Breakfast News

In May 2009, California consumer Janine Sugawara sued PepsiCo for implying that crunchberries are a fruit. She claimed that she and other consumers had been misled both by the name of the cereal and by the image on the box of Cap’n Crunch “thrusting a spoonful of ‘Crunchberries’ at the prospective buyer.” The package suggests that the product contains real fruit, she said; had she known otherwise, she would not have bought it.

“While the challenged packaging contains the word ‘berries’ it does so only in conjunction with the descriptive term ‘crunch’,” wrote Judge Morrison England Jr., reflecting wearily upon the course his life had taken. “This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a ‘crunchberry.’ Furthermore, the ‘Crunchberries’ depicted on the [box] are round, crunchy, brightly-colored cereal balls, and the [box] clearly states both that the Product contains ‘sweetened corn & oat cereal’ and that the cereal is ‘enlarged to show texture.’ Thus, a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into believing that the Product in the instant case contained a fruit that does not exist.”

He dismissed the case and denied Sugawara the chance to amend her complaint. “The survival of the instant claim would require this Court to ignore all concepts of personal responsibility and common sense,” he wrote. “The Court has no intention of allowing that to happen.”

| Oddities

“Essay to Miss Catharine Jay”

An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T J,
The girl without a ∥,
The belle of U T K.

I 1 der if U got that 1
I wrote 2 U B 4
I sailed in the R K D A,
And sent by L N Moore.

My M T head will scarce contain
A calm I D A bright,
But A T miles from you I must
M{ this chance 2 write.

And first, should N E N V U,
B E Z, mind it not.
Should N E friendship show, be true:
They should not be forgot.

From virt U nev R D V 8;
Her influence B 9
Alike induces 10 dern S,
Or 40 tude D vine.

And if you cannot cut a —
Or cause an !
I hope U’ll put a .
2 1 ?

R U for an X ation 2,
My cous N ? — heart and ☞
He off R’s in a ¶
A § 2 of land.

He says he loves you 2 X S,
U R virtuous and Y’s,
In X L N C U X L
All others in his I’s.

This S A, until U I C,
I pray U 2 X Q’s,
And do not burn in F E G
My young and wayward muse.

Now fare U well, dear K T J,
I trust that U R true–
When this U C, then you can say,
An S A I O U.

— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890

| Language · Poems

Creative Taxidermy

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

To demonstrate “the discovery which I had made of preparing specimens upon scientific principles,” eccentric naturalist Charles Waterton (1782-1865) created “The Nondescript,” a red howler monkey whose face he had manipulated into a semi-human cast.

“I have no wish whatever that the nondescript should pass for any other thing than that which the reader himself should wish it to pass for,” he wrote, rather elliptically. “Not considering myself pledged to tell its story, I leave it to the reader to say what it is, or what it is not.”

The specimen is preserved at the Wakefield Museum in West Yorkshire. Lost is a similar Waterton creation, “The English Reformation Zoologically Demonstrated,” a series of “portraits” of famous Protestants fashioned from preserved lizards and toads.

Such experiments could make Waterton seem unfeeling, but he was fundamentally more sympathetic with the wildlife of South America than the Georgian society to which he’d been born. He made this address to a sloth he surprised on the banks of the Essequibo in Guyana:

“Come, poor fellow. If thou hast got into a hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it: I’ll take no advantage of thee in misfortune; the forest is large enough for both thee and me to rove in: go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself in these endless wilds; it is more than probable thou wilt never have another interview with man. So fare thee well.”

(“I followed him with my eye till the intervening branches closed in betwixt us; and then I lost sight for ever of the two-toed Sloth. I was going to add, that I never saw a Sloth take to his heels in such earnest: but the expression will not do, for the Sloth has no heels.”)

| Oddities

An Extra Hand

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

On the first day of fighting at Gettysburg, an old man in a swallowtail coat and a high black silk hat presented himself to a Union officer, volunteering to fight. When asked if he could shoot, he said, “If you knew that you had before you a soldier of the War of 1812 who fought at Lundy’s Lane, you would not ask such a question.”

It was the town constable, John L. Burns, born in 1793 and now nearly 70. He exchanged his ancient musket for a modern rifle and joined the 7th Wisconsin volunteers, with whom he distinguished himself as a sharpshooter throughout the battle. “He was as calm and collected as as any veteran on the ground,” remembered Sgt. George Eustice. “He was true blue and grit to the backbone, and fought until he was three times wounded.”

After the war he was hailed as the “hero of Gettysburg” and visited by tourists, veterans, and dignitaries, and he even met Lincoln at the dedication of the National Cemetery. He died in 1872 at age 78.

| History

Disputed Disputation

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

Some states permit less-than-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases. If a person is convicted of a crime in such a state by a jury that splits, say, nine to three, then has the defendant’s guilt been proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Does the mere existence of outvoted jurors (or their doubts) establish a reasonable doubt that should overturn the majority’s vote to convict? In Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U.S. 356 (1972), the Supreme Court faced this question and held that it does not; even a split jury can convict a person beyond a reasonable doubt. But in Johnson, the Supreme Court was itself split as much as it could be, five to four. Is there a reasonable doubt as to what constitutes reasonable doubt?

— Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment, 1990

| Society

Oedipus Wrecked

Jocasta Jones is walking in a wood when she discovers a deep freeze containing a man. She thaws him out, and he introduces himself as Dum and shows her a book that explains how to build a time machine and a deep freeze.

Jocasta and Dum marry and produce a baby, whom they name Dee. Dee grows up, discovers the book, builds a time machine and gets inside, taking his father and the book with him. The journey into the past takes a long time, and Dee is forced to kill and eat his father to stay alive.

Wracked with guilt, he emerges at his destination and destroys the machine. He changes his name to Dum, but still fearful of being punished, he builds a deep freeze and gets inside, taking the book with him. He is awakened by Jocasta.

Now, asks University of Nottingham philosopher Jonathan Harrison, “Did Jocasta commit a logically possible crime?” From her perspective, Dum enters her life, they have a child, and husband and child both disappear. But from Dee’s perspective, she has married her son and borne a child. Is this incest?

(Harrison, J. (1979) “Jocasta’s crime”, Analysis 39, 65.)

| Puzzles

Over the Top

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Going_over_the_top_02.jpg

An infantryman’s view of World War I combat, from veteran Henry Williamson’s 1930 novel Patriot’s Progress:

… Half the sky leapt alight behind them, there were shouts and cries, a cascade of sound slipped solidly upon them, seeming to John Bullock to swell and converge upon the place where his now very trembling body was large and alone. He saw a long pale shadow before him an instant before it vagged and vanished in the shock of the earth rushing up in fire before him. He was aware of men going forward, himself with them, of the unreality of all movement, of the barrage which was all-weight and all-sound, so that he was carried forward effortlessly over a land freed from the force of gravity and matter. As in a nightmare of rising green and white showers of light about the rending fire he shouted without sound in a silent world, and his senses fused into a glassy delirium which lasted until he realized that of the figures on either side of him some were slowly going down on their knees, their chins on their box-respirators, their rifles loosening from their hands. He was hot and swearing, and his throat was dried up. That sissing noise and far-away racketting must be emma-gees. Now the fire wall was going down under his nose and streaking sparks were over and he was lying on his back watching a great torn umbrella of mud, while his head was drawn down into his belly …

(The vacuum of a dud shell falling just behind him.) He retched for breath. His ears screamed in his head. He crawled to his knees and looked to see what had happened. Chaps going on forward. He was on his feet in the sissing criss-cross and stinking of smoking earth gaping — hullo, hullo, new shell-holes, this must be near the first objective. They had come three hundred yards already! Cushy! Nothing in going over the top! Then his heart instead of finishing its beat and pausing to beat again swelled out its beat into an ear-bursting agony and great lurid light that leapt out of his broken-apart body with a spinning shriek

and the earth was in his eyes and up his nostrils and going away smaller and smaller

into blackness

and       tiny       far       away

Rough and smooth. Rough was wide and large and tilting with sickness. He struggled and struggled to clutch smooth, and it slid away. Rough came back and washed harshly over him. He cried out between the receding of rough and the coming of smooth white, then rough and smooth receded …

Shell-shocked at the Somme, Williamson was invalided back to England in 1917, where he wrote seven novels about his wartime experiences. He died in 1977.

| History · Literature

In a Word

eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious
adj. very good

(This has to be facetious, but I can’t find its origin. I’ve traced it back as far as Maurice Weseen’s 1934 Dictionary of American Slang, but he gives no source.)

| Language