In a Word

febrifacient
adj. producing fever

The 1895 meeting of the Association of American Physicians saw a sobering report: Abraham Jacobi presented the case of a young man whose temperature had reached 149 degrees.

Nonsense, objected William Henry Welch. Such an observation was impossible. He recalled a similar report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (March 31, 1891) in which a Dr. Galbraith of Omaha had found a temperature of 171 degrees in a young woman.

“I do not undertake to explain in what way deception was practised, but there is no doubt in my mind that there was deception,” he said. “Such temperatures as those recorded in Dr. Galbraith’s and Dr. Jacobi’s cases are far above the temperature of heat rigor of mammalian muscle, and are destructive of the life of animal cells.”

Jacobi defended himself: Perhaps medicine simply hadn’t developed a theory to account for such things. But another physician told Welch that Galbraith’s case at least had a perfectly satisfactory explanation — another doctor had caught her in “the old-fashioned trick of heating the thermometer by a hot bottle in the bed.”

| Language · Science & Math

A Full Life

Indeed, death can coexist with immortality. Consider Miss Paginate. She is born in 2000. In 2030 she time travels to a future funeral in 2050. She finds herself in the coffin as a fifty-year-old. Just as a distinction between temporal parts allows you to both sit and stand, it also allows Miss Paginate to be both dead and alive. Indeed, by slowing down her aging to an asymptotic rate from 31 to 39, Miss Paginate lives forever. At age 40, she finds herself back in 2040. She learns that she has been missing from 2031 to 2039. Miss Paginate also discovers that her normal rate of aging has resumed. She commences a memoir of her life, with special attention to the infinite portion that commences from 2050. She regrets her upcoming death in 2050. That will deprive her the time needed to complete her autobiography. But she takes comfort in knowing that she will live forever after her death (albeit as something akin to a partial amnesiac — since she will not remember her experiences from forty to fifty).

— Roy Sorensen, “The Symmetry Problem,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, 2013

| Oddities

Self-Tiling Tile Sets

These tiles have a remarkable property — by working together, the four can impersonate any one of their number (click to enlarge):

sallows rep-tiles 1

The larger versions could then perform the same trick, and so on. Here’s another set:

sallows rep-tiles 2

In this set, each of the six pieces is paved by some four of them:

sallows rep-tiles 3

By the fathomlessly imaginative Lee Sallows. There’s more in his article “More on Self-Tiling Tile Sets” in last month’s issue of Mathematics Magazine.

| Science & Math

Fallout

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

When George’s Grandmamma was told
That George had been as good as Gold,
She Promised in the Afternoon
To buy him an Immense BALLOON.

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

And so she did; but when it came,
It got into the candle flame,
And being of a dangerous sort
Exploded with a loud report!

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

The Lights went out! The Windows broke!
The Room was filled with reeking smoke.
And in the darkness shrieks and yells
Were mingled with Electric Bells,
And falling masonry and groans,
And crunching, as of broken bones,
And dreadful shrieks, when, worst of all,
The House itself began to fall!
It tottered, shuddering to and fro,
Then crashed into the street below —
Which happened to be Savile Row.

When Help arrived, among the Dead

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

The Still-Room Maid.
And I am dreadfully afraid
That Monsieur Champignon, the Chef,
Will now be

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

While George, who was in part to blame,
Received, you will regret to hear,
A nasty lump

http://books.google.com/books?id=rrQqAAAAYAAJ

MORAL.
The moral is that little Boys
Should not be given dangerous Toys.

— Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Tales for Children, 1922

| Literature

Two Olive Problems

1. A friend gives you a bottle that contains seven olives. Two of them are green and five are black. He bets that if you remove three olives at random from the bottle, they’ll include a green one. Should you take the bet?

2. Agnes has a tin of olives. It originally contained both black and green ones, but someone has been eating them, so she’s not sure of the colors of the 14 olives that remain. She removes 7 at random and finds that they’re all green. If the odds of this happening were exactly 50-50, what are the colors of the remaining 7?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Railway Mazes

http://puzzlemuseum.com/luppitt/lmb02.htm

In 2000, the residents of Luppitt, East Devon, installed a granite bench decorated with a variety of puzzles and curiosities that “it is hoped will be practical and entertaining for most of the next millennium.”

Among the puzzles is this “railway maze,” contributed by Roger Penrose. Make your way from Start in the upper left to Finish in the lower right. The catch is that your train has no reverse gear — you must move continually forward, following the natural curve of the track and making no sharp turns.

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PenrosesRailwayMazes/

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Unquote

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lmcMAAAAIAAJ

“Foolish man, what do you bemoan, and what do you fear? Wherever you look there is an end of evils. You see that yawning precipice? It leads to liberty. You see that flood, that river, that well? Liberty houses within them. You see that stunted, parched, and sorry tree? From each branch liberty hangs. Your neck, your throat, your heart are all so many ways of escape from slavery … Do you enquire the road to freedom? You shall find it in every vein in your body.” — Seneca

| Death · Quotations

Podcast Episode 10: A Baboon Soldier, Lighthouse Rescues, and a Parliament of Owls

http://www.samvoa.org/jackie.html

When Albert Marr joined the South African army in 1915, he received permission to bring along his pet baboon, Jackie. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow Jackie’s adventures in England, Egypt, and Belgium, his work for the Red Cross after the war, and his triumphant return to Pretoria in 1919.

We’ll also meet a Rhode Island lighthouse keeper’s daughter who saved the lives of 18 people over a period of 48 years, and present the next Futility Closet Challenge.

See full show notes …

| Podcast

Intersections

Here’s a way to visualize multiplication that reduces it to simple counting:

multiplication lattice

Express the digits in each factor with rows of parallel lines, as shown, and then count the intersections to derive the product. This is more cumbersome than the traditional method, but its visual nature is appealing, and it permits anyone who can count to reach the right answer even if he doesn’t know the multiplication table.

The example above uses small digits, so no “carrying” is required, but the method does accommodate more complex sums — it’s explained well in this video:

See Two by Two.

(Thanks, Dieter.)

| Science & Math

Foursquare

foursquare puzzle

Print out two copies of this pattern, cut them out, and fold each along the dotted lines, making two identical solids. Then fit these two pieces together to make a regular tetrahedron.

This sounds dead simple, but it stumped me for some time. See if you can do it. (There’s no trick — the task is just what it seems.)

| Puzzles