Coming and Going

A curious episode from Goethe’s autobiography:

I rode along the footpath towards Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming towards me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn ; — it was pike-grey with some gold about it. But as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that eight years afterwards, I found myself on that very road, on my way to pay one more visit to Frederica, wearing the dress of which I had dreamed, and that, not from choice, but by accident.

“Whatever one may think on such matters in general,” he wrote, “in this instance my strange illusion helped to calm me in this farewell hour.” So there’s that.

| Literature

Washington’s Rules

As a teenager, George Washington copied out “110 rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation,” probably as an exercise in penmanship. Samples:

  • “Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.”
  • “Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.”
  • “Be not hasty to believe flying Reports to the Disparagement of any.”
  • “Eat not in the Streets, nor in the House, out of Season.”
  • “Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.”
  • “Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.”
  • “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.”

Washington didn’t compose these — they were originally devised by French Jesuits in 1595 — but both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin later wrote their own rules of good conduct.

| History

“A Bill of Particulars”

A certain gentleman of Worcester (Mass.) sent a very fine French clock to a well-known jeweler to be repaired, saying that he wished each item of repairing specified. The following is a copy of the bill as rendered:

To removing the alluvial deposit and oleaginous conglomerate from clock a la French, … $0.50
To replacing in appropriate juxtaposition the constituent components of said clock, … .50
To lubricating with oleaginous solution the apex of pinions of said clock, … .50
To adjusting horologically the isochronal mechanism of said clock, … .50
To equalizing the acoustic resultant of escape wheel percussion upon the verge pallets of said clock, … .50
To adjusting the distance between the centre of gravity of the pendulum and its point of suspension, so that the vibrations of the pendulum shall cause the index hand to indicate approximately the daily arrival of the sun at its meridian height, … .50
Total: $3.00

— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

| Language

Measuring the River

measuring the river

A traveler reaches a river at the point A and wishes to know the width across to B. As he has no means of crossing the river, what is the easiest way of finding its width?

From Henry Dudeney.

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Flight Risk

On May 25, 2003, someone stole a Boeing 727 from an airport in Luanda, Angola. The plane, which had been sitting idle for 14 months, took off without communicating with the tower.

An American mechanic, Ben Charles Padilla, was on board at the time. He has not been seen since.

| Crime

A Very Grand Thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Harry_Colebourne_and_Winnie.jpg

En route to a training camp in Quebec during World War I, Canadian army lieutenant Harry Colebourn bought a bear cub for $20 from a hunter in White River, Ontario.

He named her Winnipeg, after his hometown, and smuggled her to England, where “Winnie” became the mascot of his militia regiment.

Eventually he donated her to the London Zoo, where she became a great favorite of Christopher Robin Milne, the son of a local playwright.

You know the rest.

| Literature

The Lottery Paradox

Imagine a lottery with 1,000 tickets.

It’s rational to believe that one ticket will win.

But it’s also rational to believe that the first ticket will not win—nor the second, nor the third, and so on.

And isn’t that equivalent to believing that no ticket will win?

| Science & Math

A Geological Puzzle

Being at my seat near the village of Meudon, and overlooking a quarry-man, whom I had set to break some very large and hard stones, in the middle of one we found a huge live toad, though there was no visible aperture by which it could have got there. I could not help expressing my wonder how it had been generated, had grown, and lived; but the labourer told me, it was not the first time he had met with toads and the like creatures within huge blocks of stone, in which there could be found no visible opening or fissure.

— Ambrose Pare, chief surgeon to Henry III of France, quoted in The Monthly Magazine, 1798

| Oddities