Buridan’s Bridge

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buridan%27s_bridge.jpg

Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato. The two speak as follows:

Plato: ‘Socrates, if in the first proposition which you utter, you speak the truth, I will permit you to cross. But surely, if you speak falsely, I shall throw you into the water.’

Socrates: ‘You will throw me into the water.’

Jean Buridan posed this conundrum in his Sophismata in the 14th century. Like a similar paradox in Don Quixote, it seems to leave the guardian in an impossible position — whether Socrates speaks truly or falsely, it would seem, the promise cannot be fulfilled.

Some readers offered a wry solution: Wait until he’s crossed the bridge, and then throw him in.

| Oddities

An Inescapable Truth

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ambigramme_de_Georges_Perec_-_andin_basnoda_a_une_epouse_qui_pue_-_animation.gif

Georges Perec worked out that the French phrase andin basnoda a une epouse qui pue (“Andin Basnoda has a smelly wife”) reads the same upside down.

Typographer Pierre di Sciullo created a typeface to honor this ambigram — he called it Basnoda.

| Oddities

A Book Toilet

den wolsack book toilet

In 1772, wool merchant François Adrien Van den Bogaert commissioned a garden pavilion for Den Wolsack, his house in Antwerp. On the first floor is a bibliophile’s lavatory, in which the bowl is concealed in a fancifully rendered stack of books.

The volumes on the surrounding shelves aren’t real; they’re made of wood covered with leather.

(Thanks, Serge.)

| Literature · Oddities

“Geographical Enigma”

https://archive.org/details/StrandVolume22/page/n117/mode/2up?view=theater

Charles Craik of Weston-super-Mare received this enigmatic postcard from a friend in 1901 and sent it on to the Strand:

I think it rather cleverly done, and it took me some time before I could understand its meaning.

The principal message is on the big island in the centre of the map — an invitation to meet the sender at a café, with the day. The name of the island below on the left-hand side is at once translated, ‘If so, do.’ The names of the land at the bottom of the map are meant for ‘Same time and place as before’ and ‘Don’t let anything hinder you’ respectively.

The following is a translation beginning at the top and working to the right: ‘Straights of cash. If you don’t come, all sorts of ills befall you. Come early. Let me know if you can come or not. I say, there’s a peculiar thing! You’re getting it by degrees. Can’t you see? Bay rhum. Get your hair cut! Deuced bad straights. See you later. Don’t you see? Devil take you. You are a merry cus! Good old flipper. Love to all. Oh! Tut, tut. R.S.V.P. Yours ever, Guy.’

| Humor · Oddities

Self-Made Man

But despite the gaiety of his song, Balso did not feel sure of himself. He thought of the Phoenix Excrementi, a race of men he had invented one Sunday afternoon while in bed, and trembled, thinking he might well meet one in this place. And he had good cause to tremble, for the Phoenix Excrementi eat themselves, digest themselves, and give birth to themselves by evacuating their bowels.

— Nathanael West, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, 1931

| Oddities

Roll Call

Unusual personal names collected by the Society for the Verification and Enjoyment of Fascinating Names of Actual Persons, listed by curator Allan Fotheringham in 1991:

  • Procter R. Hug
  • Polly Wanda Crocker
  • Sexious Boonjug
  • Philander Philpott Pettibone
  • Zilpher Spittle
  • Petrus J.G. Prink
  • Burke Uzzle
  • Pansy Reamsbottom
  • Dunwoody Zook
  • Bastion Hello
  • Fang W. Wang
  • Montague Tyrwhitt-Drake
  • Nimrod Spong
  • Dulcie Pillage
  • Jake Moak
  • Sir Tufton Beamish
  • Sir Basil Smallpiece
  • Sir Malby Crofton
  • St. Bodfan Grufydd
  • Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax
  • Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
  • Selmer Hafso
  • Addylou Ebfisty Plunt
  • Oscar U. Zerk
  • Titus Cranny
  • Noble Puffer
  • J. Flipper Derricoate
  • Ovid Parody
  • J. Boxter Funderback
  • Middlebrook Polly
  • Lester Ouchmoody
  • Spencer Hum
  • A. Smerling Lecher

SVEFNAP founder Clyde Gilmour dreamed of assembling a golf foursome of Luke Feck, Bosh Stack, Fice Mork, and M. Tugrul Uke. “Gilmour imagined himself doing the introductions: ‘Feck, this is Stack. Stack … Mork. Mork … Uke. Uke … Feck …”

| Oddities