A Thorough Anagram

This is incredible. In 2005, mathematician Mike Keith took a 717-word section from the essay on Mount Fuji in Lafcadio Hearn’s 1898 Exotics and Retrospective and anagrammed it into nine 81-word poems, each inspired by an image from Hokusai’s famous series of landscape woodcuts, the Views of Mount Fuji.

That’s not the most impressive part. Each anagrammed poem can be arranged into a 9 × 9 square, with one word in each cell. Stacking the nine grids produces a 9 × 9 × 9 cube. Make two of these cubes, and then:

In Cube “D” (for Divisibility), assign each cell the number “1” if the sum of the letter values in the corresponding word (using A=1, B=2, C=3 etc.) is exactly divisible by 9, or “0” if it is not.
In Cube “L” (for Length), assign each cell the number “1” if its word has exactly nine letters, or “0” if it does not.

Replace each “1” cell with solid wood and each “0” cell with transparent glass. Now suspend the two cubes in a room and shine beams of light from the top and right onto Cube D and from the front and right onto Cube L:

mike keith anagram cubes

The shadows they cast form reasonable renderings of four Japanese kanji characters relevant to the anagram:

The red shadow is the symbol for fire.
The green shadow is the symbol for mountain.
Put together, these make the compound Kanji symbol (“fire-mountain”) for volcano.

The white shadow is the symbol for wealth, pronounced FU
The blue shadow is the symbol for samurai, pronounced JI
Put together, these make the compound word Fuji, the name of the mountain.

See Keith’s other anagrams, including a 211,000-word recasting of Moby-Dick.

March 1, 2019 | Language · Science & Math

Second Thoughts

There was once a very successful architect who made a great name for himself. At length he built a magnificent temple, to which he devoted more time and thought than to any of the other buildings he had erected; and the world pronounced it his masterpiece. Shortly afterward he died, and when he came before the judgment angel he was not asked how many sins he had committed, but how many houses he had built.

He hung his head and said, more than he could count.

The judgment angel asked what they were like, and the architect said that he was afraid they were pretty bad.

‘And are you sorry?’ asked the angel.

‘Very sorry,’ said the architect, with honest contrition.

‘And how about that famous temple that you built just before you died?’ the angel continued. ‘Are you satisfied with that?’

‘Oh, no,’ the architect exclaimed. ‘I really think it has some good points about it, — I did try my best, you know, — but there’s one dreadful mistake that I’d give my soul to go back and rectify.’

‘Well,’ said the angel, ‘you can’t go back and rectify it, but you can take your choice of the following alternatives: either we can let the world go on thinking your temple a masterpiece and you the greatest architect that ever lived, or we can send to earth a young fellow we’ve got here who will discover your mistake at a glance, and point it out so clearly to posterity that you’ll be the laughing-stock of all succeeding generations of architects. Which do you choose?’

‘Oh, well,’ said the architect, ‘if it comes to that, you know — as long as it suits my clients as it is, I really don’t see the use of making such a fuss.’

— Edith Wharton, The Valley of Childish Things, and Other Emblems, 1896

March 1, 2019 | Society

Signposts

The “tombstone” (∎) used to denote the end of a proof was suggested by mathematician Paul Halmos. “The symbol is definitely not my invention,” he wrote. “It appeared in popular magazines (not mathematical ones) before I adopted it, but, once again, I seem to have introduced it into mathematics. It is the symbol that sometimes looks like ∎, and is used to indicate an end, usually the end of a proof. It is most frequently called the ‘tombstone’, but at least one generous author referred to it as the ‘halmos’.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knuth%27s_dangerous_bend_symbol.svg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

The group of mathematicians who wrote under the name Nicolas Bourbaki would include a “dangerous bend” symbol in the margin next to tricky or difficult passages, “to forewarn the reader against serious errors, where he risks falling.” Other writers have adopted the symbol, including computer scientist Donald Knuth, who included American-style road signs in his Metafont and TeX typesetting systems.

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

And teachers in the Netherlands use a distinctive “flourish of approval” when grading schoolwork to show that they have seen and agreed with a paragraph. The mark, which may have evolved from a hastily written g (for “good” [goed] or “seen” [gezien]), rarely appears outside the Netherlands and its former colonies.

February 28, 2019February 28, 2019 | Language

Bootstraps

However, there is one thing that cannot be the result of God’s will: the fact that his will is effective. For if God’s will is not effective, then nothing he wills could come about. It would follow that he could not will that his will become effective and, as a result, have it become effective. Unless God’s will is already effective, he could not will it to become effective and have it in fact become effective. If God’s will is not effective, God could not make it effective. Thus, if God’s will is effective, God did not make it effective. So there is at least one state of affairs that cannot be dependent on God’s will: namely, that his will is effective.

— B.C. Johnson, The Atheist Debater’s Handbook, 1983

February 28, 2019February 27, 2019 | Religion

E Pluribus Unum

Replace each * with a different digit 1-9 to make this equation true:

$\displaystyle \frac{*}{**} + \frac{*}{**} + \frac{*}{**} = 1$

	Select Click for Answer
$\displaystyle \frac{9}{12} + \frac{5}{34} + \frac{7}{68} = 1$ It’s easy to solve this by writing a program to try all possibilities, but reasoning it out is tricky. Donald Aucamp gives one solution in MIT Technology Review, March 2002. 03/18/2019 UPDATE: I should have explained that the double asterisks in the denominators are two-digit numbers. Interestingly, there are two other interpretations that both yield answers! Reader Nick Berry sent this: $\displaystyle \frac{1}{6 \times 3} + \frac{7}{4 \times 2} + \frac{5}{9 \times 8} = 1$ And Paul Wagner sent: $\displaystyle \frac{6}{3 + 9} + \frac{5}{7 + 8} + \frac{1}{2 + 4} = 1$ Thanks to both of them.

Click for Answer

February 27, 2019March 18, 2019 | Puzzles

Levon’s Divine Underground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL-6h0dHTRg

In 1985, Levon Arakelyan’s wife asked him to dig a potato cellar in their basement in Arinj, Armenia. He did this, and then continued digging for 23 years. At his death in 2008 he’d produced a network of rooms, steps, and corridors that extended 21 meters beneath the couple’s two-story house. A builder by trade, he did all of this with hand tools. Today his widow runs a small museum and gives tours of her late husband’s strange obsession. More photos here.

February 27, 2019February 26, 2019 | Oddities

Something Borrowed

http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2011/06/june-brides-and-d-day.html — Image: National Museum of American History

Under enemy fire on March 25, 1945, radio operator Temple Leslie Bourland bailed out of a C-47 over the Rhine. He injured his hip but avoided capture, hiding in a foxhole for two days while using his parachute as a blanket. When Allied troops discovered him he returned to his unit.

That summer he met San Antonio secretary Rosalie Hierholzer, and during their brief courtship he showed her the bullet-riddled parachute, which he kept in his trunk. Rosalie’s aunt Lora offered to make it into a bridal gown, and Rosalie wore it at their wedding. The train still retained some of the military seams.

February 26, 2019 | History · Oddities

Philosophical Limericks

Cried the maid: “You must marry me, Hume!”
A statement that made David fume.
He said: “In cause and effect,
There is a defect;
That it’s mine you can only assume.”

— P.W.R. Foot

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury thought
Life was nasty and brutish and short;
But contracts, once made,
Would come to our aid,
And ensure modest comfort — at court.

— Peter Alexander

There was a young man who said: “Ayer
Has answered the atheist’s prayer,
For a Hell one can’t verify
Surely can’t terrify —
At least till you know you are there.”

— Anonymous

February 26, 2019February 25, 2019 | Poems

Turbulence

The roots of the word helicopter are not heli and copter but helico and pter, from the Greek “helix” (spiral) and “pteron” (wing).

G.L.M. de Ponton’s 1861 British patent says, “The required ascensional motion is given to my aerostatical apparatus (which I intend denominating aeronef or helicoptere,) by means of two or more superposed horizontal helixes combined together.”

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019 | Language · Technology

Podcast Episode 238: The Plight of Mary Ellen Wilson

In 1873 a Methodist missionary in New York City heard rumors of a little girl who was kept locked in a tenement and regularly whipped. She uncovered a shocking case of neglect and abuse that made headlines around the world. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell how one girl’s ordeal led to a new era in child welfare.

We’ll also outsource Harry Potter and puzzle over Wayne Gretzky’s accomplishments.

See full show notes …

February 25, 2019March 4, 2019 | History · Podcast · Society