Psychologist Adelbert Ames, inventor of the Ames room, also devised this illusion. In which direction is the window turning?
Dispatch
“Don’t waste your time on the branches small,”
Said the farmer to his son,
“But lay your axe at the root of the tree,
So your work is sooner done.”
Then, like a good and obedient boy,
Not a word back did he say,
But he laid his axe at the root of the tree,
And went off and fished all day.
— Newton Mackintosh, Precious Nonsense!, 1895
Seat of Knowledge
John VI of Portugal was hard of hearing, so he had a throne built whose leonine arms captured sound and directed it to a listening tube.
“Requiring anyone who wishes to speak with you to kneel and address you through the jaws of your carved lion might be fun for an hour or so,” notes neuroscientist Jan Schnupp, “but few psychologically well-balanced individuals would choose to hold the majority of conversations in that manner.”
Alfonso XIII of Spain was “the most tone-deaf man I ever knew,” remembered Artur Rubinstein. “From the time he was seven, he was accompanied by a man assigned to nudge him whenever the national anthem was played.”
Unquote
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because it pleases him, and it pleases him because it is beautiful. Were nature not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” — Henri Poincaré
Sweet and Sour
An ant will always position itself so that it’s precisely twice as far from vinegar as from honey. If we put a dab of vinegar at A and a dab of honey at B and we release a troop of ants, what formation will they take up?
The Right Word
Useful German:
- Feierabend: a festive frame of mind at the end of a working day
- Drachenfutter: (“dragon fodder”) a peace offering to a wife from a guilty husband
- Fachmensch: a narrow specialist
- Fingerspitzengefühl: (“fingertipfeel”) intuitive sensibility, confident sureness of touch
- fisselig: nagged and flustered to the point of incompetence
- pomadig: “like hair oil,” able to slip through difficulties
- Verschlimmbesserung: an intended improvement that has made things worse
- Stammplatz: a favorite usual spot, as a table at a café
- Zivilcourage: courage to stand up for what is right
- Zwischenraum: the space between things
The contraceptive pill is the Antibabypille. “I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it,” wrote Mark Twain, “but I talk it best through an interpreter.”
Legal Brief
Full text of the opinion of Michigan appeals court judge J.H. Gillis in Denny v. Radar Industries Inc., 1970:
The appellant has attempted to distinguish the factual situation in this case from that in Renfroe v. Higgins Rack Coating and Manufacturing Co., Inc. (1969), 17 Mich.App. 259, 169 N.W.2d 326. He didn’t. We couldn’t. Affirmed. Costs to appellee.
“It is truly a model of brevity,” wrote an Arizona state court justice. “If more judicial opinions were like this one, lawyers and judges who have to read them would be much happier, and the forests would be much safer.”
Black and White
Menu Trouble
Charles Ollier observed that GHOTI can be pronounced “fish”:
- GH as in laugh
- O as in women
- TI as in nation
Melville Dewey, who devised the Dewey Decimal System, suggested that GHEAUGHTEIGHPTOUGH spells “potato”:
- GH as in hiccough
- EAU as in beau
- GHT as in naught
- EIGH as in neigh
- PT as in pterodactyl
- OUGH as in though
This sort of thing can get out of hand quickly. In his 1845 Plea for Phonotypy and Phonography, Alexander John Ellis offered SCHIESOURRHCE for “scissors,” GNUITHEIERRH for “neither,” PHAIGHPHEAWRAIBT for “favorite,” PSOURRPHUAKNTW for “servant,” and (fittingly) EOLOTTHOWGHRHOIGHUAY for “orthography.”
GHOTI might even be silent:
- GH as in though
- O as in people
- T as in ballet
- I as in business
Other languages, it seems, have simply surrendered — the Klingon word for fish is ghotI.
Divine Recall
One of the most marvelous feats of recent times was performed in August, 1897, at Sondrio, capital of the Valtellina district, in the northern part of Italy, by Signor Edoe, professor in the Institution di Lorenzo, who, on a wager, repeated from memory, and without making a single mistake, the whole of Dante’s immortal poem, ‘Divina Commedia,’ which consists of nearly one hundred cantos, an amount of matter about equal to the number of words contained in the New Testament. The feat occupied about twenty-four hours in its accomplishment, lasting from 6 p.m. on one day until 2 p.m. the following day. It was achieved in the presence of a committee of associate professors and literary men, who, at about midnight, divided into two parties, alternately sleeping and listening until the recitation was finished, the text being carefully followed by prompters during the whole time, all in order that there might be no question as to the genuineness of the performance. This feat was accomplished after a preparation that was comparatively short, considering the great length of the poem, and is perhaps the most wonderful exhibition of verbal recollection in recent times.
— Henry H. Fuller, The Art of Memory, 1898