A Kitchen Timer

Another notable invention for roasting meat was the musical turnspit, that, whilst causing joints to gyrate before the Count de Castel Maria’s kitchen-fire, played four-and-twenty tunes to the cooks of that opulent lord of Treviso. The spits of this machine turned a hundred and thirty roasts at the same time; and the chef was informed, by the progress of the melodies, when the moment had arrived for removing each piece of meat. Chickens were done to a turn when the organ had played its twelfth tune; the completion of the eighteenth air was the signal for withdrawing hares and pheasants; but the largest pieces of beef and venison were not ready for the board until the twenty-fourth melody had been played out.

— John Cordy Jeaffreson, A Book About the Table, 1875

| Oddities · Technology

The Paradox of Trust

My success as a salesman depends on trust: Before I can close a sale with you, you have to trust me. But this requires me to act deliberately in a way that appears sincere. It’s not enough simply to be sincere and hope that you notice this; my best interests are served by actively cultivating this impression. And this kills true sincerity — now I’m self-consciously promoting an appearance.

“If sincerity is a natural and unforced conformity between avowals and actions, then it does not make sense to try to be sincere or to devise strategies for becoming more sincere, both of which require the deliberate attempt to achieve a state that cannot be brought about by calculation,” writes Monmouth College philosopher Guy Oakes. “Their self-consciousness — their knowledge of the circumstances of their role and the conditions required for its performance — rules out the possibility of sincerity. Sincerity produces insincerity.”

(Guy Oakes, “The Sales Process and the Paradoxes of Trust,” Journal of Business Ethics 9:8 [August 1990], 671-679.)

| Society

Deal

Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him; and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world.

— John Selden, Table Talk, 1689

| Society

Road Show

The avoid creating duplicate street names in Columbia, Maryland, developer The Rouse Company took its inspiration from famous works of art and literature. Street name maven Howard Channing cited these as some of his favorites:

  • Attic Window Way
  • Banjo Court
  • Barefoot Boy Street
  • Better Hours Court
  • Cloudburst Hill
  • Dragon Claw Street
  • Drowsy Day Street
  • Feathered Head Street
  • Flapjack Lane
  • Frostwork Row
  • Fruitgift Place
  • Hat Brim Lane
  • Honey Salt Row
  • Hundred Drums Row
  • Kind Rain Street
  • Latchkey Row
  • Lifequest Lane
  • Little Boots Street
  • Mad River Lane
  • Melting Shadows Lane
  • Quiet Hours Street
  • Resting Sea Street
  • Rustling Leaf Street
  • Satan Wood Drive
  • Sealed Message Street
  • Sharp Antler Street
  • Snuffbox Terrace
  • Tufted Moss Street
  • Wineglass Court
  • Youngheart Lane

These and more are listed in Paul Dickson’s 1996 book What’s in a Name?, and the town once published a book with the whole story. This database catalogs some of the names’ origins. Channing called Columbia the most “provocatively and imaginatively” named town he’s studied.

| Language · Literature · Oddities

In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gum_wall,_Seattle,_Washington,_Estados_Unidos,_2017-09-02,_DD_19-21_HDR.jpg
Image: Diego Delso

manducate
v. chew

congustable
adj. having a similar flavor

deturpation
n. a making foul

gazingstock
n. a thing gazed at with wonder

Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a 50-foot brick wall covered with used chewing gum. Begun in the 1990s, the wall now bears an estimated 180 pieces of gum per brick. In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction.

Washington state governor Jay Inslee called the “gum wall” his “favorite thing about Seattle you can’t find anywhere else,” but in fact Bubblegum Alley, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is even bigger, at 70 feet long (below). Opponents call it offensive, but the Chamber of Commerce lists it as a “special attraction.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bubblegum_alley.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons
| Language · Oddities

“Jealousy Is as Blind as Love”

Aphorisms from Austin O’Malley’s Keystones of Thought, 1914:

  • Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
  • Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself.
  • Humility is the sister of humor.
  • Think what you have to say, and then don’t say it.
  • Men that believe only what they understand can write their creed on a postage-stamp.
  • A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef.
  • The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.
  • Comedy smiles from a neutral intellect; humor laughs from a favoring intellect.
  • An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.
  • The picturesque is the romantic seen.
  • The worst miser is the learned man that will not write.
  • To laugh at yourself is real life, never acting.
  • Put your purse in your head and you will not be robbed.
  • A critic at best is only a football coach.
  • A gentleman seldom meets rude persons.
  • It is yesterday that makes to-morrow so sad.

“A little learning striving to explain a great subject is like an attempt to light up a cathedral with a single taper, which does no more than to show for an instant one foolish face.”

| Quotations

“A Happy Retort”

I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. One day that grave and reverend personage, the Master of his college, happening to meet him, remonstrated with him thus: ‘Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say I never look out of my window but I see you jumping over those railings.’ Mr. Dash was equal to the emergency, for he respectfully replied, ‘And it is a curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings without seeing you looking out of that window.’

— Frederick Locker-Lampson, Patchwork, 1879

| Society

Two Meetings

On Aug. 6, 1945, 24-year-old Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Three days later, Beser was aboard the B-29 Bockscar when it dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

He is the only person who served as a strike crew member on both missions.

Below him, Japanese marine engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi endured the first bombing during a business trip to Hiroshima, then returned home to Nagasaki in time to receive the second.

He is the only person acknowledged by the Japanese government to have survived both bombings.

| History

Up and Down

A remarkably simple question by Russian scientist A. Savin, from the September/October 1995 issue of Quantum:

A ping-pong ball is tossed into the air. Will it take longer to go up or to come back down?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles