“I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent than in the extent of my power and dominion.” — Alexander
In a Word
paraph
n. a flourish after a signature
Judicial Opinion
In deciding the 1972 case Flood v. Kuhn, which challenged the reserve clause in baseball players’ contracts, Justice Harry Blackmun waxed a bit rhapsodic, listing the players whom he felt deserved immortality:
Then there are the many names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs and that have provided tinder for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in-season and off-season: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Henry Chadwick, Eddie Collins, Lou Gehrig, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Hooper, Goose Goslin, Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner, Joe McCarthy, John McGraw, Deacon Phillippe, Rube Marquard, Christy Mathewson, Tommy Leach, Big Ed Delahanty, Davy Jones, Germany Schaefer, King Kelly, Big Dan Brouthers, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Wee Willie Keeler, Big Ed Walsh, Jimmy Austin, Fred Snodgrass, Satchel Paige, Hugh Jennings, Fred Merkle, Iron Man McGinnity, Three-Finger Brown, Harry and Stan Coveleski, Connie Mack, Al Bridwell, Red Ruffing, Amos Rusie, Cy Young, Smoky Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, Chief Bender, Bill Klem, Hans Lobert, Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, Roy Campanella, Miller Huggins, Rube Bressler, Dazzy Vance, Edd Roush, Bill Wambsganss, Clark Griffith, Branch Rickey, Frank Chance, Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie, Sad Sam Jones, Bob O’Farrell, Lefty O’Doul, Bobby Veach, Willie Kamm, Heinie Groh, Lloyd and Paul Waner, Stuffy McInnis, Charles Comiskey, Roger Bresnahan, Bill Dickey, Zack Wheat, George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer, Eppa Rixey, Harry Heilmann, Fred Clarke, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Pie Traynor, Rube Waddell, Bill Terry, Carl Hubbell, Old Hoss Radbourne, Moe Berg, Rabbit Maranville, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove. The list seems endless.
Justices Warren Burger and Byron White dissented from Blackmun’s list — but they declined to say whether they felt it was overinclusive, underinclusive, or irrelevant.
The State of Franklin
In 1784, to help pay off debts after the Revolutionary War, North Carolina offered to give Congress 29 million acres of its territory west of the Appalachians. When the legislature rescinded this offer a few months later, the settlers seceded to establish a new state of their own.
“Franklin” failed of joining the union by two votes in the Continental Congress, but it elected officers, convened a legislature, and wrote a constitution. The economy was based largely in barter — John Wheeler Moore’s 1882 School History of North Carolina quotes the officers’ pay:
His Excellency, the Governor, per annum, one thousand deer skins; His Honor, the Chief Justice, five hundred deer skins, or five hundred raccoon skins; the Treasurer of the State, four hundred and fifty raccoon skins; Clerk of the House of Commons, two hundred raccoon skins; members of Assembly, per diem, three raccoon skins.
Things began to fall apart in 1788, when Franklin’s governor tried to place the defenseless state under Spanish rule. North Carolina arrested him, and the last holdouts turned themselves in. The region now belongs to Tennessee.
“A Revolving Ice Cake”
There is a curious ice formation on the Mianus River, near the village of Bedford, Westchester County, New York. The Mianus at that place is a small stream, averaging about ten feet in width. At a place locally known as the ‘ten foot hole’ the stream widens out into a pool forty or fifty feet wide. In this pool there has formed a cake of ice about twenty five or thirty feet in diameter and perfectly circular in shape. This circular cake of ice is slowly revolving and is surrounded for about two-thirds of its circumference by stationary ice. There is a space of about three inches between the revolving cake and the stationary ice, except at the ‘up stream’ side of the revolving cake, where the water is open and the current quite swift. Each revolution takes about six minutes. I inclose a rough drawing which will give an idea of this curious formation.
— Letter from J.M. Bates to Scientific American, Feb. 9, 1895
Unforgettable
In probability theory, the formula for the Poisson distribution is
Pm(n) = mne–m/n!
Pleasingly, the mnemonic for this is mnemonic: “m to the n, e to the –m over n factorial.” Arguably the factorial sign even resembles an inverted i.
Now we just need a way to remember that …
(From M.H. Greenblatt, Mathematical Entertainments, 1965.)
The Corruptible Club
In 1926, Mexican physician Luis Cervantes met Concepción Jurado, a 61-year-old schoolteacher who was impersonating a bearded Spanish count at a party. Impressed by her performance, Cervantes convinced Jurado to partake in an ongoing hoax. He invented a character, Count Carlos Balmori, and engaged prominent Mexicans to underwrite the story of Balmori’s wealth and power. Reporters planted stories of the count’s wealth and travels, bankers forged bankbooks, and judges and politicians provided official papers when needed.
Then, each week, Cervantes would choose a victim and stage a “Balmoreada,” a special evening in which the count would approach one guest and offer a fabulous sum in return for a ridiculous favor. He would induce a hacienda owner to shave his beard, a general to lead a revolution against Mexico, a Chilean diplomat to denounce his country, all in return for great wealth.
It’s said that only one guest in 20 refused the offer. As soon as the victim had accepted the proposal, Jurado would reveal her disguise and the dupe was admitted to the club, sworn to secrecy and invited to each future Balmoreada as a guest.
This went on for fully five years, until Jurado’s death of cancer in 1931. The society of the gullible greedy grew to include matadors, bankers, and police officials. Onetime President Plutarco Elías Calles is even said to have attended the meetings. Its members have now dwindled away, but Jurado’s tomb, in the largest cemetery in Mexico City, commemorates it with cartoons of both her personalities.
“A Surpriseing Bett Decided”
When Essex grocer Edward Bright died in November 1750, he weighed more than 600 pounds; his coffin was three feet deep and required 12 men to draw it to the church.
The following month, to settle a bet, seven men were buttoned into Bright’s waistcoat.
In the engraving recording the feat, one onlooker says, “Sir you’ll allow that to be Fair.” His companion says, “I do Sir, & to me beyond Imagination.”
Case Closed
There was Diodorus Chronos, a most acute and subtle reasoner. He proved there was no such thing as motion. A body must move either in the place where it is or in the place where it is not. Now, a body cannot be in motion in the place where it is stationary, and cannot be in motion in the place where it is not. Therefore, it cannot move at all. …
Diodorus was brought up roundly by another densely practical intelligence. Having dislocated his shoulder, he sent for a surgeon to set it. ‘Nay,’ said the practitioner, doubtful, perhaps, whether so subtle an intelligence might not euchre him out of his fee by some logical ingenuity, ‘your shoulder cannot possibly be put out at all, since it cannot be put out in the place in which it is, nor yet in the place in which it is not.’
— “Some Famous Paradoxes,” The Illustrated American, Nov. 1, 1890
The Parrot of Atures
In exploring the upper Orinoco around 1800, Alexander von Humboldt learned of a tribe, the Atures, that had recently died out there. Their language had died with them, but Humboldt was still able to hear it spoken: “At the period of our voyage an old parrot was shown at Maypures, of which the inhabitants related, and the fact is worthy of observation, that ‘they did not understand what it said, because it spoke the language of the Atures.'”
From a 19th-century poem:
Where are now the youths who bred him
To pronounce their mother tongue?
Where the gentle maids who fed him
And who built his nest when young?
Humboldt managed to record phonetically 40 words spoken by the parrot, and in 1997 artist Rachel Berwick painstakingly taught two Amazon parrots to speak them. Can a language be said to survive if no one knows its meaning?