In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Washington crosses Delaware.
The Earth-Moon Problem
Suppose that each country on Earth has a colony on the moon and that we want to draw maps on which each nation’s territory receives a consistent color. How many colors would we need?
In 1980 Thom Sulanke showed that we might need as many as nine (above), but it’s possible that a particularly challenging map would require more than that. The problem remains unsolved.
The Size of It
In his Reflections, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg mentions a friend who divided human endeavor into four classes:
The Broxburn Icicle
During the severe frost of February 1895, a stream of water overflowing Scotland’s Almond Aqueduct began to freeze to the River Almond 120 feet below. Over the course of three nights the mass grew upward until river and bridge were connected by a continuous pillar of ice, the largest such formation on record at the time.
“When the sun shone upon the giant mass,” observed the Strand, “the iridescence was beautiful, and people came from miles around to look at it.”
(Jeremy Broome, “Freaks of Frost,” Strand 12:12 [December 1896], 738-746.)
In a Word
quisquous
adj. difficult to deal with or settle
quillet
n. a verbal nicety, a subtle distinction
aggiornamento
n. the act of bringing something up to date to meet current needs
irenic
adj. fitted or designed to promote peace
The survivors of the Titanic were picked up by the English passenger steamship Carpathia, which conveyed them to New York. This presented a delicate problem to the Social Register. “In those days the ship that people travelled on was an important yardstick in measuring their standing, and the Register dutifully kept track,” notes Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955). “To say that listed families crossed on the Titanic gave them their social due, but it wasn’t true. To say they arrived on the plodding Carpathia was true, but socially misleading. How to handle this dilemma? In the case of those lost, the Register dodged the problem — after their names it simply noted the words, ‘died at sea, 15 April 1912’. In the case of those living, the Register carefully ran the phrase, ‘Arrived Titan-Carpath, 18 April 1912’. The hyphen represented history’s greatest sea disaster.”
Return Engagement
On Easter Saturday 1921, pharmacologist Otto Loewi dreamed of an experiment that would prove that the transmission of nerve impulses was chemical rather than electrical. He scribbled down the idea and went back to sleep, then discovered the next morning that he couldn’t read the note.
That day, he said, was the longest of his life. Fortunately, the dream returned to him that night, and this time he went immediately to the laboratory. Thirteen years later he received the Nobel Prize for discovering the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter.
Art Appreciation
I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal competently with the works of modern artists. If this were the place I could write a very neat little guide to enable the amateur of pictures to deal to the satisfaction of their painters with the most diverse manifestations of the creative instinct. There is the intense ‘By God!’ that acknowledges the power of the ruthless realist, the ‘It’s so awfully sincere’ that covers your embarrassment when you are shown the coloured photograph of an alderman’s widow, the low whistle that exhibits your admiration for the post-impressionist, the ‘Terribly amusing’ that expresses what you feel about the cubist, the ‘Oh!’ of one who is overcome, the ‘Ah!’ of him whose breath is taken away.
— Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale, 1930
Alice’s Number
Alice and Bob are two infinitely intelligent logicians. Each has a number drawn on their forehead. Each can see the other’s number but not their own. Each knows that both numbers are positive integers. An observer tells them that the number 50 is either the sum or the product of the two numbers. Alice says to Bob, “I do not know my number,” and Bob replies, “I do not know my number either.” What is Alice’s number?
Moment
It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: ‘Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man.’
— Vitruvius, De architectura
Close Reading
Teaching at Cornell in the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov offered a European fiction course whose exam questions could be distressingly broad or pitilessly specific — some examples are given in an appendix to Lectures on Literature:
Bleak House
- Why did Dickens need to give Esther three suitors (Guppy, Jarndyce, and Woodcourt)?
- If you compare Lady Dedlock and Skimpole, which of them is the author’s greater success?
- Discuss the structure and style of Bleak House.
- Discuss John Jarndyce’s house. (Mangles? Surprised birds?)
- Discuss the visit to Bell Yard (Neckett’s children; and Mr. Gridley).
- Give at least four examples of the “child theme” in Bleak House.
- What kind of place was Bleak House — give at least four descriptive details.
- Where was Bleak House situated?
- How is the “bird theme” linked up with Krook?
- How is the “fog theme” linked up with Krook?
- Whose style are we reminded of when Dickens raises his voice?
- The social side (“upper class” versus “lower class” etc.) is the weakest one in Bleak House. Who was Mr. George’s brother? What part did he play? Should a major reader skip those pages, even if they are weak?
- Follow Mr. Guppy through Bleak House.
Madame Bovary
- Describe briefly Flaubert’s use of the counterpoint technique in the County Fair scene.
- There are numerous thematic lines in Madame Bovary, such as “Horse,” “Plaster Priest,” “Voice,” “The Three Doctors.” Describe these four themes briefly.
- Discuss Flaubert’s use of the word “and.”
- What character in Madame Bovary behaves in very much the same way as a character in Bleak House does under somewhat similar circumstances? The thematic clue is: “devotion.”
- Is there a Dickensian atmosphere about Flaubert’s description of Berthe’s infancy and childhood? (Be specific.)
- The features of Fanny Price and Esther are pleasantly blurred. Not so with Emma. Describe her eyes, hair, hands, skin.
- Would you say that Emma’s nature was hard and shallow?
- Would she prefer a landscape peopled with ruins and cows to one that contained no allusions to people?
- Did she like her mountain lakes with or without a lone skiff?
- What had Emma read? Name at least four works and their authors.
In his annotated copy of The Metamorphosis, Nabokov, a trained entomologist, observed that “A regular beetle has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes” — and thus Gregor Samsa is “a beetle with human eyes.”