In Other Words

University of Arizona anthropologist Keith Basso found that when the automobile was introduced into the reservation of the Western Apache of Arizona, they described it by applying their words for the human body:

Anatomical Term	Extended Meaning
“shoulder”	“front fender(s)”
“hand+arm”	“front wheel(s), tire(s)”
“chin+jaw”	“front bumper”
“foot,” “feet”	“rear wheel(s), tire(s)”
“face”	“area extending from top of windshield to bumper”
“forehead”	“front portion of cab, or automobile top”
“nose”	“hood”
“back”	“bed of truck”
“hip+buttock”	“rear fender(s)”
“mouth”	“opening of pipe leading to gas-tank”
“eye(s)”	“headlight(s)”
“vein(s)”	“electrical wiring”
“entrails,” “guts”	“all machinery under hood”
“liver”	“battery”
“stomach”	“gas-tank”
“heart”	“distributor”
“lung”	“radiator”
“intestine(s)”	“radiator hose(s)”
“fat”	“grease”

“When the automobile was introduced into Apache culture, it was perceived to possess a crucial defining attribute — the ability to move itself — which prompted its inclusion in the category labeled hinda [phenomena that are capable of generating and sustaining locomotive movement by themselves, such as man, quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, and some machines]. The traditional practice of describing the other members of this category with anatomical terms was then applied to automobiles, to produce the extended set described above.”

(Keith H. Basso, “Semantic Aspects of Linguistic Acculturation,” American Anthropologist, New Series 69:5 [October 1967], 471-477.)

January 4, 2019January 4, 2019 | Language

The Steam Man

I’ve written about this before, but I hadn’t realized a photo existed: In 1868 (!) Zadoc Dederick and Isaac Grass patented a steam-powered robot that pulled a cart. They invested $2,000 in a prototype, hoping to mass-produce top-hatted walking servants for $300 apiece.

The plan never went through, but it lives on in another way: The invention may have inspired Edward Ellis’ 1868 novel The Steam Man of the Prairies, in which a steam-powered robot carries teenage inventor Johnny Brainerd through a series of adventures:

It was about ten feet in height, measuring to the top of the ‘stove-pipe hat,’ which was fashioned after the common order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler, were where the chest in a human being is generally supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms, like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the monarch of base-ball players. The legs were quite long, and the step was natural, except when running, at which time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed different from a human being.

“Jump up there, and I’ll give you all a ride!”

January 4, 2019 | Literature · Technology

The Elements of Style

A letter from E.B. White to J.G. Case, March 30, 1962:

Dear Jack:

The next grammar book I bring out I want to tell how to end a sentence with five prepositions. A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, ‘What did you bring that book that I don’t want to be read to out of up for?’

And how are YOU?

Yrs,

Andy

See Over and Out.

January 3, 2019 | Language

Inspiration

M.C. Escher hated the Dutch high school he attended between 1912 and 1918. He failed his exam and enjoyed only the drawing lessons. But now it appears that the school’s architecture informs some of his later prints.

“It recently became clear that the staircase in Escher’s secondary school was a crucial factor in several of his works,” writes Micky Piller, curator of the The Hague Escher Museum, in The Amazing World of M.C. Escher (2015). “This discovery was confirmed by analysis of this work and photographs taken in the school.

“Escher was an unhappy boy when he was going up and down this staircase. Thirty years on, he still described his school years as ‘the hell that was Arnhem.’ Here he would have seen pupils walking in every direction. Imagine this in your mind’s eye and you will understand the rotating perspective in the print.”

“It was not all imagination, we must conclude now.”

January 3, 2019January 2, 2019 | Art

Rebus

This inscription was found in a cemetery of French Franciscan friars at Dole. What does it mean?

	Select Click for Answer
Amendez vous, qu’attendez vous, la mort. (From Arthur Watson, “The Rebus,” The Antiquary, December 1898.)

January 2, 2019 | Death · Puzzles

Court Intrigue

A stranger asks you to shuffle an ordinary deck of cards and then cut it into three heaps. He’ll bet you $20 that at least one of the topmost cards is a king, queen, or jack. Should you take the bet?

	Select Click for Answer
No. There are (52 × 51 × 50) / 6, or 22,100, ways that three different cards can be chosen from a deck of 52. If we remove the 12 picture cards, then 40 cards remain, and the number of ways of choosing three cards from a 40-card deck is (40 × 39 × 38) / 6, or 9,880. Call this group of 9,880 three-card sets Set A. Since there are 22,100 three-card sets in a normal deck, and 9,880 three-card sets that don’t contain a picture card, there must be 22,100 – 9,880 = 12,220 sets of three cards in an ordinary deck that include at least one picture card. Call these 12,220 three-card sets Set B. Now, after we’ve shuffled the deck and divided it into three heaps, the set of three topmost cards belongs to either Set A (i.e., none of them is a picture card) or Set B (i.e., at least one of them is a picture card). So the probability that none of the three topmost cards is a picture card is 9,880 / 22,100, or about 44.7 percent, and the probability that at least one of the three is a picture card is 12,220 / 22,100, or about 55.3 percent. So the odds are roughly 55 to 45 in the stranger’s favor. (From Owen O’Shea, The Call of the Primes, 2016.)

Click for Answer

January 2, 2019January 1, 2019 | Puzzles

The Jones Live-Map

Somewhat like George Boyden’s “vehicle signaling system” of 1916, Ernest Jones’ 1909 “Live-Map” navigator reckoned distance by monitoring a car’s wheels. But where Boyden’s invention guided the driver using a phonograph recording, Jones’ communicated directions via a printed paper disk that turned under a stationary pointer.

“Under its guidance the most muddling twists, turns and corners melt away behind you,” read the advertisement. “It is better than a Human Guide because it is always doing its work to the exclusion of everything else. … The Jones Live-Map emancipates you from slavery to great, flopping maps and profound route-books that you can’t make head or tail of without stopping.”

You could mount it on the dashboard, carry it in your lap, and even hand it to other occupants. The downside was that if you missed a turn you’d have to find a town on the route and recalibrate the device — and it cost $75 in 1909, or more than $2,000 today.

January 1, 2019 | Technology

In a Word

velitation
n. a minor dispute or contest

devel
v. to beat or thrash

herile
adj. pertaining to a master

satisdiction
n. saying enough

Somebody once asked pool hustler Don Willis how good Glen “Eufaula Kid” Womack was.

Willis said, “I never saw him play.”

“What do you mean, you never saw him play? I heard you just beat him out of a lot of money.”

“I did,” Willis said, “but he never got to shoot.”

(From Robert Byrne’s Wonderful World of Pool and Billiards, 1996.)

December 31, 2018 | Entertainment · Language

Finding the Way

Kohta Suzuno of Japan’s Meiji University has devised a way to solve mazes using the Marangoni effect: Fill the maze with milk, place an acidic hydrogel block at the exit, and introduce dye and a soap at the entrance. The pH change alters the surface tension and drives the dye toward the block. “In a typical experiment, the shortest path can be found and visualized within ~10s.” Suzuno has even used this technique to find the shortest distance between two points in Budapest, using a maze modeled on a street map.

(Kohta Suzuno et al., “Marangoni Flow Driven Maze Solving,” in A. Adamatzky, ed., Advances in Unconventional Computing, Vol. 23, 2017.)

December 30, 2018 | Science & Math

Servant Trouble

In What the Butler Saw, E.S. Turner reviews the bizarre case of Hannah More, whose servants formed a conspiracy to rob and defraud her. “The most shameless peculation prevailed in the kitchen,” noted the Rev. Henry Thompson. “Orders were issued to the tradesmen in her name of which the servants reaped the benefit. Monies given for charity were appropriated by the servants.”

Worse, the servants held silent parties below stairs after More had retired for the night. At midnight, the servants from neighboring houses would converge on her home in Somerset, “some creeping through hedges, others descending down laurel walks or emerging from thickets” to enjoy “hot suppers laid out with parlour-like elegance.”

Eventually, tired of keeping quiet, they began to organize balls at a hall a mile away. A suspicious guest of More’s, spying from a window, saw the servants depart the house, dressed up and led by the housekeeper and coachman arm in arm. A scullery maid was left behind to admit the returning servants in time for morning prayers.

Told of this, More asked in a faltering voice, “What, Susan unfaithful, who has lived with me so many years?” “Yes.” “And Timothy, whose relations I have fed and clothed?” “Yes.” “And Teddy and Rebecca and Jane?” “Yes, all.” “What? Not one faithful?” “The whole are faithless!”

More resolved to leave them all and find a new home where she could spend her last days “in calmness, prayer, and praise.” She summoned the villains to the drawing room and told them, “You are no longer my servants. By deserting me and my house at midnight to pursue your revels, you all proved yourselves to be unworthy of my confidence. Your unprincipled conduct has driven me from my home, forced me to seek a refuge among strangers.”

She left a quarter’s wages for each of them and departed in a friend’s coach. “I am driven like Eve from Paradise,” she said, “but not by angels.”

December 29, 2018 | Society