All God’s Creatures

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Thompson_Seton.jpg

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) loved nature and loved God — so in a 1907 book he tried to prove that animals follow the 10 commandments:

  • Thou shalt not steal: “A stick found in the woods is the property of the Rook that discovers it, and doubly his when he has labored to bring it to his nest. This is recognized law.”
  • Thou shalt not kill: “New born Rattlesnakes will strike instantly at a stranger of any other species, but never at one of their own.”
  • Honor thy father and mother: “A Hen sets out with her Chickens a-foraging; one loiters, does not hasten up at her ‘cluck cluck’ of invitation and command; consequently he gets lost and dies.”
  • Thou shalt not commit adultery: “The promiscuous animals to-day–the Northwestern Rabbit and the Voles–are high in the scale of fecundity, low in the scale of general development, and are periodically scourged by epidemic plagues.”
  • Thou shalt not bear false witness: “Oftentimes a very young Hound will jump at a conclusion, think, or hope, he has the trail, then allowing his enthusiasm to carry him away, give the first tongue, shouting in Hound language, ‘Trail!’ The other Hounds run to this, but if a careful examination shows that he was wrong, the announcer suffers in the opinion of the pack, and after a few such blunders, that individual is entirely discredited.”
  • Thou shalt not covet: “A Hen had made a nest in a certain place, and was already sitting. Later another Hen, desiring the same nest, took possession several times during the owner’s brief absence, adding some of her own eggs, and endeavoring to sit. The result was a state of war, and the eggs of both Hens were destroyed.”

Actually, he runs out of gas here — Seton was unable to convince even himself that animals avoid making graven images, swearing, or working on Sunday. So he concludes The Natural History of the Ten Commandments by deciding that “Man is concerned with all” the commandments, “the animals only with the last six.”

“The Pessimist”

Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes,
To keep one from going nude.

Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash ‘t is gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.

Nothing to comb but hair,
Nowhere to sleep but in bed,
Nothing to weep but tears,
Nothing to bury but dead.

Nothing to sing but songs,
Ah, well, alas! alack!
Nowhere to go but out,
Nowhere to come but back.

Nothing to see but sights,
Nothing to quench but thirst,
Nothing to have but what we’ve got;
Thus through life we are cursed.

Nothing to strike but a gait;
Everything moves that goes.
Nothing at all but common sense
Can ever withstand these woes.

— Ben King, collected in Joel Chandler Harris, ed., American Wit and Humor, 1907

Mathematicians’ Graves

http://books.google.com/books?id=ssEKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA103&dq=henry+perigal+pythagorean&hl=en&ei=twPNS9qlGoGB8gbJwbzSBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Archimedes wanted no other epitaph than a sphere inscribed within a cylinder — he had determined the sphere’s relative volume and considered this his greatest achievement.

Henry Perigal’s tomb in Essex displays his graphic proof of the Pythagorean theorem (left).

Gauss wanted to be buried under a heptadecagon, which he’d shown can be constructed with compass and straightedge. (The stonemason demurred, fearing he’d produce only a circle.)

And Jakob Bernoulli opted for a logarithmic spiral and the words Eadem mutata resurgo—the motto means “I shall arise the same though changed.”

A Little Crusade

http://books.google.com/books?id=HRRBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA134&dq=chess+curiosities&as_brr=4&ei=e_uzS8KSMY3mygTujrjfCw&cd=1#v=onepage&q=chess%20curiosities&f=false

White to move his king only and mate in six moves.

Click for Answer

Unquote

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” — William James

Managing the Managers

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Lighthouse_of_Alexandria_by_Magdalena_van_de_Pasee.jpg

Sostratos, architect of the famous light-house on the Island of Pharos, Alexandria, once numbered among the seven wonders of the world, engraved deeply on one of the stones the words, ‘Sostratos of Gnidos, son of Dexiphanos, to the Gods protecting those on the sea.’ Knowing very well that Ptolemy, his employer, would not be satisfied with this inscription, he covered it with a thin coating of plaster on which he inscribed the name of Ptolemy. In time the plaster disappeared, and with it the name of the king, so that in the end the architect had all the credit for the work.

The Illustrated American, June 18, 1892

Double Feature

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes_Movie_Trailer_Screenshot_(18).jpg

Hollywood has always abbreviated long titles — Gone With the Wind became known as GWTW, and For Whom the Bell Tolls as FWTBT.

One Jane Russell picture was tentatively titled Tall in the Saddle until an RKO publicist pointed out this trend.

The title was dropped.

Donkeyshines

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Don_Quixote_2.jpg

In Don Quixote, when Sancho Panza’s ass is stolen, Quixote sympathizes and the two ride on … Sancho somehow “sitting side-ways on his ass.” In the next chapter he laments its loss again: “It may be well to saddle Rocinante again, that he may supply the loss of my Dapple.”

Sancho also leaves his wallet at an inn and loses his cloak and the food it contains. Yet later he discovers the food on the ass … and puts gold in his wallet.

Strangely, these errors appear in the novel’s second edition but not the first. No one knows how this happened; possibly it’s a compositor’s error, or perhaps Cervantes added a page without weaving it into the narrative.

See Cast Away.

Nothing Doing

In 1979, Robert Barbour applied for a vanity license plate at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. He listed his preferences as SAILING, BOATING, and NO PLATE, meaning he didn’t want a vanity plate if his first two choices were taken.

Inevitably, the DMV sent Barbour plates reading NO PLATE. But that wasn’t the worst of it: In the months that followed he received 2,500 notices of unpaid parking violations from around the state. When a police officer anywhere in California cited a vehicle without plates and wrote NO PLATE on the ticket, the record was matched to Barbour.

Two years later, when the DMV wised up and asked officers to stop doing this, they began writing MISSING instead … and Andrew Burg of Marina del Rey started getting the tickets.

The same thing has befallen motorists sporting the tags VOID, UNKNOWN, NOTAG, and even XXXXXXX. It makes you wonder how the police could write up a tagless car.