Bootstraps

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At the beginning of 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the third film in the original Star Wars trilogy, an alien script could be seen on monitor readouts on the second Death Star. Devised by artist Joe Johnston, these lines weren’t intended to be read, but West End Games art director Stephen Crane gave each character a name, creating an alphabet for gamers to use.

With Lucasfilm’s approval, this has become “Aurabesh,” a 34-letter writing system named for its first two letters, aurek and besh. And Aurabesh has now found its way into Star Wars films, books, comics, and TV series. Since the 2004 DVD release of A New Hope, the original film in the series, the words on the Death Star’s tractor beam control have appeared in Aurebesh, bringing the alphabet’s adoption full circle.

“The Aurebesh is a lot like Boba Fett,” Crane wrote. “It is a facet of the Star Wars phenomenon that had its origin as a cinematic aside, but which has come to be widely embraced, far out of proportion to its humble origins.”

| Language

Plea

https://www.reddit.com/r/EverythingScience/comments/3g5tz7/note_from_the_last_one_to_go_from_university_of/

On Sept. 2, 1945, an American Navy squadron came ashore at Sagami Bay near Yokohama to demilitarize the Japanese midget submarines in the area. They found this notice on the door of a marine biological research station there, left by embryologist Katsuma Dan.

The Americans honored his wish: On the last of 1945 he was summoned by an officer of the U.S. First Cavalry and handed a document releasing the station back to the University of Tokyo.

The notice is on display at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Marine Biological Laboratory (here’s the full story).

| Science & Math · Society

Podcast Episode 190: Mary Patten and the Neptune’s Car

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In 1856, an American clipper ship was approaching Cape Horn when its captain collapsed, leaving his 19-year-old wife to navigate the vessel through one of the deadliest sea passages in the world. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of Mary Patten and the harrowing voyage of the Neptune’s Car.

We’ll also consider some improbable recipes and puzzle over a worker’s demise.

See full show notes …

| History · Podcast

Occupational Hazard

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In his 1874 Lives of the Chief Justices of England, John Campbell tells this anecdote of Lloyd Kenyon, Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1788 to 1802:

In those days retiring-rooms for the use of the Judges were unknown, and a porcelain vase, with a handle to it, was placed in a corner of the Court at the extremity of the bench. In the King’s Bench at Guildhall the students’ box (in which I myself have often sat) was very near this corner. One day a student who was taking notes, finding the ink in his little ink-bottle very thick, used the freedom secretly to discharge the whole of it into my Lord’s porcelain vase. His Lordship soon after having occasion to come to this corner, he was observed in the course of a few moments to become much disconcerted and distressed. In truth, discovering the liquid with which he was filling the vase to be of a jet black colour, he thought the secretion indicated the sudden attack of some mortal disorder. In great confusion and anguish of mind he returned to his seat and attempted to resume the trial of the cause, but finding his hand to shake so much that he could not write, he said that on account of indisposition he was obliged to adjourn the Court.

Happily for Kenyon, “As he was led to his carriage by his servants, the luckless student came up and said to him, ‘My Lord, I hope your Lordship will excuse me, as I suspect that I am unfortunately the cause of your Lordship’s apprehensions.’ He then described what he had done, expressing deep contrition for his thoughtlessness and impertinence, and saying that he considered it his duty to relieve his Lordship’s mind by this confession. Lord Kenyon: ‘Sir, you are a man of sense and a gentleman — dine with me on Sunday.'”

| History · Humor

Hadwiger’s Conjecture

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A triangle can be covered by three smaller copies of itself. A square requires four smaller copies. But in general four will do: Any bounded convex set in the plane can be covered with four smaller copies of itself (and in fact the fourth copy is needed only in the case of parallelograms, like the square).

Is this true in every dimension? In 1957 Swiss mathematician Hugo Hadwiger conjectured that every n-dimensional convex body can be covered by 2n smaller copies of itself. But this remains an unsolved problem.

(Interestingly, Russian mathematician Vladimir Boltyansky showed that this problem is equivalent to one of illumination: How many floodlights does it take to illuminate an opaque convex body from the exterior? The number of floodlights turns out to equal the number of smaller copies needed to cover the body.)

| Science & Math

Freehand

Type designer Hermann Zapf could reproduce a typeface by hand. In The Art of Hermann Zapf, an educational film he produced for Hallmark Cards in 1967, at 14:13 he draws Melior, a serif type used in newspapers such as the Village Voice.

Typeface designer Steve Matteson said, “Zapf was someone who could write 10-point type and it looked like a typeface. It was pretty astounding; his muscle control was so fluid.”

Zapf created around 200 typefaces, including Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. When he died in 2015, “all the rest of us moved up one,” type designer Matthew Carter told the New York Times. “That’s my way of saying Hermann was on top.”

| Art

Spiral Tilings

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

It’s easy to see that a plane can be tiled with squares or hexagons arranged in regular ranks, but in 1936 Heinz Voderberg showed that it can also be tiled in a spiral formation. Each tile in the figure above is the same nine-sided shape, but together they form two “arms” that bound one another. If both arms are extended infinitely, they’ll cover the whole plane.

In 1955 Michael Goldberg showed that spirals might be devised with any even number of arms, and in 2000 Daniel Stock and Brian Wichmann did the same for odd numbers, so it’s now possible to devise a shape that will tile the plane in a spiral with any specified number of arms.

(Daniel L. Stock and Brian A. Wichmann, “Odd Spiral Tilings,” Mathematics Magazine 73:5 [December 2000], 339-346.)

| Science & Math

The Lawyer’s Prayer

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In 1765 Samuel Johnson considered taking up the study of law. In his diary he wrote:

Almighty God, the Giver of wisdom, without whose help resolutions are vain, without whose blessing study is ineffectual, enable me, if it be Thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful and instruct the ignorant, to prevent wrong, and terminate contention; and grant that I may use that knowledge which I shall attain to Thy glory and my own salvation; for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

He seems to have given up the project, but he maintained his respect for the profession. The following year, when James Boswell mentioned that a friend had jokingly advised him against becoming a lawyer “because I should be excelled by plodding block-heads,” Johnson replied, “Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a plodding block-head may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding block-head can never excel.”

| Society