“We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.” — Nietzsche
“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” — Shakespeare
“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” — Defoe
School Reform
A classroom contains 25 desks arranged in 5 rows and 5 columns. The teacher asks each student to move to the desk in front of, behind, to the left of, or to the right of her current desk. The students at the edges have limited choices — will every child be able to find a new seat?
Checking In
Letter from T.S. Eliot to Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Feb. 3, 1940:
Possum now wishes to explain his silence
And to apologise (as only right is);
He had an attack of poisoning of some violence,
Followed presently by some days in bed with laryngitis.
Yesterday he had to get up and dress–
His voice very thick and his head feeling tetrahedral,
To go and meet the Lord Mayor & Lady Mayoress
At a meeting which had something to do with repairs to Southwark Cathedral.
His legs are not yet ready for much strain & stress
And his words continue to come thick and soupy all:
These are afflictions tending to depress
Even the most ebullient marsupial.
But he would like to come to tea
One day next week (not a Wednesday)
If that can be arranged
And to finish off this letter
Hopes that you are no worse and that Leonard is much better.
Errata
In the early 1960s, the American Automobile Association lost Seattle — the nation’s 23rd largest city did not appear on AAA’s United States road map. “It just fell through the editing crack,” a spokesman confessed, and the association expensively recalled and reprinted the map.
A Canadian government tourist office once omitted Ottawa from a brochure prepared for British tourists. The map did include Regina, Calgary, and Winnipeg. The office explained that the map had been compiled before regular air service was available between New York and the Canadian capital, but an executive at the city’s convention bureau said, “Ottawa should be shown in any case, even if the only point of entry was by two-man kayak.”
Cruel and Unusual
I couldn’t believe this when a reader first reported it — in July 2010 a Russian tourism company forced a donkey to parasail over the Sea of Azov as part of a publicity stunt.
“This is a little town and we all know that donkey well,” a local woman told reporters. “He worked for several years on the beach, being photographed with tourists. As soon as his ordeal was over, a lot of the people on the beach ran forward to soothe him.”
After worldwide outrage at the stunt, the donkey spent its last months in a sanctuary near Moscow, eating fruit and vegetables, spending time in a solarium, and getting massages. It died in December.
Animal-rights activists tried to prosecute the owners, but no charges were ever filed.
(Thanks, AnneLaure.)
The St. Petersburg Paradox
Let’s play a game. You’ll flip a coin, and if it comes up heads I’ll give you $1. If you flip heads again I’ll give you $2, then $4, then $8, and so on. When the coin comes up tails, the game is over and you can keep your winnings.
Because I’m taking a risk, I ought to charge you an entrance fee. What’s a fair fee? Surprisingly, it seems I should charge you an infinite amount of money. With each new flip your chance of success is 1/2 but your prospective earnings double, so your total expected earnings — the earnings times their chance of being realized — is infinite:
E = (1/2 × 1) + (1/4 × 2) + (1/8 × 4) + … = ∞
Nicholas Bernoulli first described this problem in 1713. One proposed resolution is that it ignores psychology — we’re considering the monetary value of the prize rather than its value to us. Gold shines more brightly for a beggar than for a billionaire; once we’ve amassed a certain sum, the appeal of greater riches begins to diminish. “The mathematicians estimate money in proportion to its quantity,” wrote Gabriel Cramer, “and men of good sense in proportion to the usage that they may make of it.”
(Thanks, Ross.)
In a Word
scacchic
adj. pertaining to chess
The Right Words
After earning a Ph.D. in linguistics, Suzette Haden Elgin invented the language Láadan for a science fiction novel. What makes the language unique is that it’s designed particularly to express the perceptions of women:
- widazhad: to be pregnant late in term and eager for the end
- radiídin: a non-holiday, a holiday more work that it’s worth, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help
- rathom: a “non-pillow,” one who lures another to trust and rely on them but has no intention of following through, a “lean on me so I can step aside and let you fall” person
- rathóo: a non-guest, someone who comes to visit knowing perfectly well that they are intruding and causing difficulty
- ramimelh: to refrain from asking, with evil intent; especially when it is clear that someone badly wants the other to ask
- bala: anger with reason, with someone to blame, which is not futile
- bina: anger with no reason, with no one to blame, which is not futile
- ab: love for one liked but not respected
- doóledosh: pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming
One word that has no English equivalent is doroledim, which means “sublimation with food accompanied by guilt about that sublimation”: “Say you have an average woman. She has no control over her life. She has little or nothing in the way of a resource for being good to herself, even when it is necessary. She has family and animals and friends and associates that depend on her for sustenance of all kinds. She rarely has adequate sleep or rest; she has no time for herself, no space of her own, little or no money to buy things for herself, no opportunity to consider her own emotional needs. She is at the beck and call of others, because she has these responsibilities and obligations and does not choose to (or cannot) abandon them. For such a woman, the one and only thing she is likely to have a little control over for indulging her own self is FOOD. When such a woman overeats, the verb for that is ‘doroledim.’ (And then she feels guilty, because there are women whose children are starving and who do not have even THAT option for self-indulgence …)”
A full dictionary is here.
A Poet’s Proposal
I think I can offer this
simple remedy for a part
at least of the world’s
ills and evil I suggest
that everyone should be
required to change his
name every ten years I
think this would put a
stop to a whole lot of
ambition compulsion ego
and like breeders of dis-
cord and wasted motion.
— James Laughlin, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 1978
Togetherness
Brice Belisle’s 1997 patent application is admirably concise: “The invention relates to clothing for transporting and displaying small pets while worn by a person.”
The “pet display clothing” can accommodate mice, hamsters, gerbils, snakes, and “possibly even insects.” “Fluid wastes tend to gravitate to the pocket,” we note with some concern, but the whole contraption can be rinsed with a faucet.
So now you can visit your friends without leaving your pets — and without sacrificing style: “The vest could be provided with sleeves to form a coat or jacket and be of increased length to form an overcoat.”