Podcast Episode 233: Flight to Freedom

In 1978 two families hatched a daring plan to escape East Germany: They would build a hot-air balloon and sail it by night across the border. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow their struggles to evade the authorities and realize their dream of a new life in the West.

We’ll also shuffle some vehicles and puzzle over a perplexing worker.

Intro:

In 1993 Tom Peyer and Hart Seely found that Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto’s utterances can be cast as free verse.

Jane Austen wrote three novels on a tiny table in her family’s sitting room, subject to continual interruption.

Sources for our story on the East German balloon escape:

Jürgen Petschull, With the Wind to the West, 1980.

John Dornberg, “Freedom Balloon,” Popular Mechanics 153:2 (February 1980), 100-103, 150.

Kate Connolly, “Film of Daring Balloon Escape From East Revives German Identity Debate,” Guardian, Oct. 7, 2018.

“Man Who Fled East Germany in a Homemade Balloon and Whose Story Was Made Into a Film Dies,” Sunday Express, March 15, 2017.

“Fleeing Communism in a Hot Air Balloon,” BBC World Service, June 18, 2015.

Donata Von Hardenberg, “Escaping the East by Any Means,” McClatchy-Tribune Business News, Nov. 12, 2009.

“Great Escapes,” National Post, Nov. 7, 2009.

Scott Dick, “Those Who Risked It All on a Flight to Freedom,” Daily Telegraph, April 13, 2004.

Alice Demetrius Stock, “Homemade Craft Made Daring Escape,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 3, 1995.

Paul Martin, “The House at Checkpoint Charlie: A Little West Berlin Museum Celebrates the Ingenuity of Those Who Conquered the Wall,” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 7, 1986.

Victoria Pope, “Berlin Wall, 20 Years Later: People Still Try to Flee,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 13, 1981.

“East-West: The Great Balloon Escape,” Time, Oct. 1, 1979.

Michael Getler, “Harrowing Flight From East Germany,” Washington Post, Sept. 28, 1979.

“Eight Flee East Germany in Homemade Balloon,” UPI, Sept. 17, 1979.

“Günter Wetzel Und Peter Strelzyk,” Haus de Bayerischen Geschichte Museum (accessed January 6, 2019).

Günter Wetzel’s website.

Listener mail:

Wikipedia, “Road Space Rationing” (accessed Jan. 10, 2019).

Wikipedia, “Vehicle Restriction in São Paulo” (accessed Jan. 10, 2019).

Reddit legaladvice (accessed Jan. 12, 2019).

“I trained an AI to generate /r/legaladvice post titles, and it asks ‘Is it legal for me to get in legal trouble?’,” Reddit legaladviceofftopic (accessed Jan. 11, 2019).

Wikipedia, “Keyforge: Call of the Archons” (accessed Jan. 10, 2019).

“Archon Names,” Fantasy Flight Games, Nov. 9, 2018.

“The Amazing KeyForge Deck Names,” Heavy Punch Games (accessed Jan. 10, 2019).

Dave Lawrence posts lists of neural net outputs on his blog, Aardvark Zythum.

This week’s lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Peter Wilds, who sent this related link (warning — this spoils the puzzle).

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.

Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet — you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we’ve set up some rewards to help thank you for your support.

You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

Doorstops

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_Reading_Room_Panorama_Feb_2006.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudie’s, and it makes me very angry if any one gives me one for my private library. I once heard two ladies disputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of them had or had not been wasting money. ‘I spent it in books,’ said the accused, ‘and it’s not wasting money to buy books.’ ‘Indeed, my dear, I think it is,’ was the rejoinder, and in practice I agree with it.

— Samuel Butler, Ramblings in Cheapside, 1890

January 20, 2019 | Literature

Thinking Big

This is fantastic — in 2017, 56 enthusiasts built an O-gauge model railway 71 miles long, connecting Fort William and the City of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. At a scale of 46:1, that’s half the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Only one journey was made on the completed railway. The locomotive Silver Lady departed Corpach Double Lock on June 23, 2017, and arrived, on time, at Inverness Castle on July 1.

Volunteer team leader Lawrence Robbins told the Daily Record, “Just because it’s bonkers doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.”

January 19, 2019 | Oddities · Technology

Threes and Fours

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Euclid_Tetrahedron_4.svg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

A problem from the Tenth International Mathematical Olympiad, 1968:

Prove that in every tetrahedron there is a vertex such that the three edges meeting there have lengths which are the sides of a triangle.

	Select Click for Answer
Well, three segments can make a triangle if and only if the longest of them is shorter than the other two combined. So consider a tetrahedron with vertices A, B, C, D, and let AB be the longest side. Now suppose there isn’t a vertex such that the three edges meeting there can form the sides of a triangle. The three edges that meet at vertex A are AB, AC, and AD. If those three edges won’t form a triangle, that means that AB ≥ AC + AD. Similarly, considering vertex B, we can conclude that BA ≥ BC + BD. Adding two those inequalities, we get 2AB ≥ AC + BC + AD + BD. But we also know that two of the tetrahedron’s faces are ABC and ABD, and each of these is a triangle, so AB < AC + BC and AB < AD + BD. Adding those two inequalities gives 2AB < AC + BC + AD + BD, which contradicts the inequality we just reached. So it can’t be the case that no vertex has edges that will form a triangle.

Click for Answer

January 18, 2019 | Puzzles

Misc

The negative space in the eight of diamonds forms an 8.
William Brewster, leader of the Plymouth Colony, named his children Jonathan, Patience, Fear, Love, and Wrestling.
Wilfred Owen’s mother received the news of his death on Armistice Day.
SCHOOLMASTER = SMOTE SCHOLAR
“I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.” — William James

January 18, 2019January 17, 2019 | History · Language · Literature · Oddities · Quotations

Good Boy

In 1919, engineer James Cowan Smith bequeathed £55,000 to the National Gallery of Scotland.

He set two conditions. One was that the gallery provide for his dog Fury.

The other was that this picture of his previous dog Callum, by painter John Emms, always be hung in the gallery.

Both conditions were fulfilled.

January 17, 2019 | Art

Seduction

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1940 Bertrand Russell was invited to teach logic at the City College of New York.

A Mrs. Kay of Brooklyn opposed the appointment, citing Russell’s agnosticism and his alleged practice of sexual immorality.

In the lawsuit his works were described as “lecherous, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac, aphrodisiac, irreverent, narrowminded, untruthful, and bereft of moral fiber.”

“Although he lost the case, the aging Russell was delighted to have been described as ‘aphrodisiac,'” writes Betsy Devine in Absolute Zero Gravity. “‘I cannot think of any predecessors,’ he claimed, ‘except Apuleius and Othello.'”

January 17, 2019January 16, 2019 | Science & Math · Society

Dance Lessons

The quicksort computer sorting algorithm demonstrated with Hungarian folk dance, from Romania’s Sapientia University.

Also:

The four queens puzzle solved using ballet.

Binary search through flamenco dance.

Merge sort via Transylvanian-Saxon folk dance.

Selection sort using Gypsy folk dance.

More.

(Via MetaFilter.)

01/19/2019 UPDATE: When Gavin Taylor showed these algorithms to his students at the United States Naval Academy, they asked whether they themselves could dance for extra credit. He said yes. So here are the U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen dancing the InsertionSort algorithm:

(Thanks, Gavin.)

January 16, 2019January 19, 2019 | Science & Math

Morrie’s Law

$\displaystyle \cos \left ( 20^{\circ} \right ) \cdot \cos \left ( 40^{\circ} \right ) \cdot \cos \left ( 80^{\circ} \right ) = \frac{1}{8}$

Richard Feynman was so struck by this fact that he remembered ever afterward where he had learned it — from his childhood friend Morrie Jacobs as the two stood in Morrie’s father’s leather shop in Far Rockaway, Queens.

January 16, 2019January 15, 2019 | Science & Math

Tempting Fate

What remained of the Tenth [Massachusetts] departed from City Point, on the James River, on June 21 [1864], for the return to Springfield and Northampton. But before leaving Virginia, on June 20, Sgt. Maj. George F. Polley, who was originally in Brewster’s company and had just reenlisted, carved his name and the inscription ‘Killed June –, 1864’ on a piece of board torn from a cracker box. After participating in the ‘goodbye’ rituals with his comrades and sharing an awkward amusement with them about his carving, Polley was struck flush by an artillery shell and killed. In his diary, brigade member Elisha Hunt Rhodes recorded this incident in his matter-of-fact style. Polley ‘showed me a board on which he had carved his name, date of birth and had left a place for the date of his death,’ reported Rhodes. ‘I asked him if he expected to be killed and he said no, and that he had made his head board only for fun. To day he was killed by a shell from a Rebel Battery.’ The last act of the Tenth before boarding the mailboat for Washington, D.C., was to bury Polley.

— David W. Blight, When This Cruel War Is Over, 2009

January 15, 2019 | Death · History · Oddities