Goliath Bound

Irritated with Britain’s repeated “paper blockades” of the American coast, privateer Thomas Boyle slipped into the English Channel in 1814 and proclaimed a one-ship blockade of the entire United Kingdom:

Whereas it has become customary with the Admirals of Great Britain, commanding small forces on the coast of the United States, particularly Sir John Borlaise Warren and Sir Alexander Cochrane, to declare all the coast of the United States in a state of strict and rigorous blockade, without possessing the power to justify such a declaration, or stationing an adequate force to maintain said blockade, I do therefore, by virtue of the power and authority in me vested (possessing sufficient force) declare all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and seacoast of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in a state of strict and rigorous blockade. And I do further declare, that I consider the force under my command adequate to maintain strictly, rigorously, and effectually, the said blockade. And I do hereby require the respective officers, whether captains, commanders, or commanding officers, under my command, employed or to be employed on the coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to pay strict attention to the execution of this my proclamation. And I do hereby caution and forbid the ships and vessels of all and every nation, in amity and peace with the United States, from entering or attempting to enter, or from coming or attempting to come out of any of the said ports, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, or seacoasts, under any pretence whatsoever. And that no person may plead ignorance of this my proclamation, I have ordered the same to be made public in England.

The proclamation was posted in Lloyd’s Coffee House in London — and, back home, won his ship the title “The Pride of Baltimore.”

| History

The Gentle Cynic

More maxims of Rochefoucauld:

  • “Before we passionately wish for anything, we should examine into the happiness of its possessor.”
  • “Were we perfectly acquainted with any object, we should never passionately desire it.”
  • “It is easier to appear worthy of the employments we are not possessed of, than of those we are.”
  • “Those who endeavor to imitate us we like much better than those who endeavor to equal us. Imitation is a sign of esteem but competition of envy.”
  • “We are often more agreeable through our faults than through our good qualities.”
  • “We easily excuse in our friends those faults that do not affect us.”
  • “None are either so happy or so unhappy as they imagine.”
  • “Censorious as the world is, it oftener does favor to false merit than injustice to true.”
  • “Absence destroys small passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes tapers, and kindles fires.”
  • “We never desire ardently what we desire rationally.”
  • “Our self-love bears with less patience the condemnation of our taste than of our opinion.”

And “Why have we memory sufficient to retain the minutest circumstances that have happened to us; and yet not enough to remember how often we have related them to the same person?”

| Literature

Partly Cloudy

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/706719

But how are we to figure the change from ‘undecided’ to ‘true’? Is it sudden or gradual? At what moment does the statement ‘it will rain tomorrow’ begin to be true? When the first drop falls to the ground? And supposing that it will not rain, when will the statement begin to be false? Just at the end of the day, 12 p.m. sharp? … We wouldn’t know how to answer these questions; this is due not to any particular ignorance or stupidity on our part but to the fact that something has gone wrong with the way the words ‘true’ and ‘false’ are applied here.

— F. Waismann, “How I See Philosophy,” in H.D. Lewis, ed., Contemporary British Philosophy, 1956

| Science & Math

The Specialty Shelf

Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes has won the 2009 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, with 42 percent of the vote. Other contenders:

  • Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
  • An Intellectual History of Cannibalism
  • Father Christmas Needs a Wee!
  • What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua?
  • Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
  • Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
  • The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
  • I Stopped Sucking My Thumb … Why Can’t You Stop Drinking?

The winning book informs readers how to “crochet models of the hyperbolic plane, pseudosphere, and catenoid/helicoids” and explores geometry and the history of crochet. “It defended its poll-topping position despite strong support for the spoon-carrying Third Reich, once again attempting to muscle in on someone else’s territory,” said prize custodian Horace Bent. “But the public proclivity towards non-Euclidean needlework proved too great for the Third Reich to overcome. If only someone had let the Poles know in ’39.”

Some past winners.

| Literature

Pinpointing

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

Writing in Psychological Review in 1917, Berkeley psychologist George Stratton reported the startling achievements of Jewish scholars known as Shass Pollaks, who would memorize the entire Babylonian Talmud — not just the text, but the position of every word on every page:

“A pin would be placed on a word, let us say, the fourth word in line eight; the memory sharp would then be asked what word is in the same spot on page thirty-eight or fifty or any other page; the pin would be pressed through the volume until it reached page thirty eight or page fifty or any other page designated; the memory sharp would then mention the word and it was found invariably correct. He had visualized in his brain the whole Talmud; in other words, the pages of the Talmud were photographed on his brain. It was one of the most stupendous feats of memory I have ever witnessed and there was no fake about it.”

Stratton also quotes Judge Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia, who had seen a Shass Pollak put down a pencil at random in the Talmud and immediately name the word on which it had lighted.

These achievements, Stratton wrote, “should be stored among the data long and still richly gathering for the study of extraordinary feats of memory.”

| Oddities

The Savage Breast

Ben Greenblatt, popular piano stylist, has played for every kind of society party, but this week marked the first time that his audience consisted of monkeys. He ‘gave’ at the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens just to see how the chimpanzees would react to his Steinway. …

Checking upon the reaction of animals to music has been tried periodically ever since the zoo opened its gates 70 years ago. Once an elephant nearly sprayed a jazz band with a trunkful of water, and on another occasional Tommy Dorsey nearly lost his trombone when an inquisitive chimpanzee tried to take it apart to see what made it tick.

— Billboard, April 1, 1944

| Oddities

Hot Rocks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hawaii_lava_field_360.jpg

Every year, thousands of tourists pass through Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and many collect sand or rocks as souvenirs. And every year, thousands of people mail them back, reporting mysterious misfortunes:

  • “Please return to soil. I have been having bad luck.”
  • “Ever since we have taken items, we have had nothing but back luck and medical problems. We apologize for taking items, so we are returning same to Hawaii.”
  • “We placed the rock last fall on a cast iron chair in our garden, this spring the chair’s leg had fallen off. This is the least of the problems we have had since we have taken the rock.”
  • “I must be cursed! Please, whatever the legend, curse or folklore is, please put these rocks back on a beach for me. I do not want one more stroke of fate to push me over the edge.”

According to legend, the volcano goddess Pele punishes those who steal from her. Timothy Murray took home some sand in 1997, and his pet died, his fiancee left him, he started to drink, and the FBI arrested him in a copyright infringement case. “One minute you’re working and you’re law-abiding and you’ve got money in the bank,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “The next minute you are sitting in a federal penitentiary in Miami.”

“People need something to blame their troubles on,” says local postmaster Dave Kell, who notes that much of what is sent back is not even from Hawaii. “They bring this stuff on themselves.”

What does he know? If the fire goddess is oppressing you, mail your guilty rock to this return service and they’ll wrap it in a ti leaf and return it to Pele with a propitiating orchid. Better safe than sorry.

| Oddities

Ghost Train

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cincinnati_Subway_Entrance_01_2005_10_22.JPG

Cincinnati has a subway. Or, rather, the abortive beginnings of one. The digging began in 1920, when streetcars couldn’t keep up with the city’s growing population. But cost overruns and the advent of the automobile gradually turned it into a white elephant. In all, seven miles were prepared, but no cars were ever ordered.

In the years since 1925, when construction stopped, the empty tunnel has been proposed for use as an air-raid shelter, a storage area, a mall, a film set, a wind tunnel, and a wine cellar, but none of these received approval. Instead the entrances have been sealed with concrete, and it remains simply the nation’s largest abandoned subway tunnel.

If enough time passes, perhaps it will be forgotten entirely. Intriguingly, this has happened before.

| Oddities