“Fine Words Butter No Parsnips”

English proverbs:

Experience keeps a dear school. (1743)
Everybody stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. (1550)
He that would the daughter win, must with the mother first begin. (1578)
A still tongue makes a wise head. (1562)
Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them. (1640)
One of these days is none of these days. (1658)
One hand for yourself and one for the ship. (1799)
It’s never too late to mend. (1590)
The highest branch is not the safest roost. (1563)
He who is absent is always in the wrong. (1640)
The golden age was never the present age. (1732)
Example is better than precept. (1400)
Sweep your own doorstep clean. (1624)
Idle people have the least leisure. (1678)
He that would have eggs must endure the cackling of hens. (1659)

| Quotations

It Begins

Cockatoos in Sydney have mastered a five-step process for opening the lids of trash bins to reach the food inside.

“It was so exciting to observe such an ingenious and innovative way to access a food resource, we knew immediately that we had to systematically study this unique foraging behavior,” wrote behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump.

The birds learn the technique from one another, and cockatoos in different regions have worked out different techniques. Before 2018, the behavior had been reported in only three suburbs, but by the end of 2019 the number had reached 44.

“These results show the animals really learned the behavior from other cockatoos in their vicinity,” Klump wrote.

(Barbara C. Klump et al. “Innovation and Geographic Spread of a Complex Foraging Culture in an Urban Parrot,” Science 373:6553 [2021], 456-460.) (Thanks, Sharon.)

| Science & Math

Sea Horses

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1808_horse_paddle-boat.jpg

In June 1809, a ferry boat called the Experiment set out from Providence, R.I. for Pawtuxet Village. It was named for an innovative propulsion system: a screw propeller driven by eight horses on a treadmill. Unfortunately the mechanism was poorly realized — even with a favorable wind and tide, the craft made only 4 knots on her outbound journey, and on the return a gust of wind blew her into mud flats, ending her career. She was broken up and sold to remunerate the creditors, and even the patent was lost in an 1836 fire, but the innovation of the screw propeller would find a place in other designs.

| Technology

Signing Off

When CNN was launched in 1980, founder Ted Turner said, “Barring satellite problems, we won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover it live, and that will be our last, last event. We’ll play the National Anthem only one time, on the first of June [1980], and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ before we sign off.”

He wasn’t joking — Turner had ordered the creation of a video of the Christian hymn performed by members of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine bands. It was held in the network’s archives, marked HFR [Hold For Release] till end of the world confirmed. Michael Ballaban, who’d been an intern at the network’s launch, released the recording above in 2015.

Ballaban wrote, “That leaves open a whole host of unanswered questions. If this is the last CNN employee alive, in the last CNN bureau on Earth, who do they confirm it with? What does confirmation look like? Who can be the one to make that determination, to pronounce the universe itself dead? … And who would be around to watch it? We don’t know.”

| Death · Oddities

The Right Place

In February 1933, Franklin Roosevelt gave an impromptu speech from the back of an open car in Miami. Local resident Lillian Cross stood on a bench to get a better view, and a man stood up with her.

“I glanced up at him and saw he had a pistol,” she said later. “He began shooting toward Mr. Roosevelt. I grabbed his arm and pushed it with all my strength into the air, and called for help. A man named Tom Armour also grabbed his arm, and the next thing I knew some other men had reached him and were choking him.

“The shots made a terrific noise in my ear. He kept shooting and trying to force my arm down, but I wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t have held much longer, however, when Mr. Armour seized him. A second or two later the Legion boys came smashing through and we all went tumbling off the bench together. My breath was knocked out, but I wasn’t hurt.”

She was 5 foot 4 and weighed 100 pounds. The assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, was ultimately executed for the murder of Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was killed in the attack.

| History

Implementia

https://pixabay.com/photos/concentric-children-s-outing-park-3438463/

A puzzle by Yoshinao Katagiri: A boy and a girl played rock paper scissors 10 times. Altogether the boy played rock three times, scissors six times, and paper once, and the girl played rock twice, scissors four times, and paper four times (though, in each case, the order of these plays is unknown). There were no ties. Who won?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Problem Solved

In 1991, botanist John L. Strother was reviewing the classification of North American sunflowers when he identified a new genus. By this time his 100-page monograph was in the final stages of proofing, and adding a new entry in the middle would require troublesome changes in the layout.

The genera were listed alphabetically, and the last one was Zexmenia. So Strother named the new genus Zyzyxia. Since this placed the new entry near the end of the article, it minimized the necessary changes, and the editor accepted the addition.

| Language · Science & Math

Skylon

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1951_South_Bank_Exhibition.jpg
Image: Peter Benton

A striking symbol of the 1951 Festival of Britain was this cigar-shaped sculpture, which seemed to float impossibly 15 meters above the ground.

Designed by Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell, and Felix Samuely, the structure relied on the principle of tensegrity: The base rested at the junction of three tensioned cables, and three further cables held the body vertical. Together, these six well-positioned supports were enough to keep the 80-meter sculpture from toppling.

Britons joked that, like the national economy at the time, it had “no visible means of support.”

| Art · Science & Math