In 1923 the Acme Code Company published a list of “phrase codes” for use in telegrams — customers could save money by substituting a five-letter code for a longer phrase in their messages. The list of codes was charmingly comprehensive:

BIINC What appliances have you for lifting heavy machinery?

URPXO For what use was the mixing machine intended?

CHOOG lard, in bladders

GAHGU cod-liver oil

GNUEK rubber, slightly moldy

HEHST clammy condition

ZOKIX unhealthy trees

ARPUK The person is an adventurer …

BUKSI Avoid arrest if possible

NARVO Do not part with the documents

OBYNX Escape at once

CULKE Bad as possibly can be

LYADI Arrived here with decks swept … encountered a hurricane

PYTUO Collided with an iceberg

YBDIG Plundered by natives

Similarly, George Holland Ackers’ Universal Yacht Signals (1847) includes signals for “Can I have … quarts of turtle soup?”, “Marmalade — orange unless specified,” and “I can strongly recommend my washerwoman.”

In Film Facts (2001), Patrick Robertson notes that Central Casting installed a Hollerith computer in 1935 to help with the casting of extras in Hollywood films. This meant subdividing humanity into tidy categories — lawyers, for instance, were classed as Shrewd, Dixie, Hawk-faced, Inquisitor and Benevolent. “When the new system was unveiled before the press, the operator was asked to produce ten Englishmen, 6ft tall, blue-eyed, possessed of full evening dress, and able to play polo. The cards of all 600 male dress extras were run through the machine to reveal that there were only two such paragons on the books of Central Casting.”

See Enjoy Your Stay.

Amanda Blake and David Cronin were engaged to be married while both were working for the Coca-Cola Company in Northampton, Mass., in 1985. Then Cronin left Coke to work for Pepsi.

Blake sued Coke for $600,000, alleging that her employer had told her that she must either break off the engagement, leave Coke, or convince Cronin to leave Pepsi. When she refused, she was fired.

“It made me sad that they didn’t trust me,” she said. “I was more sad than mad after all the hours and time I put in, and then they didn’t think twice about firing me.”

In 1987 they reached a settlement that was “satisfactory to all parties.”

“Not for life, but for school do we learn.” — Seneca the Younger

“Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.” — Henry Adams

“Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” — Leonardo

“I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.” — Petronius

But to go to school in a summer morn,
Oh, it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day —
In sighing and dismay.

— William Blake, The Schoolboy

“The only thing I ever learned in school that did me any good in after life was that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.” — Dorothy Parker

The pupils of St. Cassian, a schoolmaster, stabbed him to death with their pens.

In May 1954, 12-year-old M. Paul Claussen Jr. of Alexandria, Va., sent a letter to Felix Frankfurter saying that he was interested in “going into the law as a career” and requested the jurist’s advice as to “some ways to start preparing myself while still in junior high school.” He received this reply:

My Dear Paul:

No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man. If I were you, I would forget all about any technical preparation for the law. The best way to prepare for the law is to come to the study of the law as a well-read person. Thus alone can one acquire the capacity to use the English language on paper and in speech and with the habits of clear thinking which only a truly liberal education can give. No less important for a lawyer is the cultivation of the imaginative faculties by reading poetry, seeing great paintings, in the original or in easily available reproductions, and listening to great music. Stock your mind with the deposit of much good reading, and widen and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe, and forget about your future career.

With good wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Felix Frankfurter

Suppose we agree that everyone has a right to life, but that a person forfeits this right when he threatens the life of another — in that case it’s permissible to kill him.

Now consider three people, A, B, and C. A aims a gun at B, B aims a gun at C, and C aims a gun at A. When A takes aim, he’s threatening another person, so he loses his own right to life. Normally in that case C would be justified in killing him, since this defends B. But B is aiming at C, which means he forfeits his own right to life … which means that A can kill him, and that C can’t kill A.

There seems no way to resolve this under the rules we’ve laid out. “Each actor has a right to life if he or she lacks a right to life and lacks a right to life if he or she has a right to life,” wrote University of Tulsa law professor Russell Christopher, who offered the puzzle in 1998. He uses it to suggest that subjective factors such as motive, belief, and knowledge must be considered when making these judgments.

(Russell Christopher, “Self-Defense and Defense of Others,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Spring 1998)

See The Bystander Paradox.

In 1976, when the United Kingdom’s Labour government was threatening to institute a wealth tax, Conservative Party treasurer Alistair McAlpine installed a new column at West Green House, his Hampshire estate. The inscription read:

HOC MONUMENTUM MAGNO PRETIO QUOD ALITER IN MANUS PUBLICANORUM QUANDOQUE CECIDISSET ÆDIFICATUM EST

Or:

This monument was built with a large sum of money which would otherwise have fallen, sooner or later, into the hands of the tax gatherers.

“The placing of the column so near the public road could with justice be called provocative,” wrote Clive Aslet in his 1986 biography of Quinlan Terry, who designed it. The tax was abandoned.