The Case of the Self-Stealing Store

In 1983, Jacob Henderson was convicted of burglarizing a Maaco paint shop in Jackson, Miss. He appealed on the ground that the indictment was illiterate:

The Grand Jurors for the State of Mississippi, … upon their oaths present: That Jacob Henderson … on the 15th day of May, A.D., 1982.

The store building there situated, the property of Metro Auto Painting, Inc., … in which store building was kept for sale or use valuable things, to-wit: goods, ware and merchandise unlawfully, feloniously and burglariously did break and enter, with intent the goods, wares and merchandise of said Metro Auto Painting then and there being in said store building unlawfully, feloniously and then and there being in said store building burglariously to take, steal and carry away; And
One (1) Polaroid Land Camera,
One (1) Realistic AM/FM Stereo Tuner
One (1) Westminster AM/FM radio
One (1) Metal Box and contents thereof,

… the property of the said Metro Auto Painting then and there being in said store building did then and there unlawfully, feloniously and burglariously take, steal and carry away the aforesaid property, he, the said Jacob Henderson, having been twice previously convicted of felonies, to-wit: … .

Henderson called an English teacher as an expert witness. She pointed out that the district attorney’s indictment doesn’t charge Henderson with any wrongdoing; instead it charges the merchandise itself with breaking into the paint store.

“This case presents the question whether the rules of English grammar are a part of the positive law of this state,” wrote Justice Robertson for the court. “If they are, Jacob Henderson’s burglary conviction must surely be reversed, for the indictment in which he has been charged would receive an ‘F’ from every English teacher in the land.”

“Though grammatically unintelligible, we find that the indictment is legally sufficient and affirm, knowing full well that our decision will receive of literate persons everywhere opprobrium as intense and widespread as it will be deserved.”

| Language · Society

Backwards

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Life_and_Age_of_Man-Stages_of_Man%27s_Life,_from_the_Cradle_to_the_Grave_by_James_Baillie.jpg

“The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”

— Mark Twain, letter to Edward Dimmitt, July 19, 1901

| Quotations

All in the Family

Two men are brothers-in-law if one is married to the other’s sister. What is the largest possible group of men in which each is brother-in-law to each of the others?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Uh-Oh

Can a fraction whose numerator is less than its denominator be equal to a fraction whose numerator is greater than its denominator? If not, how can

white fraction fallacy

In the proportion

+6 : -3 :: -10 : +5

is not either extreme greater than either mean? What has become of the old rule, ‘greater is to less as greater is to less’?

— William Frank White, A Scrap-Book of Elementary Mathematics, 1908

| Science & Math

If You Build It …

http://msrmaps.com/map.aspx?t=1&s=11&lat=41.4580200&lon=-109.4904136&w=700&h=700

Green River, Wyo., is certainly neighborly: In 1994, when NASA determined that up to six meteors might strike Jupiter, Green River’s city council designated an airstrip south of town as the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. They asked NASA to broadcast the news to any fleeing Jovians and warned residents to “prepare themselves to make welcome any refugees who might cast themselves upon our mercy.”

Mayor George Eckman told the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner, “I feel it is a gesture that could be made and should be made by someone on the planet Earth to fellow citizens of the solar system.”

The two council members who opposed the resolution pointed out that the region already has a problem with illegal aliens and noted the local housing shortage. But the mile-long runway remains open.

| Oddities

Thorough

LONDON — Mrs. Kathleen Cameron, 19, was amazed at how hard and fast carpenters worked to tear down the pre-fab house next door at 10 Jardin Street.

‘I didn’t become suspicious of the four men until they skipped their tea break to continue working,’ she said.

Sure enough, the carpenters were thieves who stole the five-room house in its entirety. By the time police arrived, they were gone.

— Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Sept. 12, 1971

| Crime

The Montauk Monster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhodeislandMonster.jpg

In July 2008 an unrecognizable creature washed up on a beach on Long Island. Local resident Jenna Hewitt took this photo, which appeared in the local newspaper The Independent. What is it? No explanation quite adds up:

  • Its proportions don’t match those of a raccoon.
  • Sea turtles don’t have teeth.
  • It lacks the large incisors of a rodent.
  • A dog or coyote would have a more prominent eye ridge.

Some speculate that the animal was an escapee from the nearby Plum Island Animal Disease Center. William Wise, director of Stony Brook University’s Living Marine Resources Institute, flatly calls it a fake, the product of “someone who got very creative with latex.” The carcass has since been lost, so we’ll never know for sure.

| Oddities

Advancing Years

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=QzNhAAAAEBAJ

Allain Eustis’ “device for assisting infirm persons,” patented in 1895, is essentially a plate for shoving old people up stairs.

Eustis notes that the arrangement of the harness “avoids chafing the assistant.” Evidently he’d had a lot of experience at this.

| Technology

“Poetical Economy”

What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!

When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off without apol.
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realize that time is mon.

My sense remains as clear as cryst.,
My style as pure as any duch.
Who does not boast a bar sinist.
Upon her fam. escutch.,
And I can treat with scornful pit.
The sneers of ev’ry captious crit.

I gladly publish to the pop.
A scheme of which I make no myst.,
And beg my fellow scribes to cop.
This labor-saving syst.
I offer it to the consid.
Of ev’ry thoughtful individ.

The author, working like a beav.,
His readers’ pleasure could redoub.,
Did he but now and then abbrev.
The works he gives his pub.,
Did Upton Sinc. or Edith Whart.
Curtail their output by a quart.

If Mr. Caine rewrote “The Scape.”,
And Miss Corell. condensed “Barabb.”,
What could they save in foolscap pape.
Did they but cultivate the hab.
Which teaches people to suppress
All syllables that are unnec.!

If playwrights would but thus dimin.
The length of time each drama takes
(“The Second Mrs. Tanq.” by Pin.
Or even “Ham.” by Shakes.),
We could maintain a wakeful att.
When at a mat. on Wed. or Sat.

Foll. my examp., O Maurice Hewl.
When next you cater for the mill.;
You, too, immortal Mr. Dool.
And Ella Wheeler Wil.;
And share with me the grave respons.
Of writing this amazing nons.!

— Harry Graham, in Life, December 1909

| Language · Poems

Attenuated Language

What’s the longest “narrow” word — the longest word whose handwritten letters keep tidily to the middle of the line?

Dmitri Borgmann considered this question in 1965 and came up with overnervousnesses and overnumerousnesses — 17 and 18 letters.

In 1973 Darryl Francis sought the opposite — “tall” words made up entirely of letters that ascend above the mean line or descend below it. He discovered if, hip, glib, lipid, highly, fifthly, filthify, flightily, and lillypilly.

“I must tell you that my wife has a theory that only thin people can talk English well,” Bismarck told journalist Henri de Blowitz in 1878. “According to this, neither you nor I will make our mark in that language.”

| Language