Good Boy

The esoteric programming language DOGO “heralds a new era of computer-literate pets.” Commands include:

SIT — If the value of the current memory cell is 0, jump to STAY.
STAY — If the value of the current memory cell is not 0, jump to SIT.
ROLL-OVER — Select the next operation in the operation list.
HEEL — Execute the currently selected operation.

This program prints the words HELLO WORLD:

roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel 
heel heel heel heel heel heel sit roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over 
roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel heel heel heel heel roll-over roll-over 
heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over roll-over stay roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over 
roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over 
roll-over heel heel heel heel heel heel heel sit roll-over roll-over roll-over 
heel roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel roll-over roll-over heel 
roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over roll-over stay roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over  
roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel 
roll-over heel heel heel heel heel heel heel roll-over roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over heel heel roll-over heel heel heel roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel 
roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel heel heel heel heel 
sit roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel 
heel heel roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over 
roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over stay roll-over 
roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over 
heel heel heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel heel 
heel heel heel heel heel sit roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over 
roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel heel heel heel heel heel roll-over 
roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over 
roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over stay roll-over roll-over roll-over heel 
roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel heel 
heel roll-over roll-over heel roll-over heel heel heel roll-over roll-over 
roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over heel heel heel heel heel 
heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel roll-over roll-over heel heel 
heel heel heel heel heel heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel 
roll-over roll-over roll-over heel heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over 
heel roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over roll-over heel

Here’s a similar program in Blub, which is designed to be readable by fish:

blub. blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub?
blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub? blub! blub!
blub? blub! blub? blub. blub! blub. blub. blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub.
blub! blub? blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub? blub! blub! blub? blub! blub? blub. blub. blub.
blub! blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub. blub! blub. blub. blub.
blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub. blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub.
blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub? blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub? blub! blub!
blub? blub! blub? blub. blub! blub. blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub.
blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub? blub? blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub.
blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub? blub! blub! blub? blub! blub? blub. blub! blub! blub! blub!
blub! blub! blub! blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub! blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub. blub! blub.
blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub. blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub!
blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub! blub. blub. blub? blub. blub? blub. blub. blub! blub.

See User Friendly.

April 25, 2018April 24, 2018 | Science & Math · Technology

Short Work

Then God said, Let there be light! And the light came. And God saw the light, and it pleased him, and he gave it the name of Day. And when the day was gone, and the dark came back to stay for a while, he gave the dark spell the name of Night. And God did these things on the first day.

— Josephine Pollard, History of the Old Testament in Words of One Syllable, 1888

04/20/2018 UPDATE: Much later, in 1994, MIT logician George Boolos summarized Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem in words of one syllable. (Thanks, Ethan.)

April 18, 2018April 20, 2018 | Literature · Religion

Podcast Episode 196: The Long Way Home

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the crew of an American seaplane were caught off guard near New Zealand. Unable to return across the Pacific, they were forced to fly home “the long way” — all the way around the world. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the adventures of the Pacific Clipper on its 30,000-mile journey through a world engulfed in war.

We’ll also delve into the drug industry and puzzle over a curious case of skin lesions.

See full show notes …

April 16, 2018April 23, 2018 | History · Podcast

Cold Facts

Victorian and Edwardian boys could send confidential questions to the Boy’s Own Paper and look for responses in the “Answers to Correspondents” column:

“We are not sure of the colour of the South-Eastern Railway Carriages. The paint is rarely visible owing to the thick covering of dirt by which it is concealed.” (July 28, 1888)
“Your insect was smashed in the post, but we have identified the fragments as those of Cetonia aurata, the common rose-beetle. Next time you send us a specimen, put it in a box.”
“You cannot safely treat rupture yourself.” (July 1888)
“It is extremely unlikely that Victor Hugo would ever answer any of your letters, even if we forwarded them. He has been dead quite some years.”

One of the editors, Scottish physician Gordon Stables, seemed to have a particular favorite remedy for health questions:

“Rise not later than 7 and cold tub immediately. In very cold weather massage yourself all over before turning out, and then with the rough towel after the cold tub. Breakfast at 8, but only after ten minutes in the open air.”
“Swimming in winter (Mac.). — Few can stand it, but judge for yourself if you can get a good reaction. Dr. Gordon Stables tells us that he joined his swimming club in December when a student. Keeps it up all the year round. Has swum for his life with his heavy clothes on in the Arctic regions. Took no hurt. Others might.” (January 1905)
(To a girl who “wanted to get strong like the boys”:) “You have tried the really cold tub and the B.O.P. dumb-bell exercises every morning before breakfast, my dear?”

When one boy said he longed for a fine pair of whiskers, he was told that “a really cold tub” was his only hope. A New Zealand reader who asked for something to help his nerves was advised to “take plenty of exercise in the open air and a cold tub every morning before breakfast.”

What if there was no tub in the house? “Douche yourself regularly 365 days a year in the mornings on rising, and 366 in any Leap Year, with 30 sponge loads of the coldest water obtainable. We presume there is somewhere around where you can do this with discretion.” (Footnote: “The water must be really cold.”)

To a boy in Northern Ontario: “On no account should you ever cut a circular hole in the winter ice to get a cold tub. You would certainly freeze to death very quickly but it is also probable you might well provide a tasty meal for some hungry seal lurking below. In your case, wait for the spring thaws.”

Stables didn’t mince words. In 1905 he wrote, “The children of the wealthy and well-to-do in cities are apt to be spoiled by pampering and coddling and over-feeding. Cargoes of such little fat boys would sell well in some parts of new Guinea, but in this country they do not assist in the very least to keep the crown on the King’s head.” To a boy inquiring about “bad habits” in 1902, he wrote, “Coffins are cheap and boys like you are not of much use in the world. We do not answer by post.” Admonished for this, he published a modified reply in the Boy’s Own Annual for that year: “If you go on as you are, there is nothing before you but an early and dishonoured grave. Pray God to forgive and help you to resist temptation.”

(Jack Cox, Take a Cold Tub, Sir!, 1982.)

April 15, 2018 | Society

For What It’s Worth

In 2015 Keele University historian Paul Booth found evidence of a man named “Roger Fuckbythenavele” in the Chester county court plea rolls of 1310:

County Court of Chester, held on Tuesday after the feast of St Nicholas, 4 Edw. II, before Payn Tibotot, justiciar of Chester (8th December 1310)

A man called ‘Roger Fuckbythenavele’ was exacted for the first time [the process preliminary to outlawry].

TNA CHES 29/23 m 10d

Booth believes that’s the earliest known reference to fuck as a swear word. “This surname is presumably a nickname. I suggest it could either mean an actual attempt at copulation by an inexperienced youth, later reported by a rejected girlfriend, or an equivalent of the word ‘dimwit’ i.e. a man who might think that that was the correct way to go about it.”

Humiliatingly, Roger is mentioned seven times by that name in the rolls in 1310 and 1311. The “serjeants of the peace” had been ordered to bring him before the court, but they’d failed to find him, and consequently he was outlawed. Apparently a court clerk gave him the nickname.

(Paul Booth, “An Early Fourteenth-Century Use of the F-word in Cheshire, 1310–11,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 164 [2015], 99–102.)

April 13, 2018 | Language

Mankindish Goodgain

In 1989 Poul Anderson wrote a short text using only words of Germanic origin, to show what English might look like if it expressed new concepts using German-style compounds rather than borrowing from other languages. The piece described atomic theory, or “uncleftish beholding”:

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike clefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

The full text is here. Douglas Hofstadter called this style “Ander-Saxon.”

UPDATE: Apparently there’s a whole wiki for “Anglish,” including recastings of famous texts:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this greatland, a new folkship, dreamt in freedom, and sworn to the forthput that all men are made evenworthy. Now we are betrothed in a great folk-war, testing whether that folkship, or any folkship so born and so sworn, can long withstand. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

(Thanks, Dave.)

April 10, 2018April 11, 2018 | Language

Misc

Salman Rushdie suggested that if Robert Ludlum had written Hamlet it would be called The Elsinore Vacillation.

Larry Rosenbaum observed that a gigolo is a million million billion piccolos.

The Greek god of theatrical criticism was named Pan.

Most pygmy hippos in American zoos are descended from William Johnson Hippopotamus, a pet given to Calvin Coolidge.

BISOPROLOL FUMARATE is an anagram of SUPER MARIO FOOTBALL.

Illinois considers Pluto a planet.

“It is as if children know instinctively that anything wholly solemn, without a smile behind it, is only half alive.” — Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, 1959

April 4, 2018 | Language · Literature · Quotations · Trivia

Drumbeats

In 2004 Stanford physicist R.B. Laughlin wrote a 12-page poem critiquing of the theory of resonating valence bonds. He set it in trochaic tetrameter, after Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha:

What ensued was simply awesome,
Destined to go down in legend.
They proposed a cuprate theory
So magnificent in concept,
So much bolder than the others
That it blasted them to pieces
Like some big atomic warhead,
So outshined them in its glory
Like a nova in the heavens
That it blinded any person
Who would dare to gaze upon it.
Cuprates did these things, it stated,
Just because a quirk of nature
Made them like the Hubbard model,
Which, as had been long established,
Did some things quite fundamental,
Not yet known to modern science,
Which explained the crazy data,
So to understand the cuprates
One would have to solve this model.
How colossal! How stupendous!
It was absolutely foolproof!
No one could disprove this theory
With existing mathematics
Or experimental data
For exactly the same reasons
Nor could they admit they couldn’t,
So they’d spend their whole lives trying,
Blame themselves for being so stupid,
And pay homage in each paper
With the requisite citation!

The whole thing is here. (Thanks, Daniele.)

Related: Mark Twain’s father, a justice of the peace, once told his son that there was more poetry in a warranty deed than in Longfellow’s verse. So Twain “took the stupid warranty deed itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank verse, without altering or leaving out three words, and without transposing six”:

THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED.

THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth
Day of November, in the year
Of our Lord one thousand eight
Hundred six-and-fifty,

Between JOANNA S.E. GRAY
And PHILIP GRAY, her husband,
Of Salem City in the State
Of Texas, of the first part,

And O.B. Johnson, of the town
Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:
That said party of first part,
For and in consideration

Of the sum of Twenty Thousand
Dollars, lawful money of
The U.S. of Americay,
To them in hand now paid by said

Party of the second part,
The due receipt whereof is here
By confessed and acknowledg-ed,
Have Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,

Released and Aliened and Conveyed,
Confirmed, and by these presents do
Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,
Alien, Release, Convey, and Con-

Firm unto the said aforesaid
Party of the second part,
And to his heirs and assigns
Forever and ever, ALL

That certain piece or parcel of
LAND situate in city of
Dunkirk, county of Chautauqua,
And likewise furthermore in York State,

Bounded and described, to-wit,
As follows, herein, namely:
BEGINNING at the distance of
A hundred two-and-forty feet,

North-half-east, north-east-by-north,
East-north-east and northerly
Of the northerly line of Mulligan street,
On the westerly line of Brannigan street,

And running thence due northerly
On Brannigan street 200 feet,
Thence at right angles westerly,
North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,

West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,
About —

That’s as far as he got in reciting it to his father. “I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking glass. I could have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to, but I took no interest in such things.”

April 3, 2018April 3, 2018 | Poems

First Things First

For his keynote address at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA conference, Sun Microsystems computer scientist Guy Steele illustrated the value of growing a computer language by growing the language of his talk itself, starting with words of one syllable and using these to build new definitions that permit increasing sophistication.

“For this talk, I chose to take as my primitives all the words of one syllable, and no more, from the language I use for most of my speech each day, which is called English. My firm rule for this talk is that if I need to use a word of two or more syllables, I must first define it.”

(Via MetaFilter.)

April 2, 2018April 1, 2018 | Science & Math

The F-Scale

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ADORNO_by_LGdL.JPG — Image: Wikimedia Commons

In 1947 Theodor Adorno devised a test to measure the authoritarian personality — he called it the F-scale, because it was intended to measure a person’s potential for fascist sympathies:

Although many people may scoff, it may yet be shown that astrology can explain a lot of things.
Too many people today are living in an unnatural, soft way; we should return to the fundamentals, to a more red-blooded, active way of life.
After we finish off the Germans and Japs, we ought to concentrate on other enemies of the human race such as rats, snakes, and germs.
One should avoid doing things in public which appear wrong to others, even though one knows that these things are really all right.
He is, indeed, contemptible who does not feel an undying love, gratitude, and respect for his parents.
Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of delinquency and ought to be severely punished.
There is too much emphasis in college on intellectual and theoretical topics, not enough emphasis on practical matters and on the homely virtue of living.
No matter how they act on the surface, men are interested in women for only one reason.
No insult to our honor should ever go unpunished.
What a man does is not so important so long as he does it well.
When you come right down to it, it’s human nature never to do anything without an eye to one’s own profit.
No sane, normal, decent person could ever think of hurting a close friend or relative.

Adorno hoped that making the questions oblique would encourage participants to reveal their candid feelings, “for precisely here may lie the individual’s potential for democratic or antidemocratic thought and action in crucial situations.”

“The F-scale … was adopted by quite a few experimental psychologists and sociologists, and remained in the repertoire of the social sciences well into the 1960s,” writes Evan Kindley in Questionnaire (2016). But it’s been widely criticized — Adorno and his colleagues assumed that any attraction to fascist ideas was pathological; the statements were worded so that agreement always indicated an authoritarian response; and people with high intelligence tended to see through the “indirect” items anyway.

Ironically, the test’s dubious validity might be a good thing, Kindley notes: Otherwise, “If something like the F-scale were to fall into the wrong hands, couldn’t it become a vehicle of tyranny?”

March 31, 2018 | Science & Math · Society

An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements

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