When Michelangelo’s David was unveiled in 1504, it was seen to symbolize the civil liberties of the Republic of Florence in the face of the surrounding city-states and the powerful Medici.
A Medici duke commissioned Cellini’s Perseus With the Head of Medusa, which was unveiled 50 years later. Composed of bronze, it was situated opposite the David — so that Medusa’s gaze seemed to turn it to stone.
In 1909, 22-year-old Alice Huyler Ramsey set out to become the first woman to drive across the United States. In an era of imperfect cars and atrocious roads, she would have to find her own way and undertake her own repairs across 3,800 miles of rugged, poorly mapped terrain. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow Ramsey on her historic journey.
We’ll also ponder the limits of free speech and puzzle over some banned candy.
jouisance
n. use or enjoyment
Barmecidal
adj. giving only the illusion of plenty
cacœconomy
n. bad management
furibund
adj. irate
The residents of the parking-challenged Hampshire town of Farnborough were delighted in 2016 to learn that a fully equipped car park had been lying unused for five years. The bad news: It could be reached only on foot. It resides on a roof above a gym complex.
Under the plan, motorists would reach the facility via a bridge from an adjoining property. But that site was still under development.
“We have a massive problem with car parking in Farnborough,” councillor Gareth Lyon told the Independent. “To have had this huge car park lying empty defies belief. It is ridiculous.”
(Thanks, Charlie.)
Franklin K. Young worked out a way to apply battlefield principles to the chessboard. Unfortunately, his description is incomprehensible:
The normal formative processes of a Logistic Grand Battle consist, first, in Echeloning by RP to QR4 and then in Aligning the Left Major Front Refused en Potence by the development of QKtP to QKt5, followed by Doubly Aligning the Left Major Front Refused and Aligned by developing QRP to QR5.
The final and decisive development in the formative process of a Logistic Grand Battle is the transformation of the Left Refused Front Doubly Aligned into a Grand Left Front Refused and Echeloned by the development of QRP to QR6.
Chess historian Edward Winter quotes a 1909 parody by P.H. Williams in Chess Chatter & Chaff:
White here takes the opportunity of duple deployment of bolobudginous hoplites, by mutual transposition of kindred hypothetics — the one in enfilade, the other in marmalade. This example of Tyntax involves duodecimal parabaloidic curves, whose radii are in strict parallelism with the dyptic hypotenuse. (Note: These terms will be elucidated when the author has discovered meanings for them, in a glossary of 457 pages.)
The system was still obscure when Young died in 1931, but perhaps you can make sense of it: His works are here.
Something new from Lee Sallows: a self-descriptive magic square. Each row, column, and long diagonal adds up to 20, and every letter used is correctly counted.
“You may notice that the square includes a fox. But don’t be foxed by the fox. Just enjoy him. For this is not merely any old fox. No, it is our old friend the quick brown fox that jumped over that lazy dog!”
(Thanks, Lee!)
“The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.” — Bertrand Russell
The Asian moth Macrocilix maia carries a stunning image on its wings.
“It’s the only mimic insect I know that paints an entire scene,” writes entomologist Alex Wild. “It looks like a watercolor. Two red-eyed muscomorph flies feed from fresh bird droppings, complete with light glinting off their wings. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Very little seems to be known about it. It’s found in India, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo.
The heaviest known organism is a clonal stand of quaking aspen in the Fishlake National Forest of south-central Utah. Connected by an enormous underground root system, it occupies 43 hectares and is estimated to weigh 6,000 metric tons.
The root system is also among the oldest living organisms, with an estimated age of 80,000 years.
Catalonian artist Sergi Cardenas creates three-dimensional oil paintings that change depending on the viewer’s perspective.
In 1984 University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Jordan Smoller called attention to an alarming syndrome that hadn’t received much clinical attention: childhood. Features:
Billy J., age 8, was brought to treatment by his parents. Billy’s affliction was painfully obvious. He stood only 4’3″ high and weighed a scant 70 pounds, despite the fact that he ate voraciously. Billy presented a variety of troubling symptoms. His voice was noticeably high for a man. He displayed legume anorexia and, according to his parents, often refused to bathe. His intellectual functioning was also below normal — he had little general knowledge and could barely write a structured sentence. Social skills were also deficient. He often spoke inappropriately and exhibited ‘whining behavior.’ His sexual experience was non-existent. Indeed, Billy considered women ‘icky.’
Most children are unemployed and poorly educated, and the condition appears to run in families. Public schools don’t seem to reduce the number of victims, but a longitudinal study suggests that it tends to abate with time. “Clearly, much more research is needed before we can give any real hope to the millions of victims wracked by this insidious disorder.”
(Jordan W. Smoller, “The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood,” Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, 1984, 3-7.)
_(5).jpg){kind=link}
