Getaway

The Woodrow Wilson Bridge carries the Capitol Beltway across the Potomac River south of Washington, D.C., connecting Maryland on the eastern shore with Virginia on the western.

The southern tip of Washington’s jurisdiction just touches the bridge’s westbound lanes — a 90-meter section of that span belongs to the District of Columbia. This makes the Wilson the only bridge in the United States that occupies three jurisdictions.

This sounds like an opportunity for some sort of perfect crime, but I can’t quite work it out.

June 4, 2014June 3, 2014 | Oddities

An Old Story

Whenever I passed, some few years ago, a certain shop-window in the West-end of London, I usually had an additional peep at a large card to which was attached a mummified cat grasping a mummified rat firmly in its jaws. If I remember rightly, these animals were discovered, in a preserved, albeit shrunken and dusty, condition, imprisoned between some rafters in the house during repairs. Evidently the unfortunate cat got jammed in its peculiar position accidentally, and being averse to releasing its own prisoner, and thereby being better able to release itself, held it securely until suffocation to both ensued. It was a striking illustration of the powerfulness of determination exercised by even the smaller class of animals.

— James Scott, “Shopkeepers’ Advertising Novelties,” Strand, November 1895

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_cat_and_the_rat_Christ_Church_Cathedral_in_Dublin_02.JPG — Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the 1860s, workers discovered the remains of a cat and a rat behind the organ in Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral.

There’s no telling how long they’d been there. Their bodies had been desiccated in the dry air of the church.

June 3, 2014June 2, 2014 | Death · Oddities

Self-Determination

Did Socrates commit suicide? Philosopher R.G. Frey argues that he did. Socrates’ final conversations with Phaedo and his friends show that he intended to drink the hemlock, and he drank it intentionally, knowing its effect and without being forced. It’s true that he had been sentenced to die, but still he chose to accept the cup rather than compel another to take his life.

“The fact that Socrates died a noble and dignified death does not show that he did not commit suicide,” writes Frey, “but rather that suicide need not be ignoble and undignified.”

(R.G. Frey, “Did Socrates Commit Suicide?”, Philosophy 53:203 [January 1978], 106-108.)

June 3, 2014June 2, 2014 | Death

Podcast Episode 12: The Great Race, Grace Kelly’s Tomahawk, and Dreadful Penmanship

The New York Times proposed an outrageous undertaking in 1908: An automobile race westward from New York to Paris, a journey of 22,000 miles across all of North America and Asia in an era when the motorcar was “the most fragile and capricious thing on earth.” In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the six teams who took up the challenge and attempted “the most perilous trip ever undertaken by man.”

We’ll also see how a tomahawk linked Alec Guinness and Grace Kelly for 25 years and hear poet Louis Phillips lament his wife’s handwriting.

See full show notes …

June 2, 2014November 11, 2017 | Podcast

Unquote

“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.” — Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1856

June 2, 2014June 1, 2014 | Quotations · Society

The Telltale Mart

The Journal of Portfolio Management published an unlikely article in 1986: “Is Time Travel Impossible? A Financial Proof.”

In it, California economist Marc Reinganum notes that anyone with a time machine would have an enormous incentive to manipulate investments and futures markets, using his knowledge of the future to amass huge profits.

If this were possible at all, it would be happening on such a large scale that interest rates would be driven to zero.

So the fact that we see positive interest rates proves that time travelers don’t exist.

June 1, 2014November 9, 2023 | Oddities · Society

Wheels of Justice

In 1962 a Swedish motorist was fined for leaving his car too long in a space with a posted time limit. The motorist objected, saying that he had removed the car in time and then happened to return to the same spot later, resetting the time limit. The policeman defended his charge, saying that he had noted the positions of the valves on two of the tires — the front-wheel valve was in the 1 o’clock position, the rear-wheel valve at 8 o’clock. If the car had been moved, he argued, the valves were unlikely to take the same positions.

The court accepted the motorist’s claim, calculating that the chance that the valves would return to the same positions by chance was 1/12 × 1/12 = 1/144, great enough to establish reasonable doubt. The court added that if all four valves had been found to be in the same position, the lower likelihood (1/12 × 1/12 × 1/12 × 1/12 = 1/20,736, it figured) would have been enough to uphold the fine.

Is this right? In evaluating this reasoning, University of Chicago law professor Hans Zeisel notes that this method is biased in favor of the defendant, since the positions of the valves are not perfectly independent. He later added, “The use of the 1/144 figure for the probability of the constable’s observations on the assumption that the defendant had driven away also can be questioned. Not only may the rotations of the tires on different axles be correlated, but the figure overlooks the observation that the car was in the same parking spot. When a person leaves a parking place, it is far from certain that the spot will be available later and that the person will choose it again. For this reason, it has been said that the probability of a coincidence is even smaller than a probability involving only the valves.”

(Hans Zeisel, “Dr. Spock and the Case of the Vanishing Women Jurors,” University of Chicago Law Review, 37:1 [Autumn 1969], 1-18)

May 31, 2014May 30, 2014 | Science & Math

Shadow Play

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ombra_astrofilo.png — Image: Wikimedia Commons

I am watching a double solar eclipse. The heavenly body Far, traveling east, passes before the sun. Beneath it passes the smaller body Near, traveling west. Far and Near appear to be the same size from my vantage point. Which do I see?

Common sense says that I see Near, since it’s closer. But Washington University philosopher Roy Sorensen argues that in fact I see Far. Near’s existence has no effect on the pattern of light that reaches my eyes. It’s not a cause of what I’m seeing; the view would be the same without it. (Imagine, for example, that Far were much larger and Near was lost in its shadow.)

“When objects are back-lit and are seen by virtue of their silhouettes, the principles of occlusion are reversed,” Sorensen concludes. “In back-lit conditions, I can hide a small suitcase by placing a large suitcase behind it.”

See In the Dark.

(Roy Sorensen, “Seeing Intersecting Eclipses,” Journal of Philosophy XCVI, 1 (1999): 25-49.)

May 30, 2014May 31, 2014 | Science & Math

In a Word

mumpsimus

n. a person who obstinately adheres to old ways, particularly in language; an ignorant and bigoted opponent of reform (also a custom so adhered to)

(Thanks, Cindy.)

May 30, 2014May 29, 2014 | Language

Diner Lingo

“Adam and Eve on a raft and wreck ’em”: two scrambled eggs on toast
“Burn one, take it through the garden, and pin a rose on it”: hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion
“Burn the British and draw one in the dark”: English muffin, toasted, with black coffee
“Adam’s ale, hold the hail”: water, no ice
“Give it shoes”: an order to go
“Honeymoon salad”: “lettuce alone”
“Life preservers”: doughnuts
“Noah’s boy on bread”: ham sandwich
“Put out the lights and cry”: liver and onions
“Zeppelins in a fog”: sausages and mashed potatoes

In 1838 James Fenimore Cooper wrote, “The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.”

May 29, 2014May 28, 2014 | Language