Bang!

If Brown hopes to throw a six in a game of dice and succeeds, we wouldn’t say he threw the six intentionally. If Brown puts his last cartridge into a six-chambered revolver, spins the chamber as he aims it at Smith, his archenemy, pulls the trigger, and kills Smith, we’d say he killed him intentionally. Does that make sense? In both cases Brown hoped for a certain result, in both cases the probability of that result was the same. If Brown didn’t intentionally throw a six, why did he intentionally shoot Smith?

— Leo Katz, Bad Acts and Guilty Minds, 1987

| Science & Math · Society

Rimshot

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1215011

A husband and wife are killed in an accident and find themselves in heaven. It’s an immaculate golf course with a beautiful clubhouse and handsomely landscaped greens, and they have it to themselves. They gape at it for a while, and then he asks her if she’d like to play a round.

As they’re teeing up for the first hole, she says, “What’s wrong?”

He says, “We could have been here years ago if it weren’t for your stupid oat bran.”

| Humor

Youth Club

The same Dr. Webb was on one occasion counsel for Peter Mulligan, who made an application before the Recorder of Dublin for a license for a public-house. The applicant was only twenty-five years of age, and the police objected on account of his youth.

‘He is very young for so responsible a position,’ quoth the Recorder.

Dr. Webb instantly rose to the occasion:

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘Alexander the Great at twenty-two years of age had–had crushed the Illyrians and razed the city of Thebes to the ground, had crossed the Hellespont at the head of his army, had conquered Darius with a force of a million in the defiles of Issus and brought the great Persian Empire under his sway. At twenty-three René Descartes evolved a new system of philosophy. At twenty-four Pitt was Prime Minister of the British Empire, on whose dominions the sun never sets. At twenty-four Napoleon overthrew the enemies of the Republic with a whiff of grape-shot in the streets of Paris, and is it now to be judicially decided that at twenty-five my client, Peter Mulligan, is too young to manage a public-house in Capel Street?’

The license was hurriedly granted.

— Matthias M’Donnell Bodkin, Recollections of an Irish Judge, 1915

| Society

Misc

  • What time is it on the sun?
  • PATERNAL, PARENTAL, and PRENATAL are anagrams.
  • If forecastle is pronounced “fo’c’sle,” should forecast be pronounced “folks”?
  • A clock’s second hand is its third hand.
  • “The religion of one seems madness unto another.” — Thomas Browne

Bonus poser: In what sport does only the winning team travel backward?

| Language · Quotations · Science & Math

No Exceptions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wilson_Mizner.jpg

In 1907, Wilson Mizner ran a theatrical hotel in New York.

He posted two rules:

“Carry Out Your Own Dead”

“No Opium Smoking in the Elevator”

“Be nice to people on the way up,” he once said, “because you’ll meet them on the way down.”

| Entertainment

Going Ashore

In February 1820, Connecticut sealer John Davis sailed south past Hoseason Island in the Southern Ocean and spied a peninsula there. He wrote in his log:

Commences with open Cloudy Weather and Light winds a standing for a Large Body of Land in that Direction SE at 10 A.M. close in with it our Boat and Sent her on Shore to look for Seal at 11 A.M. the Boat returned but found no sign of Seal at noon our Latitude was 64°01’ South. Stood up a Large Bay, the Land high and covered intirely with snow. … I think this Southern Land to be a Continent.

He is believed to be the first man to set foot on Antarctica.

| History

Who’s Who?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GertrudeStein.JPG

Picasso said of his portrait of Gertrude Stein, “Everybody thinks that the portrait is not like her, but never mind, in the end she will look like the portrait.”

An old epigram runs: “It sounds like paradox — and yet ’tis true, You’re like your picture, though it’s not like you.”

| Art

Gremlins

The celebrated Foulises, of Glasgow, attempted to publish a work which should be a perfect specimen of typographical accuracy. Every precaution was taken to secure the desired result. Six experienced proof-readers were employed, who devoted hours to the reading of each page; and after it was thought to be perfect, it was posted up in the hall of the university, with notification that a reward of fifty pounds would be paid to any person who could discover an error. Each page was suffered to remain two weeks in the place where it had been posted, before the work was printed, and the printers thought that they had attained the object for which they had been striving. When the work was issued, it was discovered that several errors had been committed, one of which was in the first line of the first page.

— William Keddie, Cyclopædia of Literary and Scientific Anecdote, 1854

| Literature