Exchange

In 1951 Clement Attlee received this message from 15-year-old Ann Glossop, who had completed her final exams at Penrhos College only to discover that under recent reforms she was considered too young to graduate and must wait a year and go through them again:

Would you please explain, dear Clement
Just why it has to be
That Certificates of Education
Are barred to such as me?

I’ve worked through thirteen papers
But my swot is all in vain
Because at this time next year
I must do them all again.

Please have pity, Clement,
And tell the others too.
Remove the silly age-limit
It wasn’t there for you.

He replied:

I received with real pleasure
Your verses, my dear Ann.
Although I’ve not much leisure
I’ll reply as best I can.

I’ve not the least idea why
They have this curious rule
Condemning you to sit and sigh
Another year at school.

You’ll understand that my excuse
For lack of detailed knowledge
Is that school certs were not in use
When I attended college.

George Tomlinson is ill, but I
Have asked him to explain
And when I get the reason why
I’ll write to you again.

He lost office shortly thereafter, so Ann’s problem was never solved.

January 24, 2020January 23, 2020 | History · Poems

SRO

A gracious moment between Samuel Johnson and the actress Sarah Siddons:

When Mrs. Siddons came into the room, there happened to be no chair ready for her, which he observing, said with a smile, ‘Madam, you who so often occasion a want of seats to other people, will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself.’

(From Boswell’s Life of Johnson.)

January 24, 2020January 23, 2020 | Literature

Math Notes

There are only five integer-sided triangles in which the area equals the perimeter:

(5, 12, 13) (6, 8, 10) (6, 25, 29) (7, 15, 20) (9, 10, 17)

Only two of them are right triangles.

(Lee Markowitz, “Area = Perimeter,” Mathematics Teacher 74:3 [March 1981], 222-223.)

January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 | Science & Math

The Grave Creek Stone

This flat, polished sandstone pebble was found in a 2,000-year-old burial mound in West Virginia in 1838. Though it seemed to bear 25 pseudo-alphabetic characters, no one could agree on their meaning. In 1845 ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft consulted “noted antiquarians” and concluded that the inscription contains “four characters corresponding to the Ancient Greek; four Etruscan; five Runic; six ancient Gallic; seven old Erse; ten Phoenician; fourteen old British; sixteen Celtiberic, with some resemblance to the Hebrew.” In the 1870s physician R.J. Farquharson compiled wildly varying translations of the inscription from three different scholars:

“Thy orders are laws, thou shines in thy impetuous clan, and rapid as the chamois.”
“The chief of emigration who reached these places (or island), has fixed these decrees forever.”
“The grave of one who was murdered here; to revenge him may God strike his murderer, suddenly taking away his existence.”

Also in the 1870s, antiquarian M.C. Reid asked a law student, a schoolgirl, a pharmacist, and a college professor to create “twenty or more arbitrary characters not resembling any figures or alphabetical characters known to them.” Their characters resembled those in Old World alphabets, just as did those on the Grave Creek stone. Reid was “compelled to conclude that there is nothing in the form of the characters of the Grave Creek Stone which require us to decide that they are old, that they are alphabetical, or if alphabetical that they are derived from any known alphabet.”

Today it seems most likely that the stone was forged by James W. Clemens, a local physician who had financed the original excavation and wanted to sell rights to exploit the mound. In 2008 anthropologist David Oestreicher discovered the same sequences of markings in a 1752 book by a Spanish historian, An Essay on the Alphabets of the Unknown Letters That Are Found in the Most Ancient Coins and Monuments of Spain. It appears that Clemens simply copied these characters onto the stone and planted it in the mound.

January 23, 2020January 22, 2020 | Hoaxes

Parenthood

We want to line up our six children for a photograph, but we can’t put Sally and John next to one another because they fight. In how many ways can we arrange the photo with this constraint?

	Select Click for Answer
Solving this directly would require finding all the arrangements in which Sally and John are not side by side — 10 different cases, as it turns out. But another way is to consider the opposite problem: What if Sally and John are required to stand side by side? That amounts to treating them as one child, though we must remember that there are two ways to “attach” them, Sally & John or John & Sally. Five children can be arranged in 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 5! = 120 ways, so there are 2 × 120 = 240 ways to arrange the six children so that Sally and John will be side by side. Going back to the original problem, there would be 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 720 ways to arrange the six children if there were no constraints at all, so there must be 720 – 240 = 480 ways to line them up if Sally and John are to be kept apart. (Shawn Godin, “Pólya’s Paragon: Au Contraire, Mon Ami,” Crux Mathematicorum 30:1 [February 2004], 13-15.) 02/09/2020 UPDATE: Remarkably, Marin Mersenne addressed the same question in his 1636 musical treatise Harmonie universelle. Reader Jon Wild explains that in a section on combinatorics, Mersenne asks how many ways there are of forming non-repeating melodies from the six notes of the hexachord ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, then asks how many are “good,” which for him means they do not contain the interval (ascending or descending) of a major sixth, found between “ut” and “la.” He follows the same reasoning to the same answer, that 240 of the 720 melodies must be ruled out. He actually writes out all 720 permutations, then explains that some of them are bad because they contain “ut la” or “la ut” (which is disagreeable, hard to sing, and painful to the ear, and whose frequency ratios are objectionable on numerological grounds). 120 of the listed permutations include the major sixth ascending and 120 descending; subtracting these from the 720 listed permutations leaves 480 good melodies. (Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 1636, Proposition 9 from the “Deuxième livre des chants” [second book on Melody].) (Thanks, Jon.)

Click for Answer

Solving this directly would require finding all the arrangements in which Sally and John are not side by side — 10 different cases, as it turns out.

But another way is to consider the opposite problem: What if Sally and John are required to stand side by side? That amounts to treating them as one child, though we must remember that there are two ways to “attach” them, Sally & John or John & Sally. Five children can be arranged in 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 5! = 120 ways, so there are 2 × 120 = 240 ways to arrange the six children so that Sally and John will be side by side.

Going back to the original problem, there would be 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 720 ways to arrange the six children if there were no constraints at all, so there must be 720 – 240 = 480 ways to line them up if Sally and John are to be kept apart.

(Shawn Godin, “Pólya’s Paragon: Au Contraire, Mon Ami,” Crux Mathematicorum 30:1 [February 2004], 13-15.)

02/09/2020 UPDATE: Remarkably, Marin Mersenne addressed the same question in his 1636 musical treatise Harmonie universelle. Reader Jon Wild explains that in a section on combinatorics, Mersenne asks how many ways there are of forming non-repeating melodies from the six notes of the hexachord ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, then asks how many are “good,” which for him means they do not contain the interval (ascending or descending) of a major sixth, found between “ut” and “la.” He follows the same reasoning to the same answer, that 240 of the 720 melodies must be ruled out.

Mersenne Harmonie universelle

He actually writes out all 720 permutations, then explains that some of them are bad because they contain “ut la” or “la ut” (which is disagreeable, hard to sing, and painful to the ear, and whose frequency ratios are objectionable on numerological grounds). 120 of the listed permutations include the major sixth ascending and 120 descending; subtracting these from the 720 listed permutations leaves 480 good melodies.

(Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 1636, Proposition 9 from the “Deuxième livre des chants” [second book on Melody].) (Thanks, Jon.)

January 22, 2020February 9, 2020 | Puzzles

Longplayer

In 1999, ex-Pogues banjoist Jem Finer composed a piece of music that will take 1,000 years to perform. It’s been playing continuously at Bow Creek Lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf on the north bank of the Thames since midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, and will continue until Dec. 31, 2999. (Shown here is an excerpt of 1,000 minutes performed live in 2009 at the Roundhouse in London.)

The piece is essentially a computer-administered series of variations on a core composition that’s 20 minutes and 20 seconds long; the current rendition is played on Tibetan singing bowls and gongs, but in principle it might be played on any instrument and indeed by any means; the conclusion of the piece might be mediated by technologies, and certainly will be by people, that don’t exist today.

It can be heard at various listening stations around the United Kingdom, and a mobile app is available that plays a version synchronized with the Trinity Buoy Wharf performance.

See Larghissimo.

January 22, 2020January 21, 2020 | Art · Oddities

Last Resident

When dredging began off the south Devon village of Hallsands in the 1890s, it destabilized the beach, permitting storms to reach the town. A strong storm in 1917 washed away 37 homes, but a single cottage on a hill was left standing, and a single resident, Elizabeth Prettejohn, lived alone in the ruined village for 47 years, until her death in 1964 at age 80.

“I have all my memories here, but it’s no good sitting down moping,” she said shortly before she died. “It was the dockyard that took all our beach. It blew for four days and four nights. The sea was like mountains. I prayed god that the wind would stop. … Once I thought of moving to Dartmouth, but this is where I belong with my memories.”

(Thanks, Cathy.)

January 21, 2020 | Society

Podcast Episode 281: Grey Owl

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

In the 1930s the world’s best-known conservationist was an ex-trapper named Grey Owl who wrote and lectured ardently for the preservation of the Canadian wilderness. At his death, though, it was discovered that he wasn’t who he’d claimed to be. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of his curious history and complicated legacy.

We’ll also learn how your father can be your uncle and puzzle over a duplicate record.

See full show notes …

January 20, 2020January 27, 2020 | History · Literature · Podcast

Borrowed Gold

Eunoia is a dictionary of more than 500 untranslatable (or obscurely useful) words:

sankocha: the feeling of embarrassment due to receiving an inordinate or extravagant gift, making you feel as though you need to return a favor that you can’t (Kannada)
mudita: the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being or happiness (Sanskrit)
Erbsenzähler: literally “pea counter”: a nitpicker (German)
jayus: a joke so unfunny that one has to laugh (Indonesian)
házisárkány: “indoor dragon”: a nagging, restless spouse (Hungarian)
tretår: a third cup of coffee (Swedish)
xiao xiao: the whistling and pattering of rain or wind (Chinese)

There’s a whole subreddit for these.

(Thanks, Sharon.)

January 19, 2020September 16, 2021 | Language

Overheard

Alexander Woollcott once encountered artist Neysa McMein at a party where she was dressed in a gown hung with spangles.

“Why, Neysa,” he said, “you’re scrofulous with mica.”

January 18, 2020January 18, 2020 | Literature