Person to Person

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/fascinating-phone-book

Artist Alex Queral found himself spending a fortune in paint to create the thickly textured portraits he favored. He switched media and began carving them instead, at first out of Styrofoam, then “on another day noticed a stack of old phone books outside waiting to be recycled. It occurred to me that they were not unlike blocks of very soft wood, and there it all began.”

“Taking an ordinary phone book, Alex Queral carves a face into this object of so many faceless names,” writes Laura Heyenga in Art Made From Books (2013). “With a very sharp X-Acto knife, a little pot of acrylic medium to set detail areas, and a great deal of craft, Queral literally peels away the pages of the book as if they were the layers of an onion to reveal the portrait within. Once the carving is complete, he will often apply a black wash to enhance the features and then seal the entire book with acrylic to preserve the work. However, he never loses the line registration, and the book remains quite pliable.”

More here.

| Art

Behind Schedule

In 1980 Philip K. Dick was asked to forecast some significant events in the coming years. Among his predictions:

1983: The Soviet Union will develop an operational particle-beam accelerator, making missile attack against that country impossible. At the same time the U.S.S.R. will deploy this weapon as a satellite killer. The U.S. will turn, then, to nerve gas.

1989: The U.S. and the Soviet Union will agree to set up one vast metacomputer as a central source for information available to the entire world; this will be essential due to the huge amount of information coming into existence.

1993: An artificial life form will be created in a lab, probably in the U.S.S.R., thus reducing our interest in locating life forms on other planets.

1997: The first closed-dome colonies will be successfully established on Luna and on Mars. Through DNA modification, quasi-mutant humans will be created who can survive under non-Terran conditions, i.e., alien environments.

1998: The Soviet Union will test a propulsion drive that moves a starship at the velocity of light; a pilot ship will set out for Proxima Centaurus, soon to be followed by an American ship.

2000: An alien virus, brought back by an interplanetary ship, will decimate the population of Earth, but leave the colonies on Luna and Mars intact.

2010: Using tachyons (particles that move backward in time) as a carrier, the Soviet Union will attempt to alter the past with scientific information.

Also: “Computer use by ordinary citizens (already available in 1980) will transform the public from passive viewers of TV into mentally alert, highly trained, information-processing experts.”

(From David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace, The Book of Predictions, 1980.)

| Literature · Science & Math · Society · Technology

Unquote

Weil’s Law of University Hiring: “First-rate people hire other first-rate people. Second-rate people hire third-rate people. Third-rate people hire fifth-rate people.” (from French mathematician André Weil)

“Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.” — Montesquieu

| Quotations · Society

Dirty Work

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elsheimer,_Adam_-_Frankfurter_Kreuzaltar,_Predellentafel_%22Die_Ausgrabung_der_Kreuze%22_-_1603-1605.jpg

A puzzle by Pierre Berloquin:

Timothy, Urban, and Vincent are digging identical holes in a field.

  • When Timothy and Urban work together, they dig 1 hole in 4 days.
  • When Timothy and Vincent work together, they dig 1 hole in 3 days.
  • When Urban and Vincent work together, they dig 1 hole in 2 days.

Working alone, how long does it take Timothy to dig one hole?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Client Management

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Josquin.jpg

A good anecdote is told of Josquin [des Prez] and his royal patron, Louis XII. The king was particularly fond of a certain popular song, and desired Josquin to arrange it for several voices, and to include a part for himself (Louis). The last condition was rather a puzzle for the composer, as the king knew nothing of music, and had a very bad and unpliant voice; however, he set to work, wrote a canon on the melody for two boys’ voices, added a part for the king which he marked ‘Vox Regis,’ consisting of only one constantly repeated note, and placed below a bass part which he took himself.

— Musical Times, June 1, 1884

| Art · Society

Overtoun Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OvertounBridge.jpg
Image: Wikipedia

In the last 50 years, scores of dogs have jumped to their deaths from the bridge approaching Scotland’s Overtoun House. All the dogs have jumped between the final two parapets on the right-hand side, and nearly all have jumped on clear, sunny days. The dogs tend to be long-nosed breeds, labradors, collies, and retrievers.

It’s unlikely that the dogs are seeing something, because from their perspective little is visible. Acoustic experts have detected no unusual sounds. But mice and mink live under the bridge, and animal habitat expert David Sands found that the dogs he tested were strongly drawn to mink scents. Mink were introduced to Scotland in the 1920s and would have produced a significant population by the 1950s, when the jumps started occurring. The scents left by their anal glands would be strongest in dry conditions and most accessible to keen-nosed dogs with long snouts.

“When you get down to a dog’s level, the solid granite of the bridge’s 18-inch thick walls obscures their vision and blocks out all sound,” Sands told the Daily Mail. “As a result, the one sense not obscured, that of smell, goes into overdrive.”

| Oddities

Podcast Episode 28: The Real-Life Sherlock Holmes

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherlock_Holmes_statue_at_Meiringen1.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Sherlock Holmes was based on a real man, a physician who trained Arthur Conan Doyle at the University of Edinburgh. During his medical lectures, Joseph Bell regularly astonished his students with insights into his patients’ lives and characters.

“From close observation and deduction, gentlemen,” he said, “it is possible to make a diagnosis that will be correct in any and every case. However, you must not neglect to ratify your deductions.”

In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll meet Joseph Bell and review the stories of his legendary acuity. We’ll also take a tour through Greg’s database of unpublished oddities and puzzle over how having your car damaged might be a good thing.

See full show notes …

| Podcast

There’ll Always Be an England

From the Daily Telegraph obituary of British Army major Digby Tatham-Warter (1917–1993):

Digby Tatham-Warter, the former company commander, 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, who has died aged 75, was celebrated for leading a bayonet charge at Arnhem in September 1944, sporting an old bowler hat and a tattered umbrella.

During the long, bitter conflict Tatham-Warter strolled around nonchalantly during the heaviest fire. The padre (Fr Egan) recalled that, while he was trying to make his way to visit some wounded in the cellars and had taken temporary shelter from enemy fire, Tatham-Warter came up to him, and said: ‘Don’t worry about the bullets: I’ve got an umbrella.’

Having escorted the padre under his brolly, Tatham-Warter continued visiting the men who were holding the perimeter defences. ‘That thing won’t do you much good,’ commented one of his fellow officers, to which Tatham-Warter replied: ‘But what if it rains?’

| History

Photo ID

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:44_Bill_Clinton_3x4.jpg

This is the official White House photograph of Bill Clinton. It was taken on Jan. 1, 1993. But Clinton wasn’t inaugurated until Jan. 20. Can this be said, then, to be a photo of President Bill Clinton?

To get an answer to this cosmic question, a reporter called the chairman of the New York University philosophy department, Roy Sorensen. Sorensen said yes.

“Think of it this way,” he said. “A photograph of Clinton does not need to be a photograph of the full spatial extent of his body. Just a representative part of his body will do. The same applies for temporal parts; a photograph of one stage of Clinton is a photograph of Clinton. Even a baby picture of Clinton is a picture of President Clinton.”

(From Sorensen’s A Brief History of the Paradox, 2005.)

| History · Oddities