In Other News

Peterborough Standard misprint

From the Peterborough Standard, 1979:

CROWLAND’S Silver Jubilee committee was finally wound up on Thursday evening with a presentation ceremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one remony atremony aremony at the library.

The jubremony at the library.

Tremony at remony at the library.

Thrremony at tremony at the liremony at the libraremony at the library.

Theremony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Premony rremony at the liremony aremony at the libremony atremony at the tremony at the library.

Tremorremony at the library remony at the library.

The jubilee fund, described by chairman Frank Parnell as ‘one of the finest efforts in Lincolnshire’, fn he latched onto a through ball. Although he was hauled down by the ‘keeper he still managed to stroke the ball home.

But for the second week running Durant had to leave the field injured, this time suffering eye trouble.

The winning goal was another 25-yard shot — again from Blackstones’ central defender — coming from their second chance of the game.

Gary Cooper, recently signed from Queens Old Boys, had a good debut.

Traffic

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_camille_gaston_cariot_pont_neuf_laurore_122559).jpg

Remarked by Robert Southey in 1850:

“If you wait half an hour on the Pont Neuf, it was said, you were sure to see an Abbé, a Benedictin, a Genovesin, a Capuchin, a Knight of St. Louis, a French Guardsman, a woman of the town, and a white horse cross during that time. This has been often tried and verified.”

Found Art

George Herrick notes this oddity in his 1997 commonplace book: The record of this U.S. congressional hearing on dirigible disasters contains an inadvertent poem — the encoded weather report for April 3, 1933:

Washington numoil nihilist radnell deadly wabash.
Titusville sanno reflect unripe turfs.
Harrington bonfire gecko unfold.
George felger naked neggins.
Pas roofage gedby gafol.
Havana sorrow mabin caramel.
Father safable oak barfee rogue.
Wichita nineveh mulberry somnific cupsail.
Doucet nightfall naked gargarize birds.
Galveston sirup gullish sacred cupsail.
Sound narford naked ungear seemly.
Antonio surrogate fabella sausage cunette.
Davenport ridgy reflow feugar needs consort.
Birmingham simulate subjoin formosa faints.
Buffalo nightfire ribard gummut gently.
Evansville romulus seahog femme mends control.
Memphis similar suburb gammon medlar wired catsup.
Detroit negative rabate fengone miley currency.
Indianapolis regent seabate formal gently catsup.
Nashville samuda sabula ginmill mexico congregate.
Columbus rugate mallet farmable feline.

Herrick writes, “This particular code has literary flair and one wants the rich prose to read on.”

Round and Square

This rank impossibility by Kokichi Sugihara won second prize in the Neural Correlate Society’s 2016 illusion of the year contest.

The key is that the top of each cylinder is not a planar curve. Dickinson College mathematician David Richeson has created an interactive applet that you can use to examine the shape, and see his paper below for an explanation of the math and the template of a paper model.

(David Richeson, “Do the Math!: Sugihara’s Impossible Cylinder,” Math Horizons 24:1 [September 2016], 18-19.)

Never Mind

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flemish_school_-_De_maneblussers,_oil_on_canvas,_113,5_x_83,5_cm,_ca._1700.jpg

According to a popular story, a resident of Mechelen, Belgium, emerged unsteadily from an inn one foggy night in 1687, looked up at St. Rumbold’s Cathedral, and raised an alarm — the tower was on fire.

Residents flung open their windows and saw the same reddish glow. The rumor raised an uproar, and the mayor organized a chain of volunteers to pass buckets of water up the tower stairway.

Before they reached the top, though, the fog cleared and the alarm was called off. The red glow had been only the moon’s light shining through the tower’s red bell windows.

Ever since, residents of Mechelen have been known as Maneblussers, or moon extinguishers.

Turn, Turn, Turn

On May 19, 1914, G. Howell Parr of Baltimore lay down and rolled three continuous miles to win a bet of $1,000. Details, from the New York Times:

Wagered $1,000 he could roll three miles.
Made the time limit June 1.
Started at 8 o’clock last night from the Elk Ridge Kennels.
Finished at 11:10 A M. to-day at Charles Street and University Parkway.
Rolled fifteen hours and ten minutes, with intermissions for rest.
Covered approximately 15,840 feet, or about three miles.
Took about four feet to a roll.
Made about 3,960 rolls.
Won the $1,000.
Every time he rolled he won about 25 cents.

He wore football gear and turned with every fourth revolution into a pillowed chair positioned by his friends, where he’d rest for 30 seconds. “At times the wife approached him solicitously and asked how he felt. He always looked up at her, and smiled and said: ‘Feel fine.'”

Indeed, he felt well enough afterward to go to the racetrack, “where several of his horses were on the day’s programme.” “When asked where he felt the strain of the rolling most, he said, ‘At my wrists; I put so much weight on them.'”

A Second Life

Psychoanalyst Robert Lindner received a remarkable client at his Baltimore practice: “Kirk Allen” had read a series of science fiction novels and “In some weird and inexplicable way I knew that what I was reading was my biography.” (Lindner never revealed which series this was, but some have theorized that it was the Barsoom books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which describe the adventures of an American Confederate veteran on Mars.)

Allen believed that he could assume his fictional identity at will and was spending part of his life on another planet. In an effort to understand his own history he’d compiled his life story, working from the books and supplementing the account with his own invented memories. Lindner asked to see this work:

There were, to begin with, about 12,000 pages of typescript comprising the amended ‘biography’ of Kirk Allen. This was divided into some 200 chapters and read like fiction. Appended to these pages were approximately 2,000 more of notes in Kirk’s handwriting, containing corrections necessitated by his more recent ‘researches,’ and a huge bundle of scraps and jottings on envelopes, receipted bills, laundry slips. There also were a glossary of names and terms that ran to more than 100 pages; 82 full-color maps carefully drawn to scale, 23 of planetary bodies in four projections, 31 of land masses on these planets, 14 labeled ‘Kirk Allen’s Expedition to –,’ the remainder of cities on the various planets; 161 architectural sketches and elevations, all carefully scaled and annotated; 12 genealogical tables; an 18-page description of the galactic system in which Kirk Allen’s home planet was contained, with four astronomical charts, one for each of the seasons, and nine star-maps of the skies from observatories on other planets in the system; a 200-page history of the empire Kirk Allen ruled, with a three-page table of dates and names of battles or outstanding historical events; a series of 44 folders containing from 2 to 20 pages apiece, each dealing with some aspect — social, economic, or scientific — of the planet over which Kirk Allen ruled. Finally, there were 306 drawings of people, animals, plants, insects, weapons, utensils, machines, articles of clothing, vehicles, instruments, and furniture.

To free Allen from his delusion, Lindner eventually entered it himself, validating the fantasy and repeating Allen’s ideas in the same language. This worked: After some time Allen confessed that he no longer felt that his alternate identity was real. Lindner published his account of the therapy in two articles in Harper’s Magazine in 1955 and elaborated them in his 1955 memoir The Fifty-Minute Hour. Allen’s identity remains unknown, but there’s some speculation that he was Paul Linebarger — who himself wrote science fiction under the name Cordwainer Smith.

Certainty

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyfarm/16108804
Image: Flickr

If I take a single glance at a speckled hen, I know that I’ve seen many speckles, but I can’t say how many I’ve seen. I have immediate experience of a determinate fact, but the experience doesn’t provide certain knowledge of the fact.

“[O]ur difficulty is not that there must be characteristics of the many-speckled datum which pass unnoticed,” writes philosopher Roderick Chisholm. “[I]t is, more seriously, the fact that we are unable to make a reliable judgment about what we do notice.”

“The problem is significant, since every possible solution appears to involve serious consequences for the theory of empirical knowledge.”

(Roderick Chisholm, “The Problem of the Speckled Hen,” Mind 51:204 [October 1942], 368-373.)

Alternate Route

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Squirrel_Bridge_-_Closeup.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Before 1963, hungry squirrels in Longview, Washington, had to leave their park and run across Olympia Way to collect nuts near a local office building. After seeing many of them killed, resident Amos Peters built a dedicated 60-foot bridge above the road.

It’s now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.