A Blow to Tourism

Anglican priest Samuel Peters opposed American independence and was forced to flee the colonies as the revolution approached. From London he exacted a sort of revenge by publishing a list of 45 draconian laws that he said prevailed in Connecticut, in an attempt to make the colonies look backward and fanatical. Among the sterner measures:

  • No one to cross a river, but with an authorized ferryman.
  • No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
  • No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the Sabbath day.
  • No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.
  • When it appears that an accused has confederates, and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked.
  • Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the offender at £300 estate.
  • A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be let out and sold, to make satisfaction.
  • No one shall read Common-Prayer, keep Christmas or saints-days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, trumpet, and the jaw harp.
  • The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their parents.
  • Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
  • Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.

The full list is here. Peters’ hoax did have one lasting effect — it popularized the term “blue laws” to describe laws that restrict activity on Sunday.

| History · Hoaxes · Society

Kudos

“Did you hear what Howells once said to a boring author who was trying to wring a compliment out of him? ‘I don’t know how it is,’ said the author, ‘I don’t seem to write as well as I used to do.’ ‘Oh, yes you do — indeed you do. You write as well as you ever did;– But your taste is improving.”

— From a letter from John Jay Chapman to Margaret Chanler, Nov. 30, 1911

| Literature · Society

The Other Half

Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár was almost never awake until afternoon. Once when he was forced to get up early in the morning because of jury duty, he looked unbelievingly at the people crowding the Budapest streets and asked, ‘Are they all jurors?’

— Shirley Motter Linde, The Sleep Book, 1974

| Society

Having Words

It’s said that Samuel Johnson resorted to unconventional methods to win a debate with a Billingsgate fishwife:

He called her a noun, a pronoun, an adverb, and she hesitated. He vigorously charged her with being conjunction and preposition. She wavered. And when at length with stentorian voice he accused her to her face of being a parallelopipedon, she broke in disorder and fled in the utmost confusion.

(Frederic Coudert, “Lying as a Fine Art,” 1873.)

| Language · Society

Taking Pause

‘Theft’ is a concept that logically and genetically depends on the antecedent concept of ‘rightfully owned property’ — and refers to the act of taking that property without the owner’s consent. If no property is rightfully owned, that is, if nothing is property, there can be no such concept as ‘theft.’ Thus, the statement ‘All property is theft’ has an internal contradiction: to use the concept ‘theft’ while denying the validity of the concept of ‘property,’ is to use ‘theft’ as a concept to which one has no logical right — that is, as a stolen concept.

— Nathaniel Branden, “The Stolen Concept,” The Objectivist Newsletter, January 1963

| Oddities · Society

Amara’s Law

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future, 1978

(“A modern maxim says: People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.” — J.C.R. Licklider, Libraries of the Future, 1965)

| Quotations · Society · Technology

The Moral Superiority Illusion

In 2017, University of London psychologists Ben Tappin and Ryan McKay asked 270 subjects to evaluate both themselves and the average person as to traits describing morality (honest, trustworthy, fair), agency (hardworking, knowledgeable, competent), and sociability (cooperative, warm, family-orientated).

They found that nearly all the subjects inflated their own desirable moral qualities irrationally. The more desirable a moral trait appeared to the subjects, the more likely they were to ascribe it to themselves.

“The belief that one is morally superior to the average person appears robust and widespread,” they wrote. “We find that moral superiority represents a uniquely strong and prevalent instance of ‘positive illusion.'”

(Ben M. Tappin and Ryan T. McKay, “The Illusion of Moral Superiority,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 8:6 [August 2017], 623-631.)

| Science & Math · Society

Out of Joint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2017-02_Raffaello_Sorbi_-_Time_on_his_hands.jpg

“A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time. He alone knows the correct time, but of what use is this to him? The whole world is guided by the clocks that show the wrong time.” — Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims

| Society