The Perils of Journalism

An accident, the consequences of which are expected to be fatal, took place at Cannes on Sunday last. A M. Despleschin, of Nice, had announced his intention of making an ascent in a balloon, and two gentlemen, M. Hardy, of Cannes, and M.A. de Sorr, a literary man from Paris, had made arrangements to accompany him. These two gentlemen had taken their seats in the car, M. Despleschin not having yet entered it, when some person in the crowd, anxious to see the balloon start, cried out ‘Let go.’ The man who held the ropes, thinking that the order had come from the aeronaut, obeyed, and the balloon rose rapidly into the clouds, and disappeared. M. Hardy and M. de Sorr are both entirely ignorant of the management of a balloon, and it is feared that they have been carried out to sea. Up to the 2d. no intelligence had been received of them.

— Times, May 9, 1854

| Oddities

True and False

I go fishing with my friend John. We both catch fish, a large one and a small one. We think John has caught the large one, but in fact the lines were crossed and I caught it. We throw the fish back and I go home thinking that I caught the small fish.

When my father asks how I did, I decide to deceive him, and I tell him I caught a big fish.

Am I lying?

“My linguistic intuitions tell me that a lie must be a false statement, and that, therefore, what I say in this case is not a lie,” writes Loyola University philosopher Thomas L. Carson. “I intend to lie in this case, but I don’t. … To the extent that it rests on disputed intuitions, my claim that a lie must be a false statement is open to question.” Further fishing trouble.

| Oddities

Marine Biology

Encounter with a mermaid, from a letter by Scottish schoolmaster William Munro to a Dr. Torrence, June 9, 1809:

About twelve years ago, when I was parochial schoolmaster at Reay, in the course of my walking on the shore of Sandside Bay, being a fine warm day in summer, I was induced to extend my walk towards Sandside Head, when my attention was arrested by the appearance of a figure, resembling an unclothed female, sitting upon a rock extended into the sea, and apparently in the action of combing its hair, which flowed around its shoulders, and of a light brown colour. The resemblance which the figure bore to its prototype, in all its visible parts, was so striking, that had not the rock on which it was sitting been dangerous for bathing, I would have been constrained to have regarded it as really a human form, and to an eye unaccustomed to such a situation, it must have undoubtedly appeared as such.

The head was covered with hair of the colour above mentioned, and shaded on the crown; the forehead round, the face plump, the cheeks ruddy, the eyes blue, the mouth and lips of a natural form, resembling those of a man; the teeth I could not discover as the mouth was shut: the breasts and abdomen, the arms and fingers of the size of a full grown body of the human species; the fingers, from the action in which the hands were employed, did not appear to be webbed, but as to this I am not positive. It remained on the rock three or four minutes after I observed it, and was exercised during that period in combing its hair, which was long and thick, and of which it appeared proud, and then dropped into the sea, which was level with the abdomen, from whence it did not re-appear to me. I had a distinct view of its features, being at no great distance, on an eminence above the rock on which it was sitting, and the sun brightly shining. Immediately before its getting into its natural element it seemed to have observed me, as the eyes were turned towards the eminence on which I stood.

“If the above narrative can in any degree be subservient towards establishing the existence of a phenomenon, hitherto almost incredible to naturalists, or to remove the scepticism of others who are ready to dispute every thing which they cannot fully comprehend, you are welcome to it from, dear Sir, your most obliged, and most humble servant, William Munro.”

From The Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany, October 1809.

| Oddities

Sicherman Dice

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Die_faces

What’s unusual about these dice is obvious. But what’s normal about them?

When thrown together, they produce the same probability distribution as a pair of ordinary dice. There are six ways to throw a 7, five ways to throw an 8, etc. This the only possible alternate arrangement in which all the face values are positive.

They were discovered/invented by George Sicherman of Buffalo, N.Y.

| Science & Math

Gone With the Wind

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charvolants2.jpg

Schoolteacher George Pocock invented a unique means of transportation in 1826 — the Charvolant, a buggy drawn by kites. By training the kites and turning the carriage’s front wheels, the “charioteer” could steer even along a road at right angles to the wind. “Thus,” he found, “whatever road the car may travel by a side-wind, the same road it may return by the same wind; and where there is space for traverse, as on plains or downs, it is possible to beat up against the wind.”

“This mode of travelling is, of all others, the most pleasant,” Pocock wrote in his 1851 Treatise on the Æropleustic Art. “Privileged with harnessing the invincible winds, our celestial tandem playfully transpierces the clouds, and our mystic-moving car swiftly glides along the surface of the scarce-indented earth; while beholders, snatching a glance at the rapid but noiseless expedition, are led to regard the novel scene rather as a vision than a reality.”

In experiments with a four-wheeled car drawn by two kites on leads of 300 yards, Pocock found that a high wind could produce speeds of more than 40 mph; in one friendly race three Charvolants carried 12 passengers 113 miles from Bristol to Marlborough in a single morning. Pocock estimated that a party of six might cross the Sahara in 10 days and 10 hours for a total cost of about £80. “Is it too fond a hope that, by the system of æropleustics, those sands may be navigated as the sea, and thus a most speedy and safe communication be opened between the east and the west of the interior?”

As a side benefit, Pocock found that the Charvolant could travel freely on English turnpikes, which assessed tolls by the number of horses that drew an equipage. “The herald-bugle is sounded — the gates fly open — you pass unquestioned,” Pocock marveled. “Those who travel by Kites travel as kings.”

| Technology

At Sea

Christian Morgenstern’s 1905 nonsense poem “Fish’s Night Song” manages to be both charming and incomprehensible:

http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fisches_Nachtgesang

That’s it. Jeremy Adler and Ulrich Ernst list the interpretations that have been suggested:

The symbols signify the metre of silent song; the alternation of symbols indicates a fish mouth opening and closing; together, they resemble the frontal view of a choir of fish; they represent water; they resemble the shape of a fish without head or tail. These as well as other interpretations of the poem are quite permissible. Thus we have, in the framework of ‘nonsense literature,’ a new type of visual poetry: a poem of figures that does not imitate any particular form, the abstract figure poem.

“Or, expressed differently,” writes Heinrich Plett in Literary Rhetoric, “the referentiality of this isographemic configuration is polysemous.”

| Poems

Unwound

You have 13 reels of magnetic tape, one empty reel, and a machine that will wind tape from a full reel to an empty one, reversing its direction. You need all 13 tapes reversed on their original reels. Show how this can be done, or prove that it’s impossible.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles