Said Watson to Holmes, “Is it wise —
Such false whiskers when hunting for spies?”
Said the sleuth, “I’m afraid
You’re as dense as Lestrade:
I’m disguised as myself in disguise.”
— R.J.P. Hewison, Punch, Nov. 21, 1951
Manual Labor
Dick and Jane are playing a game. Each holds up one or two fingers. If the total number of fingers is odd, then Dick pays Jane that number of dollars. If it’s even, then Jane pays Dick:
At first blush this looks fair, but in fact it’s distinctly favorable for Jane. Let p be the proportion of times that Jane holds up one finger. Her average winnings when Dick holds up one finger are -2p + 3(1 – p), and her average winnings when he holds up two fingers are 3p – 4(1 – p). If she sets those equal to one another she gets p = 7/12. This means that if she raises one finger with probability 7/12, then on average she’ll win -2(7/12) + 3(5/12) = 1/12 dollar every round, no matter what Dick does. Dick’s best strategy is also to raise one finger 7/12 of the time, but the best this can do is to restrict his loss to 1/12 dollar on average. It’s not a fair game.
Memento Mori
David Kendrick’s “life expectancy timepiece,” patented in 1991, offers a running countdown of your remaining time on earth.
Using actuarial data, enter the years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that you expect to live, and adjust this total according to the health factors in Table II.
Then set it going. It’s not quite as bad as it looks: You can press the RUN/STOP button to pause the countdown while you’re engaged in a healthful activity (“e.g. taking a walk, breathing fresh air, etc.”). And life expectancy improves with age, so you can add a few years on certain birthdays.
But still, it’s pretty sobering. An alternate version actually includes a speaker that provides “an audible signal, as a reminder that time is passing.” “This audible signal may be adapted to operate automatically at a particular time each day or may be suppressed by the user.”
The Good Life
“A gentleman never looks out of the window.” — Oscar Wilde
“Gentlemen do not take soup at luncheon.” — Lord Curzon
“Gentlemen are never busy — insects and city people are busy.” — Beau Brummel
“A gentleman never encircles the lady’s waist in the waltz until the dance begins, and drops his arm as soon as it ends. He studies to hold the lady lightly and firmly without embracing her.” — The Manners That Win, 1880
“A gentleman never sits in the house with his hat on in the presence of ladies for a single moment. Indeed, so strong is the force of habit, that a gentleman will quite unconsciously remove his hat on entering a parlor, or drawing-room, even if there is no one present but himself. People who sit in the house with their hats on are to be suspected of having spent the most of their time in barrooms, and similar places. A gentleman never sits with his hat on in the theater. Gentlemen do not generally sit even in an eating-room with their hats on, if there is any convenient place to put them.” — Arthur Martine, Martine’s Perfect Letter Writer and American Manual of Etiquette, 1866
Summing Up
Suppose I write these phrases on a blackboard:
π
6
the sum of the numbers denoted by expressions on the board in Room 213
And suppose I’m in Room 213. It’s clear what the first two phrases denote, but what of the third? If it denotes the quantity k, then k = π + 6 + k, which is absurd. So the third phrase is pathological — it appears to denote a number but it doesn’t.
But if the third phrase doesn’t denote a number, then the sum of the numbers denoted by expressions on the board in Room 213 is π + 6 — and the third phrase has a clear meaning. Asks University of North Carolina professor Keith Simmons, “How can the same phrase be pathological and yet successfully refer?”
(Keith Simmons, “Reference and Paradox,” in JC Beall, ed., Liars and Heaps, 2003)
World Music
In 2008 James Plakovic spent six weeks composing this score for 37 instruments — woodwinds, pianos, brass, and strings. “Every land mass has been transformed into musical notation,” he says. “A note, a rest, a slur, some musical expression mark such as forte or pianissimo, so that the end result, when you step back from the image itself, is that you see land. You see a part of the world.”
“The music is very busy,” he admits. “There are some spots that are flowing and harmonious, and there are definitely areas that are a bit brash and discordant. And that reflects how the world is.”
Permanent Resident
J. Joseph Renaud, the French novelist and dramatic author, to test the popularity of Conan Doyle’s stories, recently sent a letter to a friend living in Baker Street. It was addressed as follows:
Miss Compton,
The same street as Sherlock Holmes,
London.The letter was delivered by the first post the following morning. The conclusion drawn is that Sherlock Holmes is still fresh in the memory of the English and that the English postal authorities are both erudite and conscientious.
— The Morning Post, Feb. 3, 1933
Inscrutable
Advance the word GOD through the alphabet and you get OWL, SAP, and WET:
Whatever that means. Further multistep lettershifts:
ADD-BEE-ILL
BUS-HAY-PIG
IRK-RAT-VEX
MUD-WEN-AIR
OAF-WIN-COT
If we admit words of differing lengths, some interesting coincidences appear:
And, disturbingly,
Perhaps that owl is telling us something. See A Hidden Message.
Unquote
“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he usually proves that he is one himself.” — H.L. Mencken
Composing Time
“You write with ease, to show your breeding, / But easy writing’s curst hard reading.” — Richard Sheridan
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” — Samuel Johnson
“So did the best writers in their beginnings; they imposed upon themselves care, and industry. They did nothing rashly. They obtained first to write well, and then custom made it easy and a habit. By little and little, their matter showed itself to them more plentifully; their words answered, their composition followed; and all, as in a well ordered family, presented itself in the place. So that the sum of all is: ready writing makes not good writing; but good writing brings on ready writing.” — Ben Jonson