Gnossienne #3
by reader Karin Josephine
gnossienne - n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.
Abie’s Irish Rose became a fixture on Broadway in the 1920s, running for more than five years. That was bad news for Robert Benchley, who had to think up a new capsule review of the play each week for Life magazine:
In despair he finally wrote, “See Hebrews 13:8.”
That verse reads “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.”
Oh who that ever lived and loved
Can look upon an egg unmoved?
The egg it is the source of all,
‘Tis everyone’s ancestral hall.
The bravest chief that ever fought,
The lowest thief that e’er was caught,
The harlot’s lip, the maiden’s leg,
They each and all come from an egg.
The rocks that once by ocean’s surge
Beheld the first of eggs emerge –
Obscure, defenseless, small and cold –
They little knew what egg could hold.
The gifts the reverent Magi gave,
Pandora’s box, Aladdin’s cave,
Wars, loves, and kingdoms, heaven and hell
All lay within that tiny shell.
Oh, join me gentlemen, I beg,
In honoring our friend, the egg.
– Clarence Day, Scenes From the Mesozoic, 1935
Mohan K. VSo.much.thought.into.everything. Aaaargh!
This is a video of a pair of Kenyan high schoolers competing in a high jump contest, skillfully using a throwback technique rarely seen these days.
Cool, right? They're using a scissors-jump technique that was popular in international competitions prior to the early 1900s, when landing areas were sand pits rather than the huge foam pads you typically see today. Various techniques followed the scissors-jump, with each making higher jumps possible until Dick Fosbury invented his Flop in 1968. All international competitors use the Flop today.
Interestingly though, the Fosbury Flop is not the instantly disruptive innovation I'd always thought it was. Fosbury started sailing over the bar backwards as a senior in high school in the mid-1960s. He refined his invention for years until his gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics attracted the attention of other jumpers, who recognized the potential of the technique. But if you look at the progression of high jump world records, there was no huge jump (sorry) in record heights because of the Flop. Ten years after the Flop's big-stage debut at the Mexico City Games, the world record holder Vladimir Yashchenko still used the straddle technique. And in the 1980 Olympics, three high jump finalists didn't use the Flop. Like most new promising technologies, the Flop took time to catch on, even though 45 years on, it's the clearly superior technique. (via @dunstan)
Tags: Dick Fosbury sports track and field videoMohan K. VThis is true creativity!
Cronuts are donuts made from croissant dough and they are all the rage here in NYC. They were invented by chef Dominique Ansel and they are only available in limited quantities at his bakery in Soho. Apparently people start lining up for them at 6am and all 200 of the world's daily supply of cronuts are gone within minutes of opening. Naturally, a black market has sprung up, with cronuts selling on Craigslist for upwards of $25/item:
Kevin Roose has some ideas for Ansel about expanding the reach of the cronut, but in the meantime, Edd Kimber replicated the treat at home with a quickie croissant dough.
Since I wont be in New York any time soon I thought I would see if I could replicate them at home, and you know what? They are pretty damn good! Now the dough I'm using isnt a proper croissant dough, its my quick dough made with just 20 minutes active work which, compared to traditional croissant dough is a snap to make.
Update: Pillsbury has gotten into the act as well with a cronut recipe that uses their crescent dough.
Tags: Dominique Ansel economics Edd Kimber food Kevin Roose NYCShortly before his retirement at 60, Tatsuo Horiuchi picked up a copy of Microsoft Excel and started making art with it. His art does not look anything like you'd expect Excel art to look:
It was British wordplay expert Leigh Mercer who coined the classic palindrome “A man, a plan, a canal — Panama” in Note & Queries on Nov. 13, 1948. He later said that he’d had the middle portion, PLAN A CANAL P, for a year before he saw that PANAMA fit.
Mercer published 100 palindromes in N&Q between 1946 and 1953 — a selection:
See, slave, I demonstrate yet arts no medieval sees
Now Ned I am a maiden won
Here so long? No loser, eh?
Trade ye no mere moneyed art
Ban campus motto, “Bottoms up, MacNab”
No dot nor Ottawa “legal age” law at Toronto, Don
Now ere we nine were held idle here, we nine were won
Egad, a base life defiles a bad age
“Reviled did I live,” said I, “as evil I did deliver”
I saw desserts, I’d no lemons, alas, no melon, distressed was I
Sue, dice, do, to decide us
Sir, I demand — I am a maid named Iris
No, set a maple here, help a mate, son
Poor Dan is in a droop
Yawn a more Roman way
Won’t lovers revolt now?
Pull a bat, I hit a ball up
Nurse, I spy gypsies, run!
Stephen, my hat — ah, what a hymn, eh, pets?
Pull up if I pull up
… and the remarkably natural “Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.”
Mercer didn’t confine himself to palindromes — he also devised this mathematical limerick:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.
“I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.” — Samuel Johnson
A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.
‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.
‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains.
‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’
The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’
The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?’
– Benjamin Franklin, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” 1784
A person with Münchausen syndrome feigns illness to get attention. In order to get this diagnosis, she must be faking symptoms of a condition that she doesn’t really have. But any such faked symptoms are an authentic sign of Münchausen syndrome. Does this mean it’s impossible to have the disorder?
(By Washington University philosopher Roy Sorensen.)
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” — Logan Pearsall Smith
A letter from Pope Innocent IV to Güyük Khan, king of the Mongols, March 13, 1245:
Seeing that not only men but even irrational animals, nay, the very elements which go to make up the world machine, are united by a certain innate law after the manner of the celestial spirits, all of which God the Creator has divided into choirs in the enduring stability of peaceful order, it is not without cause that we are driven to express in strong terms our amazement that you, as we have heard, have invaded many countries belonging both to Christians and to others and are laying them waste in a horrible desolation, and with a fury still unabated you do not cease from stretching out your destroying hand to more distant lands, but, breaking the bond of natural ties, sparing neither sex nor age, you rage against all indiscriminately with the sword of chastisement.
We, therefore, following the example of the King of Peace, and desiring that all men should live united in concord in the fear of God, do admonish, beg and earnestly beseech all of you that for the future you desist entirely from assaults of this kind and especially from the persecution of Christians, and that after so many and such grievous offences you conciliate by a fitting penance the wrath of Divine Majesty, which without doubt you have seriously aroused by such provocation; nor should you be emboldened to commit further savagery by the fact that when the sword of your might has raged against other men Almighty God has up to the present allowed various nations to fall before your face; for sometimes He refrains from chastising the proud in this world for the moment, for this reason, that if they neglect to humble themselves of their own accord He may not only no longer put off the punishment of their wickedness in this life but may also take greater vengeance in the world to come.
On this account we have thought fit to send to you our beloved son and his companions the bearers of this letter, men remarkable for their religious spirit, comely in their virtue and gifted with a knowledge of Holy Scripture; receive them kindly and treat them with honour out of reverence for God, indeed as if receiving us in their persons, and deal honestly with them in those matters of which they will speak to you on our behalf, and when you have had profitable discussions with them concerning the aforesaid affairs, especially those pertaining to peace, make fully known to us through these same Friars what moved you to destroy other nations and what your intentions are for the future, furnishing them with a safe-conduct and other necessities on both their outward and return journey, so that they can safely make their way back to our presence when they wish.
Güyük wrote back:
By the power of the Eternal Heaven, we are the all-embracing Khan of all the Great Nations. It is our command:
This is a decree, sent to the great Pope that he may know and pay heed.
After holding counsel with the monarchs under your suzerainty, you have sent us an offer of subordination which we have accepted from the hands of your envoy.
If you should act up to your word, then you, the great Pope, should come in person with the monarchs to pay us homage and we should thereupon instruct you concerning the commands of the Yasak.
Furthermore, you have said it would be well for us to become Christians. You write to me in person about this matter, and have addressed to me a request. This, your request, we cannot understand.
Furthermore, you have written me these words: ‘You have attacked all the territories of the Magyars and other Christians, at which I am astonished. Tell me, what was their crime?’ These, your words, we likewise cannot understand. Chinggis Khan and Ogatai Khakan revealed the commands of Heaven. But those whom you name would not believe the commands of Heaven. Those of whom you speak showed themselves highly presumptuous and slew our envoys. Therefore, in accordance with the commands of the Eternal Heaven, the inhabitants of the aforesaid countries have been slain and annihilated. If not by the command of Heaven, how can anyone slay or conquer out of his own strength?
And when you say: ‘I am a Christian. I pray to God. I arraign and despise others,’ how do you know who is pleasing to God and to whom He allots His grace? How can you know it, that you speak such words?
Thanks to the power of the Eternal Heaven, all lands have been given to us from sunrise to sunset. How could anyone act other than in accordance with the commands of Heaven? Now your own upright heart must tell you: ‘We will become subject to you, and will place our powers at your disposal.’ You in person, at the head of the monarchs, all of you, without exception, must come to tender us service and pay us homage; then only will we recognize your submission. But if you do not obey the commands of Heaven, and run counter to our orders, we shall know that you are our foe.
That is what we have to tell you. If you fail to act in accordance therewith, how can we forsee what will happen to you? Heaven alone knows.
The two never met on the field of battle, so God was unable to make his wishes clearer.
(Thanks, Julian.)
In November of last year I wrote:
Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge.
A recent paper provides evidence. It’s well known that Democrats and Republicans give different answers to even basic factual questions when those questions are politically loaded (Did inflation fall under Reagan? Were WMDs found in Iraq? and so forth). But do the respondents really believe their answers or are they simply signalling their affiliations? In other words, are respondents bullshitting? In a new paper, Bullock, Gerber, Huber and Hill provide evidence that the respondents don’t actually believe what they say and the authors do so by making partisans pay for their beliefs. Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog has a good writeup:
They ran two experiments. In the first, they split respondents into two groups: Those in the control group were asked basic factual questions about politics; those in the treatment group were asked the same questions but were entered into a raffle for an Amazon gift card wherein their chances depended on how many questions they got right.
In the control group, the authors find what Bartels, Nyhan and Reifler found: There are big partisan gaps in the accuracy of responses.
…But when there was money on the line, the size of the gaps shrank by 55 percent. The researchers ran another experiment, in which they increased the odds of winning for those who answered the questions correctly but also offered a smaller reward to those who answered “don’t know” rather than answering falsely. The partisan gaps narrowed by 80 percent.
The paper also has implications for democracy. Voting is just another survey without individual consequence so voting encourages expressions of rational irrationality and it’s no surprise why democracies choose bad policies.
Hat tip: @jneeley78.
Lars Christensen has a theory of airport security:
…my theory is that if you meet an unfriendly bureaucrat at the security check in the airport then it is also very likely it will be hard to start a business in that country. Therefore, I tend to think of airport security as an indicator of the level of government regulation of the country’s economy. This is something that makes me terribly bearish on the US’ long-term growth perspectives every time I encounter a TSA official in an US airport – and makes me terribly depressed about the prospects for Ukraine and it gives me an understanding of why the Scandinavian countries ‘works’ well despite excessively large public sectors.
It was therefore a pleasure today to meet friendly and efficient people at the security check in Chopin airport (Poland). And if my theory has any value this is an indication that Poland has “matured” and the level of regulation is luckily getting lighter. That is good news. So now I am thinking of raising my long-run growth forecasts for Poland…
I recently asked my young son whether he thought he could travel by himself to visit his grandmother in Victoria, Canada. He said that he could navigate the airports fine and getting into Canada was no problem but he was afraid of the security people coming back into the United States. Bear in mind that my son is American.
Mohan K. VHowever democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, ‘Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,’ or ‘Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.’ They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
– G.K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross, 1909
Mohan K. VYet another example of, "Kalla naagara kaNdare haalanere embavaru,, diTa naagara kaNdare kollembarayya" (The same people who ask you to ritually offer milk to a statue of a snake, ask you to kill if they see a real one"
The cow’s status as a sacred being in Hinduism is increasingly being threatened as more wealthy Indians, even Hindus, are turning carnivorous, as Gardiner Harris of The New York Times recently reported. Meanwhile, the increasing demand for beef is driving gangs to steal cows that are wandering around Delhi so that the animals can be sold to slaughterhouses.
Still, cows have plenty of protectors in India, and even beyond its borders. Thousands of miles away, Indian citizens living in the United States regularly send money to cow shelters in India like Mataji Gaushala, located in Barsana, near Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.
Mataji Gaushala is one of the biggest cow shelters in northern India, spread over 42 acres. It houses 20,000 cows, most of them old and no longer providing milk. Brijinder Sharma, manager of Mataji Gaushala, said the shelter’s objective is to let the animals live a natural life and die from natural causes.
Subhash Puri, 69, a civil engineer who retired from the American government in 2011, lives in Laurel, Maryland, but sends money, after collecting it from other Indian patrons, and visits Mataji Gaushala often, spending four to six months out of the year.
“The cow is our mother,” he said. “It is our duty to give them a dignified life. We try to save them from the slaughterhouses.”
Mr. Puri said Indians in the United States who support the shelter include doctors, engineers and IT professionals. “They give new ideas to run the place,” he said.
The article is here, and for the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
