The Vague Specific

In Collier’s in 1949, Richard B. Gehman identified a troubling feature of American language — the tendency to refer to specific things vaguely.

“Say, what about all those things in the front room?” his wife had asked him, supposing that he knew what she meant. “I didn’t,” Gehman wrote. “For all I knew, ‘those things’ could have been the furniture, books, rugs, magazines, lamps, or the remnants of a sandwich I’d been eating.”

Some more examples:

“Here,” my wife said, “you can take these. … Put them with those things behind the others.”
“Remember the girl from the place with the stuff? Well, she’s here.”
“The men came today.” (Gehman tried asking, “What did you tell them?”, but she only answered, “I told them to go ahead.”)
“Do you remember that time we were at the shore, and it rained?”
“When was it that we had the Coes over?”
“The woman’s here for the money.”
“What was the name of that couple we met the time we went to the Zeamers’?”
“What’s the name of that fellow who drives the truck?”

A neighbor appeared at Gehman’s door one day and asked his help in repairing a washing machine — his wife had said that the thing on its side was acting funny. “He sighed, and asked if I had anything to drink in the house.”

May 1, 2016April 30, 2016 | Language

“A Victim of Irregularity”

Though no great catch, this man was caught,
And neighbors tell, I’m told,
That oft, with scratch, his face was scraught,
Till fearful yells he yold.

In sink of sadness almost sunk,
To quit all strife he strove —
And after he a think had thunk,
A happier life he love.

To steal a kiss, no more he stole;
To make a break, he broke;
To remedy the deal he’d dole,
A secret sneak he snoke.

Fate’s dice with crafty shake he shook;
As gamblers feel he felt;
But ere the final stake he stook
A bitter squeal he squelt.

Of earlier days, I think, he thought,
Ere Hymen’s bonds had bound —
Before his links were firmly lought —
When he by blond was blound.

A stroke for liberty he struck;
For in a fly he flew —
But though full many a joke he juck,
A secret cry he crew.

Then stings of conscience no more stung,
And so in peace he slept;
For, on the wings of Morpheus brung,
In Paradise he pept.

— George B. Moregood, Puck, Oct. 2, 1912

April 30, 2016April 29, 2016 | Language · Poems

Good Boy

The best dog breeds to sit for paintings, according to British artist Briton Rivière:

The best dog to sit is an animal which I am afraid I must admit I thoroughly dislike — an intelligent poodle. Many dogs are a long time before they grasp what is wanted of them, and one has to go through no small amount of patience to get them to behave themselves. The most restless sitters are the collie and the deerhound. Still, notwithstanding their restlessness, I am very fond of both, and have frequently painted them. Perhaps the dog I admire most is the bloodhound; but, as a matter of fact, I am fond of all short-haired dogs.

He also found greyhounds and fox terriers to be restless. “Some dogs are very difficult to manage, but however awkward and ill-tempered a dog may be, in time he gets used to the studio. I have watched a dog for hours at a time, until I have been able to get exactly what I wanted, for however troublesome an animal may be, it is only a question of waiting, when you will be sure to get what you want.”

(From The Strand, January 1896.)

April 30, 2016April 29, 2016 | Art

Clear Purpose

In 1944, manager Maury Maverick sent this memo to the workers at his government agency:

This is the first known usage of gobbledygook to refer to obscure jargon. It wouldn’t be the last.

(From the National Archives.)

April 29, 2016April 28, 2016 | History · Language

“Courage”

A poem written by Amelia Earhart in 1928:

Courage is the price that
Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the resistless day,
And count it fair.

“Please know I am quite aware of the hazards,” she wrote in a final letter left to her husband. “I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

April 28, 2016April 27, 2016 | History · Poems

The Discursive Dilemma

The employees of a company are trying to decide whether to give up a pay raise so they can afford to install a workplace safety measure. Each employee will vote for the sacrifice if she thinks the danger is sufficiently serious, if the safety measure is sufficiently effective, and if the pay sacrifice is sufficiently bearable. Otherwise she’ll vote against it. The three employees come to this result:

discursive dilemma

This is troubling: A majority of employees supports each of the criteria, and yet each of the three resolves to reject the proposal. If the employees reach their decision by comparing their views about the measure as a whole, then they’ll reject the pay sacrifice. But if they compare their views about each criterion, they’ll accept it.

Princeton philosopher Philip Pettit worries that this phenomenon makes it impossible for us to make confident statements about the beliefs of a group. “Going the conclusion-driven way means adopting a course that is inconsistent with the premises endorsed by the group, and going the premise-driven way means adopting a course that a majority individually reject.”

Both outcomes are undesirable. “Going the first way means sacrificing collective rationality for the sake of responsiveness to individuals, going the second means sacrificing responsiveness to individuals for the sake of collective rationality.”

(Philip Pettit, “Deliberative Democracy and the Discursive Dilemma,” Philosophical Issues 11:1 [2001], 268-299.)

April 27, 2016April 26, 2016 | Society

Couplet

From the postscript to a 1737 letter by Jonathan Swift — “Here is a rhyme; it is a satire on an inconstant lover.”

You are as faithless as a Carthaginian,
To love at once Kate, Nell, Doll, Martha, Jenny, Anne.

April 26, 2016 | Language · Literature · Poems

Moving Pictures

In 1864 a photographer employed by Mathew Brady used a four-lens camera to record activity at a Union Army wharf along Potomac Creek in Virginia. The four images were taken in quick succession, so staggering them produces a crude time lapse of the events they record:

In effect they present a four-frame film, perhaps the closest we’ll come to a contemporary movie of life during the Civil War. Here are a few more, all taken in Virginia in 1864:

Union cavalry crossing a pontoon bridge over the James River:

Traffic in front of the Marshall House in Alexandria:

Union soldiers working on a bridge over the Pamunkey River near White House Landing:

There’s more information at the National Park Service’s Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park blog.

April 26, 2016April 25, 2016 | History · Technology

Podcast Episode 103: Legislating Pi

In 1897, confused physician Edward J. Goodwin submitted a bill to the Indiana General Assembly declaring that he’d squared the circle — a mathematical feat that was known to be impossible. In today’s show we’ll examine the Indiana pi bill, its colorful and eccentric sponsor, and its celebrated course through a bewildered legislature and into mathematical history.

We’ll also marvel at the confusion wrought by turkeys and puzzle over a perplexing baseball game.

See full show notes …

April 24, 2016October 10, 2017 | Podcast · Science & Math

Pagan Island

Twenty-six villages are ranged around the coastline of an island. Their names, in order, are A, B, C, …, Z. At various times in its history, the island has been visited by 26 missionaries, who names are also A, B, C, …, Z. Each missionary landed first at the village that bore his name and began his work there. Each village was pagan to begin with but became converted when visited by a missionary. Whenever a missionary converted a village he would move along the coastline to the next village in the cycle A–B–C-…-Z–A. If a missionary arrived at an uncoverted village he’d convert it and continue along the cycle, but there was never more than one missionary in a village at a time. If a missionary arrived at a village that had already been converted, the villagers, feeling oppressed, would kill him and revert to a state of paganism; they would do this even to a missionary who had converted them himself and then traveled all the way around the island. There’s no restriction as to how many missionaries can be on the island at any given time. After all 26 missionaries have come and gone, how many villages remain converted?

	Select Click for Answer
None. Each village is converted by its namesake missionary, unless it has already been converted by someone else, so every village gets converted at some point. But then each becomes a deathtrap for the next missionary who visits it. As each missionary works his way around the island, he leaves a string of such traps behind him, the first of which will spring on him when he comes around again unless he’s killed even sooner by stumbling on a village converted by someone else. So all 26 missionaries must die. Since a murderous village reverts to a pagan state, over time the 26 deaths provide 26 unconverted villages, but these are not necessarily different. If we could show that once a village has killed a missionary it is never visited again, and is thus effectively removed from the story, then the 26 deaths leave behind 26 different unconverted villages. So suppose village A has just murdered its first victim. That means it has been visited twice, once by the missionary who converted it from paganism and then by the missionary whom it murdered. What is the possibility that it will receive a third visit? Well, one of the two known visitors might be missionary A on his first visit to the island. But any other visitor to A must come from village Z. So if A were to get 3 visitors, then at least 2 of them must have come from Z; that is, at least 2 missionaries must have got into and out of village Z. But Z kills every other missionary who visits it. So if 2 missionaries left Z, then at least 3 must have entered it. Thus in order for A to receive a third visitor, Z must already have had at least 3 visitors. By the same reasoning, Y must have had at least 3 visitors, and so on around the island, until we reach the impossible condition that in order to have a third visitor, village A must already have had 3 visitors. This shows that A cannot receive a third visitor, and the conclusion follows. (From Crux Mathematicorum, via Ross Honsberger’s More Mathematical Morsels, 1991.)

Click for Answer

None. Each village is converted by its namesake missionary, unless it has already been converted by someone else, so every village gets converted at some point. But then each becomes a deathtrap for the next missionary who visits it. As each missionary works his way around the island, he leaves a string of such traps behind him, the first of which will spring on him when he comes around again unless he’s killed even sooner by stumbling on a village converted by someone else. So all 26 missionaries must die. Since a murderous village reverts to a pagan state, over time the 26 deaths provide 26 unconverted villages, but these are not necessarily different. If we could show that once a village has killed a missionary it is never visited again, and is thus effectively removed from the story, then the 26 deaths leave behind 26 different unconverted villages.

So suppose village A has just murdered its first victim. That means it has been visited twice, once by the missionary who converted it from paganism and then by the missionary whom it murdered. What is the possibility that it will receive a third visit? Well, one of the two known visitors might be missionary A on his first visit to the island. But any other visitor to A must come from village Z. So if A were to get 3 visitors, then at least 2 of them must have come from Z; that is, at least 2 missionaries must have got into and out of village Z. But Z kills every other missionary who visits it. So if 2 missionaries left Z, then at least 3 must have entered it. Thus in order for A to receive a third visitor, Z must already have had at least 3 visitors. By the same reasoning, Y must have had at least 3 visitors, and so on around the island, until we reach the impossible condition that in order to have a third visitor, village A must already have had 3 visitors. This shows that A cannot receive a third visitor, and the conclusion follows.

(From Crux Mathematicorum, via Ross Honsberger’s More Mathematical Morsels, 1991.)

April 24, 2016May 1, 2016 | Puzzles