From Beyond

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From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via the Ohio Law Reporter, Aug. 17, 1908: During a dispute over a will in Vienna, a phonograph record was introduced into evidence so that the dead woman herself could explain her intentions, which she’d recorded during her lifetime:

Prof. Sulzer stated that he had a phonographic record that would settle beyond question the point in dispute and asked the court’s permission to introduce it as evidence. The permission was granted and Mme. Blaci, the decedent, told in her own voice of her affection for her brother and his family and announced her intention of providing before her death so that her nephew, Heinrich, would be well cared for after she had passed away.

Heinrich testified that the record was made on the twenty-first anniversary of his birth. Mme. Blaci, he told the judge, had said at the time that she wanted the words she had spoken to her brother, Heinrich’s father, put on record as a souvenir of her affection that could be handed down to her nephew.

“After hearing the record, the court immediately awarded Heinrich $120,000 as his share of the estate, which was the full amount claimed by him.”

| Death · Society · Technology

Mr. Big

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Epithets used to describe former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in state media:

  • Superior Person
  • Dear Leader
  • Respected Leader
  • Wise Leader
  • Brilliant Leader
  • Unique Leader
  • Dear Leader, Who Is a Perfect Incarnation of the Appearance That a Leader Should Have
  • Commander-in-Chief
  • Great Leader
  • Father of the People
  • Sun of the Communist Future
  • Shining Star of Paektu Mountain
  • Guiding Sun Ray
  • Leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
  • Guarantee of the Fatherland’s Unification
  • Symbol of the Fatherland’s Unification
  • Fate of the Nation
  • Beloved Father
  • Leader of the Party, the Country, and the Army
  • Great Leader of our Party and of our Nation
  • Great General
  • Beloved and Respected General
  • Great Leader
  • Beloved and Respected Leader
  • Ever-Victorious, Iron-Willed Commander
  • Sun of Socialism
  • Sun of the Nation
  • The Great Sun of Life
  • Great Sun of The Nation
  • Father of the Nation
  • World Leader of the 21st Century
  • Peerless Leader
  • Bright Sun of the 21st Century
  • Great Sun of the 21st Century
  • Leader of the 21st Century
  • Amazing Politician
  • Great Man, Who Descended From Heaven
  • Glorious General, Who Descended From Heaven
  • Supreme Leader of the Nation
  • Bright Sun of Juche
  • Leader of the Party and the People
  • Great Marshal
  • Invincible and Triumphant General
  • Dear Father
  • Guiding Star of the 21st Century
  • Great Man, Who Is a Man of Deeds
  • Great Defender
  • Savior
  • Mastermind of the Revolution
  • Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradeship
  • His Excellency

Wikipedia keeps a list. When Kim died in 2011, he was named “General Secretary for Eternity.” According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency, the decision was based on “the unanimous will and desire of all the party members and other people.”

| Society

That Good Night

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Image: Flickr

There’s a statue of Lenin in Seattle. Originally sculpted by Bulgarian artist Emil Venkov, it was installed in Poprad, Czechoslovakia, in 1988, just a year before the Velvet Revolution. Visiting American English teacher Lewis Carpenter found it lying in a scrapyard waiting to be melted down; he offered $13,000 for it and shipped it home to Issaquah, Washington.

When Carpenter died in an auto accident, the statue found its way to Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where the local chamber of commerce has agreed to hold it in trust until a buyer can be found. The current asking price is $250,000.

For now the founder of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class stands at the intersection of Fremont Place North, North 36th Street, and Evanston Avenue North, where he is regularly decorated with Christmas lights. Six-year-old Colin Sackett told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “It just makes me remember Christmas is coming. And it makes me remember Hanukkah, too.”

| Art · History · Society

No More Pencils

school's out

School’s out for summer, Belleville, Illinois, 1974.

“There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.” — George Bernard Shaw

“It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” — Albert Einstein

“I have not the least doubt that school developed in me nothing but what was evil and left the good untouched.” — Edvard Grieg

“I hope we still have some bright twelve-year-olds who are interested in science. We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives on preparing for examinations.” — Freeman Dyson

“Education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” — Bertrand Russell

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” — E.M. Forster

| Quotations · Society

Boys’ Club

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No women are allowed on Greece’s Mount Athos, the site of 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries, because they would hinder the monks’ progress toward spiritual enlightenment. Mary alone represents her sex on the mountain.

The ban has been in place since an imperial decree in 1046, with a few colorful exceptions:

  • In the 1300s a Serbian emperor brought his wife to the peninsula to protect her from the plague. She was borne in a hand carriage the whole time, her feet never touching the ground.
  • French writer Maryse Choisy snuck in in the 1920s, disguised as a sailor. She published her adventure under the title Un mois chez les hommes (“A Month With Men”).
  • In 1953 Ohio Fulbright Program teacher Cora Miller landed briefly with two other women, creating a furor.
  • In 2008, five Moldovan migrants arrived by way of Turkey; four were women. The monks forgave them.

The rule extends even to hens, cows, nanny-goats, and sows, which means that dairy products and eggs have to be brought in from outside. Female cats, insects, and songbirds are admitted.

In 2003 the European Parliament passed a resolution saying the ban violated “the universally recognised principle of gender equality,” but it remains in place — even female sightseers must stay at least 500 meters offshore.

| Religion · Society

Riposte

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Chess master Wilhelm Steinitz was having a heated political argument.

His opponent said, “Do you think you understand politics because you can play chess?”

Steinitz said, “Do you think you understand politics because you can’t play chess?”

| Society

Detente

In his Book of Good Love (1330), Juan Ruiz tells of a silent debate between Greece and Rome. The Romans had no laws and asked the Greeks to give them some. The Greeks feared that they were too ignorant and challenged them first to prove themselves before the wise men of Greece. The Romans agreed to a debate but asked that it be conducted in gestures, as they did not understand the Greek language. The Greeks put forward a learned scholar, and the Romans, feeling themselves at a disadvantage, put forward a ruffian and told him to use whatever gestures he felt inspired to make.

The two mounted high seats before the assembled crowd. The Greek held out his index finger, and the Roman responded with his thumb, index, and middle fingers. The Greek held out his open palm, and the Roman responded with a fist. Then the Greek announced that the Romans deserved to be given laws.

Each side then asked its champion to explain what had happened.

They asked the Greek what he had said to the Roman by his gestures, and what he had answered him. He said: ‘I said that there is one God; the Roman said He was One in Three Persons, and made a sign to that effect.

Next I said that all was by the will of God; he answered that God held everything in his power, and he spoke truly. When I saw that they understood and believed in the Trinity, I understood that they deserved assurance of [receiving] laws.’

They asked the hoodlum what his notion was; he replied: ‘He said that with his finger he would smash my eye; I was mighty unhappy about this and I got mighty angry, and I answered him with rage, with answer, and with fury,

that, right in front of everybody, I would smash his eyes with my two fingers and his teeth with my thumb; right after that he told me to watch him because he would give me a big slap on my ears [that would leave them] ringing.

I answered him that I would give him such a punch that in all his life he would never get even for it. As soon as he saw that he had the quarrel in bad shape, he quit making threats in a spot where they thought nothing of him.’

Ruiz writes, “This is why the proverb of the shrewd old woman says, ‘No word is bad if you don’t take it badly.’ You will see that my word is well said if it is well understood.”

(From Laura Kendrick’s The Game of Love, 1988.)

| Language · Society

Podcast Episode 149: The North Pond Hermit

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Image: Flickr

Without any forethought or preparation, Christopher Knight walked into the Maine woods in 1986 and lived there in complete solitude for the next 27 years, subsisting on what he was able to steal from local cabins. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of the North Pond hermit, one man’s attempt to divorce himself completely from civilization.

We’ll also look for coded messages in crosswords and puzzle over an ineffective snake.

See full show notes …

| Crime · Podcast · Society

Good Night Lights

Six years ago, Providence restaurant The Hot Club started the custom of flashing its lights each night at 8:30, as a way to say good night to the children in the six-story Hasbro Children’s Hospital across the Providence River. The club would flash its neon sign, and patrons would gather on the waterfront deck to wave flashlights and cell phones.

Now hotels, boat traffic, skyscrapers, and police cruisers have begun to join in, some with permanent signals but many using handheld lights. About two dozen children are in the hospital on any given night, and they’ve taken to flashing back with lights of their own.

“No one knows who’s on the other side of the gesture,” hospital cartoonist Steve Brosnihan told the Associated Press. “People often say, ‘I get goosebumps hearing about this.'”

“They don’t know me; they could skip the step of flicking the lights, but they do it anyway,” said 13-year-old lupus patient Olivia Stephenson. “I hope they saw the thank you.”

| Society

The Arlington Ladies

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In 1948, Air Force general Hoyt Vandenberg and his wife Gladys were walking through Arlington National Cemetery when they saw a young airman being buried without any family members present — only the chaplain and military honor guard who attend every burial. Moved by the lonely ceremony, Gladys organized the Officers’ Wives Club so one of its members would attend every Air Force funeral. The other branches of the armed services have followed suit so that today an “Arlington lady” attends every funeral at the cemetery. No soldier is buried alone.

“It doesn’t matter whether we are burying a four-star general or a private,” Margaret Mensch, head of the Army ladies, told NBC. “They all deserve to have someone say thank you at their grave.”

| Death · Society