Matthieu Robert-Ortis makes cleverly ambiguous wire sculptures.
In Other Words
University of Arizona anthropologist Keith Basso found that when the automobile was introduced into the reservation of the Western Apache of Arizona, they described it by applying their words for the human body:
| Anatomical Term | Extended Meaning |
| “shoulder” | “front fender(s)” |
| “hand+arm” | “front wheel(s), tire(s)” |
| “chin+jaw” | “front bumper” |
| “foot,” “feet” | “rear wheel(s), tire(s)” |
| “face” | “area extending from top of windshield to bumper” |
| “forehead” | “front portion of cab, or automobile top” |
| “nose” | “hood” |
| “back” | “bed of truck” |
| “hip+buttock” | “rear fender(s)” |
| “mouth” | “opening of pipe leading to gas-tank” |
| “eye(s)” | “headlight(s)” |
| “vein(s)” | “electrical wiring” |
| “entrails,” “guts” | “all machinery under hood” |
| “liver” | “battery” |
| “stomach” | “gas-tank” |
| “heart” | “distributor” |
| “lung” | “radiator” |
| “intestine(s)” | “radiator hose(s)” |
| “fat” | “grease” |
“When the automobile was introduced into Apache culture, it was perceived to possess a crucial defining attribute — the ability to move itself — which prompted its inclusion in the category labeled hinda [phenomena that are capable of generating and sustaining locomotive movement by themselves, such as man, quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, and some machines]. The traditional practice of describing the other members of this category with anatomical terms was then applied to automobiles, to produce the extended set described above.”
(Keith H. Basso, “Semantic Aspects of Linguistic Acculturation,” American Anthropologist, New Series 69:5 [October 1967], 471-477.)
The Steam Man
I’ve written about this before, but I hadn’t realized a photo existed: In 1868 (!) Zadoc Dederick and Isaac Grass patented a steam-powered robot that pulled a cart. They invested $2,000 in a prototype, hoping to mass-produce top-hatted walking servants for $300 apiece.
The plan never went through, but it lives on in another way: The invention may have inspired Edward Ellis’ 1868 novel The Steam Man of the Prairies, in which a steam-powered robot carries teenage inventor Johnny Brainerd through a series of adventures:
It was about ten feet in height, measuring to the top of the ‘stove-pipe hat,’ which was fashioned after the common order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler, were where the chest in a human being is generally supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms, like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the monarch of base-ball players. The legs were quite long, and the step was natural, except when running, at which time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed different from a human being.
“Jump up there, and I’ll give you all a ride!”
09/09/2024 UPDATE: In 1897 a reader sent the same photo to the Strand, writing, “My brother sent it from the United States nearly thirty years ago.”
The Elements of Style
A letter from E.B. White to J.G. Case, March 30, 1962:
Dear Jack:
The next grammar book I bring out I want to tell how to end a sentence with five prepositions. A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, ‘What did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?’
And how are YOU?
Yrs,
Andy
See Over and Out.
Inspiration
M.C. Escher hated the Dutch high school he attended between 1912 and 1918. He failed his exam and enjoyed only the drawing lessons. But now it appears that the school’s architecture informs some of his later prints.
“It recently became clear that the staircase in Escher’s secondary school was a crucial factor in several of his works,” writes Micky Piller, curator of the The Hague Escher Museum, in The Amazing World of M.C. Escher (2015). “This discovery was confirmed by analysis of this work and photographs taken in the school.
“Escher was an unhappy boy when he was going up and down this staircase. Thirty years on, he still described his school years as ‘the hell that was Arnhem.’ Here he would have seen pupils walking in every direction. Imagine this in your mind’s eye and you will understand the rotating perspective in the print.”
“It was not all imagination, we must conclude now.”
Rebus
This inscription was found in a cemetery of French Franciscan friars at Dole. What does it mean?
Court Intrigue
A stranger asks you to shuffle an ordinary deck of cards and then cut it into three heaps. He’ll bet you $20 that at least one of the topmost cards is a king, queen, or jack. Should you take the bet?
The Jones Live-Map
Somewhat like George Boyden’s “vehicle signaling system” of 1916, Ernest Jones’ 1909 “Live-Map” navigator reckoned distance by monitoring a car’s wheels. But where Boyden’s invention guided the driver using a phonograph recording, Jones’ communicated directions via a printed paper disk that turned under a stationary pointer.
“Under its guidance the most muddling twists, turns and corners melt away behind you,” read the advertisement. “It is better than a Human Guide because it is always doing its work to the exclusion of everything else. … The Jones Live-Map emancipates you from slavery to great, flopping maps and profound route-books that you can’t make head or tail of without stopping.”
You could mount it on the dashboard, carry it in your lap, and even hand it to other occupants. The downside was that if you missed a turn you’d have to find a town on the route and recalibrate the device — and it cost $75 in 1909, or more than $2,000 today.
In a Word
velitation
n. a minor dispute or contest
devel
v. to beat or thrash
herile
adj. pertaining to a master
satisdiction
n. saying enough
Somebody once asked pool hustler Don Willis how good Glen “Eufaula Kid” Womack was.
Willis said, “I never saw him play.”
“What do you mean, you never saw him play? I heard you just beat him out of a lot of money.”
“I did,” Willis said, “but he never got to shoot.”
(From Robert Byrne’s Wonderful World of Pool and Billiards, 1996.)
Finding the Way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDBAT-gW6hg
Kohta Suzuno of Japan’s Meiji University has devised a way to solve mazes using the Marangoni effect: Fill the maze with milk, place an acidic hydrogel block at the exit, and introduce dye and a soap at the entrance. The pH change alters the surface tension and drives the dye toward the block. “In a typical experiment, the shortest path can be found and visualized within ~10s.” Suzuno has even used this technique to find the shortest distance between two points in Budapest, using a maze modeled on a street map.
(Kohta Suzuno et al., “Marangoni Flow Driven Maze Solving,” in A. Adamatzky, ed., Advances in Unconventional Computing, Vol. 23, 2017.)