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” — Christopher Morley

| Quotations

Podcast Episode 365: Lateral Thinking Puzzles

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For this final episode of the Futility Closet podcast we have eight new lateral thinking puzzles — play along with us as we try to untangle some perplexing situations using yes-or-no questions.

Intro:

Sears used to sell houses by mail.

Many of Lewis Carroll’s characters were suggested by fireplace tiles in his Oxford study.

The sources for this week’s puzzles are below. In some cases we’ve included links to further information — these contain spoilers, so don’t click until you’ve listened to the episode:

Puzzle #1 is from Greg. Here are two links.

Puzzle #2 is from listener Diccon Hyatt, who sent this link.

Puzzle #3 is from listener Derek Christie, who sent this link.

Puzzle #4 is from listener Reuben van Selm.

Puzzle #5 is from listener Andy Brice.

Puzzle #6 is from listener Anne Joroch, who sent this link.

Puzzle #7 is from listener Steve Carter and his wife, Ami, inspired by an item in Jim Steinmeyer’s 2006 book The Glorious Deception.

Puzzle #8 is from Agnes Rogers’ 1953 book How Come? A Book of Riddles, sent to us by listener Jon Jerome.

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for providing the music for this whole ridiculous enterprise, and for being my brother.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

| Podcast · Puzzles

The Open Christmas Letter

https://flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/11350682363
Image: Flickr

In December 1914, as the first Christmas of World War I approached, 101 British women suffragists sent a holiday message “To the Women of Germany and Austria.”

“Some of us wish to send you a word at this sad Christmastide,” it ran. “The Christmas message sounds like mockery to a world at war, but those of us who wished, and still wish, for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to such of you who feel as we do.”

Though our sons are sent to slay each other, and our hearts are torn by the cruelty of this fate, yet through pain supreme we will be true to our common womanhood. We will let not bitterness enter into this tragedy, made sacred by the life-blood of our best, nor mar with hate the heroism of their sacrifice. Though much has been done on all sides you will, as deeply as ourselves, deplore — shall we not steadily refuse to give credence to those false tales so free told us, each of the other?

We hope it may lessen your anxiety to learn we are doing our utmost to soften the lot of your civilians and war prisoners within our shores, even as we rely on your goodness of heart to do the same for ours in Germany and Austria.

The following spring they received a reply:

If English women alleviated misery and distress at this time, relieved anxiety, and gave help irrespective of nationality, let them accept the warmest thanks of German women and the true assurance that they are and were prepared to do likewise. In war time we are united by the same unspeakable suffering of all nations taking part in the war. Women of all nations have the same love of justice, civilization and beauty, which are all destroyed by war. Women of all nations have the same hatred for barbarity, cruelty and destruction, which accompany every war.

Women, creators and guardians of life, must loathe war, which destroys life. Through the smoke of battle and thunder of cannon of hostile peoples, through death, terror, destruction, and unending pain and anxiety, there glows like the dawn of a coming better day the deep community of feeling of many women of all nations.

It was signed by 155 women of Germany and Austria.

| History · Society

The Green Cathedral

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GOPR0061.MP4_000124020.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1987 Marinus Boezem planted 178 Lombardy poplars on a knoll near Almere in the Dutch province of Flevoland.

Now grown to maturity, the trees form a living replica of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Reims, France, 150 meters long, 75 meters wide, and 30 meters tall.

The current “Groene Kathedraal” hosts weddings, funerals, and religious services, but Boezem is already planning for the future — a second clearing is being prepared nearby so that as the poplars decline a cathedral of beeches will take its place, and the two will alternate in an endless cycle thereafter.

| Art

A for Effort

During World War I, an anonymous American businessman who felt that “moral education of children is the fundamental need of the nation” offered $5,000 for “a children’s morality code that can be accepted as official — something prepared by the best brains of the educational profession.”

The contest ran for a year, from 1916 to 1917, and the winner was announced in American Magazine: William J. Hutchins had formulated 10 “laws of right living”:

  1. The welfare of our country depends upon those who try to be physically fit for their daily work.
  2. Those who best control themselves can best serve their country.
  3. Self-conceit is silly, but self-reliance is necessary to boys and girls who would be strong and useful.
  4. Our country grows great and good as her citizens are able more fully to trust each other.
  5. Clean play increases and trains one’s strength, and helps one to be more useful to one’s country.
  6. The shirker or the willing idler lives upon the labor of others, burdens others with the work which he ought to do himself. He harms his fellow citizens, and so harms his country.
  7. The welfare of our country depends upon those who have learned to do in the right way the things that ought to be done.
  8. One man alone could not build a city or a great railroad. One man alone would find it hard to build a house or a bridge. That I may have bread, men have sowed and reaped, men have made plows and threshers, men have built mills and mined coal, men have made stoves and kept stores. As we learn better how to work together, the welfare of our country is advanced.
  9. In America those who are of different races, colors and conditions must live together. We are of many different sorts, but we are one great people. Every unkindness hurts the common life, every kindness helps the common life.
  10. If our America is to become ever greater and better, her citizens must be loyal, devotedly faithful, in every relation of life.

I don’t know how widely this was actually used. The anonymous “Donor” followed up by offering a $20,000 prize for the best method of character instruction in American public schools, but I can’t tell whether that was ever awarded.

| Society