Reflections

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/698003

Aphorisms of German physicist Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799):

  • “Passionate ambition and suspicion I have invariably found to go together.”
  • “It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.”
  • “True, unaffected distrust of human power in general is the surest sign of mental ability.”
  • “I am convinced that we not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.”
  • “Where moderation is a fault indifference is a crime.”
  • “I suppose there never was a man of any great mark who was not slandered; or hardly any blackguard who never directed a slander against some man of merit.”
  • “Mankind loves company, even if it is no more than that of a burning candle.”
  • “It is a fact that there are numbers of people who read merely that they need not think.”
  • “With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.”
  • “What is very rare seldom remains long unexplained. What is inexplicable is usually no longer rare, and has perhaps never been so.”
  • “The commonest opinions and the things that everybody takes for granted often the most deserve examination.”
  • “That in advancing years we should grow incapable of learning has some connection with age’s intolerance of being ordered about, and a very close connection, too.”
  • “I have looked through the list of illnesses, and did not find cares or sad thoughts mentioned among them. That is a mistake, surely.”
  • “Saints in stone have done more in the world than living ones.”

“Has anyone, I wonder, ever dreamt of odours, without an external cause to give rise to the impression? — dreamt, for instance, of the smell of roses, when there was no rose or rosewater in the vicinity. With music this is certainly the case, and with light too; but feelings of pain in a dream usually have some external cause. As regards odours I am uncertain.”

| Quotations

“Man and Bird”

A Man with a Shotgun said to a Bird:

‘It is all nonsense, you know, about shooting being a cruel sport. I put my skill against your cunning — that is all there is of it. It is a fair game.’

‘True,’ said the Bird, ‘but I don’t wish to play.’

‘Why not?’ inquired the Man with a Shotgun.

‘The game,’ the Bird replied, ‘is fair as you say; the chances are about even; but consider the stake. I am in it for you, but what is there in it for me?’

Not being prepared with an answer to the question, the Man with a Shotgun sagaciously removed the propounder.

— Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables, 1899

| Literature

Betrothed Numbers

Two numbers are said to be betrothed if the sum of the proper divisors of each number is 1 more than the value of the other. For example:

The proper divisors of 48 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, and 24. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 12 + 16 + 24 = 76 = 75 + 1.

The proper divisors of 75 are 1, 3, 5, 15, and 25. 1 + 3 + 5 + 15 + 25 = 49 = 48 + 1.

Interestingly, in all such pairs discovered so far, one number is odd and the other even. Is this always the case? That’s an open question.

| Science & Math

Constraint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animaux_sauvages_-_ll._de_Jean_Matet_-_btv1b10573583s_(11_of_12).jpg

Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

| Art · Literature · Quotations

A 3×3 Panmagic Square

sallows 3x3 panmagic square

From Lee Sallows:

Numerical panmagic squares of 3×3 being impossible, the above square is in fact the first known order-3 panmagic square, a boast it can enjoy until the day that someone comes up with an improved solution. Such as one using all nine connected pieces, say.

Or not, perhaps? For the square above has a further property that other panmagic squares may not possess. Choose any three of the four corner pieces. There are four possibilities: aci, cig, agi and acg. Whatever your choice, the three pieces selected will tile the target.

Click for key to figure.

(Thanks, Lee!)

| Science & Math

A Crowded Verse

The names of 13 Jane Austen characters are hidden in the following lines as anagrams of complete consecutive words. For example, “was ill” yields WALLIS. (The names to be found are women’s first names and men’s surnames, as in Austen.) In most cases the anagrams are hidden in two words, but twice they’re in three, once in four, and once in a single word. What are they?

The other day when I was ill
And not a soul I knew came nigh,
Jane Austen was my daily fare —
I rather liked to be laid by.
Each line or page enthralls me quite,
I there can let no man deride;
I may be ill as a wight can be,
But, Jane with me, am satisfied.
In bed my ease is nil, yet I’ll
Be lying therein at any rate
Content. With Jane to chortle at
How can I rail at Fate?

Click for Answer
| Language · Literature · Poems · Puzzles

Comparative Biology

https://books.google.com/books?id=JDglAAAAMAAJ

The Antelope and Cantelope
Lie side by side upon the slope,
And careless persons might, I fear,
Mistake the melon for the deer.
If you will tap the Cantelope, reposing on the ground,
It does not move, but just emits a melon-choly sound;
But should you try, however, to apply a stethoscope,
And attempt this auscultation on the antlered Antelope,
And should see an imitation of a very rapid flight,
And should say, “It is the Antelope!” I think you would be right.

From Animal Analogues (1908), by Robert W. Wood, author of How to Tell the Birds From the Flowers.

| Poems

A Literary Effort

Byron swam the Hellespont. On May 3, 1810, the 22-year-old poet and a Lieutenant Ekenhead of the frigate Salsette swam the breaststroke from Sestos to Abydos, crossing from Europe to Asia in an hour and 10 minutes as they sought to emulate Leander’s nightly swims to Hero. “The whole distance … including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles.”

“I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical, or rhetorical,” Byron wrote. He commemorated the feat in Don Juan:

A better swimmer you could scarce see ever,
He could, perhaps, have pass’d the Hellespont,
As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided)
Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.

The feat is often regarded as a founding achievement in open-water swimming, and an event is held each year in its memory.

| Literature