The Sympsychograph

sympsychograph

David Starr Jordan announced an exciting breakthrough in Popular Science Monthly in 1896: He’d asked seven people to think of a cat and then used a special device to capture their mental images and combine them into a composite picture, “the impression of ultimate feline reality.”

Jordan had intended the piece as a “gentle satire” of then-prevalent experiments in mental photography, but to his horror the readers took it seriously:

One clergyman even went so far as to announce a series of six discourses on “the Lesson of the Sympsychograph,” while many others welcomed the alleged discovery as verifying what they had long believed, and an eminent professor soberly opined that my reputation as a psychologist would not be enhanced by such discoveries!

He later wrote that the experience had taught him two lessons: “first, that very few people ever read a sensational article through to the end, even much beyond pictures and headlines, and second, that with Dr. Holmes, I should never again ‘dare to write as funny as I can.’”

| Hoaxes

Turtles vs. Tigress

It’s commonly said that a queen is worth nine pawns. Is that estimate accurate? In 1846, General Guingret and Lionel Kieseritzky decided to find out:

turtles vs. tigress 1

1. e5 e6 2. d5 d6 3. e4 c6 4. exd6 cxd5 5. e5 b6 6. d4 f6 7. Bd3 g6 8. Be3 Nc6 9. c5 Bg7 10. b4 Bd7 11. b5 bxc5 12. bxc6 Bxc6 13. dxc5 fxe5 14. fxe5 Bxe5 15. Nd2 Rb8 16. Rb1 Qf6 17. Ne2 Qg7 18. O-O g5 19. Nb3 h5 20. Bd4 hxg4 21. fxg4 Kd7 22. f4 Bxd4+ 23. Nbxd4 Nf6 24. f5 e5 25. Ne6 Rxh2 26. Nxg7 Nxg4 27 f6 e4 28. f7 Rbh8 29. f8=N+ Kc8 30. d7+ Kb7 31. d8=N+ 32. Ka8

turtles vs. tigress 2

And White can no longer forestall mate on h1.

So the queen is worth more than nine pawns — if it’s wielded by Kieseritzky.

| Entertainment

“An Extraordinary Cock, With Four Legs”

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZlUNpSm5tPIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

He was hatched near Birmingham, purchased in the market of Alcester, in the county of Warwick, and is now the property of Mr. John Weisman, tailor, residing at No. 6, Lombard Street, Mint Street, Southwark. … He is strongly made, his plumage beautifully variegated and spangled, and of a fine tone of colour. When seen in front he appears to resemble any other animal of the same species, except that his beak is small for his size, and his comb and wattles are considerably larger than usual: but connected with the rump there is a smaller body, which is provided with a second pair of legs, with spurs equal in size to those of the other legs, being three inches in length and remarkably strong. These hinder legs the animal does not employ in walking; they hang down behind the others, not loosely, but on the contrary, in a firm and strong manner. He has two vents which he uses indiscriminately; and crows both loud and well.

– Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1820

| Oddities

Stairway to Seven

You hate visiting your girlfriend because there’s no elevator in her apartment building. And now she’s moved from the fourth floor to the seventh. How many times longer does this make your ascent?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Too Right

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NationaalArchief_uboat155London.jpg

Two months before the outbreak of World War I, Arthur Conan Doyle published a curious short story in The Strand. “Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius” told of a fleet of enemy submarines attacking England’s food imports, starving the nation and winning a war:

Of course, England will not be caught napping in such a fashion again! Her foolish blindness is partly explained by her delusion that her enemy would not torpedo merchant vessels. Common sense should have told her that her enemy will play the game that suits them best — that they will not inquire what they may do, but they will do it first and talk about it afterwards.

In a commentary published with the story, Adm. Penrose Fitzgerald wrote, “I do not myself think that any civilized nation will torpedo unarmed and defenceless merchant ships.” Adm. Sir Compton Domvile felt “compelled to say that I think it most improbable, and more like one of Jules Verne’s stories than any other author I know.” Adm. William Hannam Henderson agreed: “No nation would permit it, and the officer who did it would be shot.”

But within months the U-boats’ depredations had begun, and by February 1915 Doyle was being accused of suggesting the idea to the Germans. “I need hardly say that it is very painful to me to think that anything I have written should be turned against my own country,” he told a reporter. “The object of the story was to warn the public of a possible danger which I saw overhanging this country and to show it how to avoid that danger.”

| History · Literature

This Sceptred Isle

There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Who always at dinner sat dolmondeley.
His fair partner said,
As he crumbled his bread,
“Dear me! You behave very rolmondeley!”

Said a man to his spouse in east Sydenham:
“My best trousers! Now where have you hydenham?
It is perfectly true
They were not very new,
But I foolishly left half a quydenham.”

A young Englishwoman named St John
Met a red-skinned American It John
Who made her his bride
And gave her, beside,
A dress with a gaudy bead Frt John.

There was a young vicar from Salisbury
Whose manners were quite halisbury-scalisbury.
He went around Hampshire
Without any pampshire
Till his bishop compelled him to walisbury.

(Thanks, Gavin.)

| Humor · Language · Poems

“Singular Discovery”

http://books.google.com/books?id=MgMDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

A very singular discovery of an inscription was made some time since at Coxwold, near Thirsk in Yorkshire. … An ash was … felled and split for firewood. Upon being riven asunder, the outer part of the tree was cleft in two like a case, leaving the inner portion of the trunk entire, and the following rude inscription was discovered, distinctly legible, both upon the inner part of the trunk, and with the letters inverted, upon the outer casing. The inscription can, without difficulty, be thus read:–

tree inscription

There is no date to the inscription, but … it would … appear that the tree has been cut down nearly a hundred years. Also, by the number of rings in the wood, each indicating a year’s growth, the tree appears to have been about fifty-five years old when the inscription was made, and to have subsequently grown for nearly two hundred years. The closeness of the rings under the circumference prevents this estimation of the date from being regarded as more than an approximation; but all the circumstances render it highly probable that the inscription was made about three centuries ago.

– Kazlitt Arvine, Cyclopaedia of Anecdotes of Literature and the Fine Arts, 1856

| Oddities

A Boston Accent

Harvard anthropologist Terrence Deacon was walking past the New England Aquarium one day in 1984 when a voice yelled, “Hey! Hey! Get outta there!”

He stopped, but saw no one. Again the voice said, “Hey! Hey you!” Eventually he traced it to an enclosure of harbor seals, and to one in particular that seemed to be speaking English:

On investigating, Deacon learned that “Hoover” (named for his appetite) had been discovered as a pup by a Maine fisherman and donated to the aquarium, where he became a star attraction.

Deacon studied the seal for a year. Regarding the vocalizing, he notes that some birds seem to learn their parents’ songs in early life but sing them only later. “Though we will never know for sure,” he writes, “the image of Hoover guzzling the food in the cupboard and the old fisherman yelling, ‘Hey! Hey! Hoover! Hey you! Get outta there!’ has a persuasive feel, or twisted irony.”

| Oddities