Specialists

I don’t know who came up with this — it’s been bouncing around science journals for 50 years:

hydromicrobiogeochemist: one who studies small underwater flora and their relationship to underlying rock strata by using chemical methods

microhydrobiogeochemist: one who studies flora in very small bodies of water and their relationship to underlying rock strata by using chemical methods

microbiohydrogeochemist: one who studies small flora and their relationship to underlying rock strata by using chemical methods and SCUBA equipment

biohydromicrogeochemist: a very small geochemist who studies the effect of plant life in hydrology

hydrobiomicrogeochemist: a very small geochemist who studies wet plants

biomicrohydrogeochemist: a very small, wet geochemist who likes lettuce

| Humor · Science & Math

Triangle

Suppose we agree that everyone has a right to life, but that a person forfeits this right when he threatens the life of another — in that case it’s permissible to kill him.

Now consider three people, A, B, and C. A aims a gun at B, B aims a gun at C, and C aims a gun at A. When A takes aim, he’s threatening another person, so he loses his own right to life. Normally in that case C would be justified in killing him, since this defends B. But B is aiming at C, which means he forfeits his own right to life … which means that A can kill him, and that C can’t kill A.

There seems no way to resolve this under the rules we’ve laid out. “Each actor has a right to life if he or she lacks a right to life and lacks a right to life if he or she has a right to life,” wrote University of Tulsa law professor Russell Christopher, who offered the puzzle in 1998. He uses it to suggest that subjective factors such as motive, belief, and knowledge must be considered when making these judgments.

(Russell Christopher, “Self-Defense and Defense of Others,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Spring 1998)

See The Bystander Paradox.

| Society

O Beautiful

https://www.google.com/patents/USD51415

What’s more patriotic than Uncle Sam or a bald eagle? A bald eagle with Uncle Sam’s head!

This appalling statuette, patented by Mary Harris in October 1917, was so inspiring that it actually ended World War I. Apparently.

| Oddities

Comment

mcalpine folly

In 1976, when the United Kingdom’s Labour government was threatening to institute a wealth tax, Conservative Party treasurer Alistair McAlpine installed a new column at West Green House, his Hampshire estate. The inscription read:

HOC MONUMENTUM MAGNO PRETIO QUOD ALITER IN MANUS PUBLICANORUM QUANDOQUE CECIDISSET ÆDIFICATUM EST

Or:

This monument was built with a large sum of money which would otherwise have fallen, sooner or later, into the hands of the tax gatherers.

“The placing of the column so near the public road could with justice be called provocative,” wrote Clive Aslet in his 1986 biography of Quinlan Terry, who designed it. The tax was abandoned.

| Society

Oh

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_071115-N-6524M-001_Sailors_and_Marines_shout_.jpg

While on assignment aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Enterprise, Life photographer Bob Landry submitted a dubious expense report. The magazine wired him:

JUSTIFY EXPENSE ACCOUNT ITEM: TAXIS.

Landry wired back:

DAMN BIG CARRIER.

| Humor

Square Dance

paint scheme puzzle

From the 2001 Moscow Mathematical Olympiad:

Two stones, one black and one white, are placed on a chessboard. A move consists of moving one stone up, down, left, or right. The two stones may not occupy the same square. Does a sequence of moves exist that will produce every possible arrangement of the stones, each occurring exactly once?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Figure and Ground

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JFKcapitolNov25%2763.jpg

The tradition of flying a flag at half-staff began when a symbolic space was left at the top of the staff for the “invisible flag of death,” signifying death’s dominion over earthly affairs.

A riderless horse accompanies the funeral procession of U.S. military officers. The horse above, Black Jack, accompanied more than 1,000 such processions, including those for John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Douglas MacArthur.

When Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova died in 1931, her next show went on as scheduled, with a spotlight circling an empty stage.

| Death

Unquote

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Kingdon_Clifford_by_John_Collier.jpg

“In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.” — William Kingdon Clifford

(He distilled this into a credo: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”)

| Quotations

The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer

You’re fitted with a watch that imparts an electric current to your skin in increments too small to distinguish. Initially it’s set to 0 (off), and the settings run up to 1000. At the start of each week you’re allowed a period of experimentation to compare various settings, and then the watch is returned to its last setting. Then you have the option to increase the setting by 1; if you do this, you get $10,000. You may never reduce the setting.

What should you do? On the first day your experimentation shows you that the highest setting is completely intolerable; at that setting you’d pay any amount of money to get rid of the watch. But on this first week your decision is simply whether to advance from 0 to 1, getting $10,000 for accepting an imperceptible amount of pain. That seems attractive.

The trouble seems to be that your evaluations are “transitive” only at a large scale. If you prefer 0 to 500 and 500 to 1000, then it’s valid to conclude that you’ll prefer 0 to 1000. But if you prefer 51 to 4 (because of the financial reward) and 103 to 51, can we conclude that you’ll prefer 103 to 4? Not necessarily.

Unfortunately for all of us, this describes a lot of life. “The self-torturer is not alone in his predicament,” writes philosopher Warren S. Quinn, who proposed this puzzle in 1990. “Most of us are like him in one way or another. We like to eat but also care about our appearance. Just one more bite will give us pleasure and won’t make us look fatter; but very many bites will. And there may be similar connections between puffs of pleasant smoking and lung cancer, or between pleasurable moments of idleness and wasted lives.” What’s the best course?

(Warren S. Quinn, “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer,” Philosophical Studies, May 1990)

| Puzzles