Rayma Rich’s “collapsible riding companion,” patented in 1991, offers female travelers an inventive way to deter criminals: Set up the false head and torso in your passenger seat, dress it in a suitable shirt, and you have a devoted male escort who will accompany you anywhere and never ask for overtime.
When you get back to the airport, disconnect the head, stow it in the torso, and “the riding companion becomes a lightweight, easy-to-carry rectanglar case for traveling.”
How to tell a parrot from a carrot, from American physicist Robert W. Wood’s extracurricular How to Tell the Birds From the Flowers: A Manual of Flornithology for Beginners (1907):
The Parrot and the Carrot we may easily confound,
They’re very much alike in looks and similar in sound.
We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation,
For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation.
Below: A further distinction.
Here are three circles and two squares, inscribed successively as shown.
If the diameter of the largest circle is 10, what is the diameter of the smallest circle?
Stonewall Jackson’s precepts for good conversation, from a book of maxims he collected in the 1850s:
“Good breeding, or true politeness, is the art of showing men by external signs the internal regard we have for them,” he wrote. “It arises from good sense, improved by good company. It must be acquired by practice and not by books.”
“Standards for inconsequential trivia,” offered by Philip A. Simpson in the NBS Standard, Jan. 1, 1970:
10-15 bismols = 1 femto-bismol
10-12 boos = 1 picoboo
1 boo2 = 1 boo-boo
10-18 boys = 1 attoboy
1012 bulls = 1 terabull
101 cards = 1 decacards
10-9 goats = 1 nanogoat
2 gorics = 1 paregoric
10-3 ink machines = 1 millink machine
109 los = 1 gigalos
10-1 mate = 1 decimate
10-2 mentals = 1 centimental
10-2 pedes = 1 centipede
106 phones = 1 megaphone
10-6 phones = 1 microphone
1012 pins = 1 terapin
On Sept. 21, 1929, each of the major Paris newspapers received a letter from a mysterious organization calling itself the Knights of Themis. The society had been formed, it said, to punish “swindlers, dishonest financiers and others of similar kidney” whom the authorities had failed to discourage.
First on its list was Joseph Eugene Clement Passal, a notorious confidence man who had just been released from Lille Prison after a paltry five-year sentence. Over the next several days, further letters told of Passal’s abduction and torture by a series of bizarre ordeals. Finally, on Sept. 26, he confessed the location of his ill-gotten loot, and his captors retrieved a box containing 10 million francs from the Forest of Essarts. Finding Passal hopelessly unrepentant, though, they resolved to kill him.
On Sept. 27 Passal’s mother received a letter in her son’s hand, confirming that he had been kidnapped, tortured, and sentenced to death. Six days later she received another letter, this one apparently from a repentant captor who thought his fellows had gone too far. He confided that Passal had been buried alive 75 miles west of Paris in a coffin that had been fitted with an airpipe to prolong his agony.
The authorities raced to the scene and found a freshly dug grave from which a tin airpipe protruded. In the coffin was Joseph Passal, dead. When detectives traced the purchaser of the airpipe they discovered Paris thief Henri Boulogne, who confessed everything. He and Passal had been cellmates in prison, and on Passal’s release they had rented a villa, where they had typed the letters and built the coffin. Passal directed his friend to bury him alive, expecting that the authorities would resurrect him and he could sell his story for millions.
The airpipe they had chosen was too small.
“What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.” — La Rochefoucauld
“Nothing hath an uglier Look to us than Reason, when it is not of our side.” — George Savile, Marquess of Halifax
“Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance.” — Louis Brandeis
A puzzle from the Middle Ages, adapted by A.N. Prior:
Four people, on a certain occasion, say one thing each.
A says that 1 + 1 = 2.
B says that 2 + 2 = 4.
C says that 2 + 2 = 5.
Can D now say that exactly as many truths as falsehoods are uttered on this occasion?
“If what D says is true,” Prior writes, “that makes 3 truths to 1 falsehood, so that it is false; while if it is false, that makes two truths and two falsehoods, and it is true.”
An organization and methods engineer submitted this report after visiting the Royal Festival Hall:
For considerable periods the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their numbers should be reduced, and the work spread more evenly over the whole of the concert, thus eliminating peaks of activity.
All the twelve violins were playing identical notes. This seems unnecessary multiplication. The staff of this section should be drastically cut; if a large volume of sound is required, it could be obtained by means of electronic amplifiers.
Much effort was absorbed in the playing of demisemiquavers. This seems to be an unnecessary refinement. It is recommended that all notes should be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver. If this were done it would be possible to use trainees and lower grade operatives more extensively.
There seems to be too much repetition of some musical passages. Scores should be drastically pruned. No useful purpose is served by repeating on the horns a passage which has already been handled by the strings. It is estimated that if all redundant passages were eliminated, the whole concert time of two hours could be reduced to twenty minutes, and there would be no need for an interval.
The Conductor agrees generally with these recommendations, but expresses the opinion that there might be some falling-off in box-office receipts. In that unlikely event it should be possible to close sections of the auditorium entirely, with a consequential saving of overhead expenses — lighting, attendants, etc.
If the worst came to the worst, the whole thing could be abandoned and the public could go to the Albert Hall instead.
— From NPL News 236, 17 (1969)
Visitors to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London can see a plaque commemorating the location in which John Watson first met Sherlock Holmes. The occasion of Holmes and Watson’s meeting there led Tokyo’s Sherlock Holmes Appreciation Society to contribute £650 to the “Save Bart’s Campaign” in 2006.
Holmes is astir elsewhere as well. A passage in T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral runs:
THOMAS: Who shall have it?
TEMPTER: He who will come.
THOMAS: What shall be the month?
TEMPTER: The last from the first.
THOMAS: What shall we give for it?
TEMPTER: Pretence of priestly power.
THOMAS: Why should we give it?
TEMPTER: For the power and the glory.
THOMAS: No!
A writer to John O’ London’s Weekly in August 1937 noted that this is strikingly similar to a passage in “The Musgrave Ritual”:
“Whose was it?”
“His who is gone.”
“Who shall have it?”
“He who will come.”
“Where was the sun?”
“Over the oak.”
“Where was the shadow?”
“Under the elm.”
“How was it stepped?”
“North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.”
“What shall we give for it?”
“All that is ours.”
“Why should we give it?”
“For the sake of the trust.”
The writer asked, “Can you tell me what the connection is between the two?”
The editors replied: “We are informed that Mr. Eliot makes no secret of the fact that occasionally in order to obtain a special effect certain passages from his works are taken from the writings of other authors, and that the passage in question was actually adapted by him from the Conan Doyle story.”
Conan Doyle himself paid a similar compliment at the end of Holmes’ career. At the conclusion of “The Final Problem,” Watson calls his friend “the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.” A writer to the Times, March 5, 1941, points out that Plato says the same of Socrates at the end of the Phaedo: “Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.”
