Family Ties

In Riddles in Mathematics (1961), Eugene Northrop proposes that two men can be each other’s uncle and nephew:

Mr. and Mrs. Allen … had a son Tom, and Mr. and Mrs. Black … had a son Dick. Mr. Allen and Mr. Black both died. And Tom and Dick, after they were grown men, each married the other’s mother. Dick and Mrs. Allen then had a son Harry, and Tom and Mrs. Black a son George. Now consider the relationship between Harry and George. Since Harry is the brother of Tom, George’s father, Harry must be George’s uncle. On the other hand George is the brother of Harry’s father, Dick, so Harry must be George’s nephew. In exactly the same way George is Harry’s uncle and nephew.

In Fun for the Family (1939), Jerome S. Meyer observes that if you marry the mother of your father’s second wife and have a son, and if your stepmother also has a son, then you can dine alone and still enjoy the company of your stepbrother’s nephew’s father, your father’s mother-in-law’s husband, and your stepmother’s father-in-law. Lewis Carroll considered a similar dinner.

| Oddities

Limerick

A certified poet from Slough,
Whose methods of rhyming were rough,
Retorted, “I see
That the letters agree
And if that’s not sufficient I’m through.”

— Clifford Witting

| Language · Poems

Perspective

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timtom/6420755669
Image: Flickr

These yellow rings are not superimposed on an existing photograph — they’re actually painted on the landscape. Swiss artist Felice Varini created Three Ellipses for Three Locks in 2014 by painting segments on roads, walls, and nearly 100 buildings in the historic center of Hasselt, Belgium. The effect was visible only to a viewer in one particular vantage point.

Here’s another project by the same artist.

| Art

Overtime

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:All_you_zombies_timeline.png
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Robert Heinlein’s 1959 short story “–All You Zombies–“ accomplishes a kind of narrative hat trick: All the major characters turn out to be the same person, who takes on different roles through time travel and sex reassignment. The main character is his own partner, mother, father, and child.

Though it contains a number of paradoxes, Princeton philosopher David Lewis judged it to be a “perfectly consistent” time travel story. Ironically, Heinlein had written it in a single day.

| Literature · Oddities

Private Matters

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geza_Gardonyi_Cryptography_01.jpg

From 1906 to his death in 1922, Hungarian novelist Géza Gárdonyi kept a secret journal in a script so inscrutable that it wasn’t deciphered until 1965. He’d labeled the work a Tibetan grammar, but in fact it employed a calligraphic code founded in Hungarian using symbols that Gárdonyi had devised himself. In it he recorded his thoughts, observations, and literary plans. It was published in 1974 as Titkosnapló (“secret diary”).

| Uncategorized

The Cylob Cryptogram

Visiting a London bookshop in 1995 or 1996, British musician DJ Cylob noticed a pile of booklets near the entrance, with a note indicating that they were free. He asked an assistant about them, and she said that she knew nothing, only that a mysterious person was leaving them.

Each booklet consists of 20 pages of rectangular symbols. There are no letters or numbers, not even page numbers. Analysis shows that 24 different symbols make an appearance in the collection, which is consistent with encrypted English text, though some appear only at the beginning of the booklet and other very similar symbols only at the end.

The meaning of all this has never been discovered. One possibility is that the booklet is not a message at all but a game accessory. But then why does it contain no text? And why was someone silently offering it in a London bookshop?

| Oddities

Unquote

“It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘always do what you are afraid to do.”” — Emerson

“Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.” — Calvin Coolidge

| Quotations

In a Word

stillicide
n. the dropping of rainwater from the eaves of a house upon another’s land or roof

sub tegmine fagi
adv. under the cover of a beech tree

tenson
n. a contest in verse between rival troubadours

| Language