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Getting the Joke 55 Years Later

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Tenniel’s White Queen in Through the Looking Glass

Tenniel’s White Queen in Through the Looking Glass

I was a mere fourteen years old, a Freshman in Latin 1 at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio. My instructor was the Rev. Seamus MacEnri, S.M., from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. One day, he archly drew the following on the chalkboard:

Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today

Our reaction was a uniform, “Whaaa?” But then, we were all a bunch of hayseed kids from the southeastern suburbs of Cleveland and didn’t have Father MacEnri’s breadth of experience. It took quite a while before the whole joke became clear to me. Today, in this post, I will analyze the joke, effectively forestalling any laughter or snickers.

First, let’s take a look at this from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the [White] Queen said. “Two pence a week, and jam every other day.”

Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, “I don’t want you to hire me – and I don’t care for jam.”

“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.

“Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.”

“You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.”

“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day’,” Alice objected.

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”

And so were we all confused. Now, why would a teacher of Latin spring this rather arcane joke on a bunch of high school freshmen. It took a while to swirl around in my mind before I got the picture. It all comes down to something that Medieval copyists started doing in the 13th century:

Sometimes one will see a “j” in Latin. Technically Latin has no letter J. It was introduced in the 13th century or thereabouts to differentiate between the vowel i and the consonant i. The consonantal i is like our y. “Major” in Latin is pronounced as MAH-yor. Until this last century, most printed Latin texts used the j to indicate the different sounds. Today the j’s are usually replaced with the more classical i’s.

That’s why we have words like juvenile and justice, which come from the Latin iuvenilis and iustitia respectively.

Now, what does jam—or should I say iam?—mean in Latin? It means nothing less than now. Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam now.

Well, Father MacEnri, I finally got the joke—and damned near killed it, too.

Oh, No, Another Bill Nye Debate?!

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Look, Bill, Your Heart’s in the Right Place, but ...

Look, Bill, Your Heart’s in the Right Place, but …

Today, my blog is written by Juan Cole. I thought it was really funny, so here it is in its entirety:

David Gregory’s Meet the Press today hosted a debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on whether gravity is just a theory.

“Sure,” Gohmert said, “things fall down all the time. But that doesn’t mean gravity is a law. Look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s still there after hundreds of years. Things don’t always fall down.”

Nye pointed out that Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity in the 17th century and it is settled science.

Gohmert challenged Nye’s certainty. “The cultists who tout science always speak as though we know for sure that scientific discoveries are true. Gravity has only been theorized for a couple hundred years. It’s too early to tell. How much money do they want us to waste on suspension bridges and other expensive technology aimed at keeping things from falling down, on the basis of a theory?”

Nye tore off his bow-tie and began chewing on it in frustration.

“Wasn’t it an apple that hit Newton on the head?” Gohmert asked. “Well, I’ve read the Bible and I know that an apple was used to tempt Eve. Maybe the Serpent was just tempting Newton with a secular humanist theory.”

Nye said, “What?”

“Besides,” Gohmert went on, “we all saw that movie ‘Gravity.’ Obviously there’s no gravity in outer space. So if the theory doesn’t work everywhere, there must be something wrong with it.”

“The law of gravity says,” Nye replied, “that ‘any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.’ Gravity works in deep outer space, it is just that bodies there are distant from the earth. And in ‘Gravity’ they were just falling around the earth, in the grip of its gravity.”

Moderator David Gregory smirked. “That’s a lot of verbiage there, Bill. If you can’t explain something clearly, maybe it’s because there’s something wrong with the theory.”

Gohmert angrily interrupted Gregory. “Besides, we all know that Muslims believe in gravity. That should make you suspicious of it, right there.”

Nye turned to Gregory. “How can you call yourself a journalist? This is a carnival with a bearded lady exhibit!”

Gregory shrugged. “Next you’ll be saying Glenn Greenwald is a journalist. I am not an activist. I don’t know whether gravity is universal. I let both sides tell their story.”

“That’s not a ‘side’! He’s just mouthing nonsense! It doesn’t even make any sense.”

Gohmert pounded the table. “This whole gravity thing is just a way for scientists to get taxpayers’ hard-won money away from them. NASA wouldn’t get all that funding for rocket fuel if people realized that ‘gravity’ is just a theory.”

Gregory turned to the camera and smiled. “There you have it, folks. Next week on ‘Meet the Press:’ A quarter of Americans think the sun goes around the earth. Could they be right? To explain, we’ll be joined by a homeless man who says he is possessed by the spirit of the ancient astronomer Ptolemy.”

 

 

Potrzebie and Axolotl

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With Proust, A Cookie Did the Trick

With Proust, A Cookie Did the Trick

There we were on Saturday evening at my friend Bill Korn’s hacienda in the mountain fastness of Altadena. All of a sudden, Bill threw a word at me that unlocked my childhood in all its tawdriness. The word? It was potrzebie. Is there such a thing? Apparently, but not in our language:

No, This Isn’t It ...

No, This Isn’t It …

Apparently, it’s a word in Polish, as we see below:

Don’t Ask Me What This Means!

In Polish, Potrzebie Means “A Need”

If you were ever a computer programmer, you know who Donald E. Knuth is. He is the author of the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming. In the early 1970s, I dutifully purchased the first three volumes in the series: Fundamental Algorithms, Seminumerical Algorithms, and Sorting and Searching. I don’t recall reading much of it because it was intense, full of mathematical thingies of great penetration and impenetrability. So I eventually sold them.

Aside from writing books I couldn’t wrap my head around, Knuth also defined a potrzebie as being the thickness in millimeters of Mad Magazine’s Issue #26. For those of you who need to know, that amounts to 2.263348517438173216473 millimeters, as shown in the following illustration from Mad:

The System in All Its Glory

The System in All Its Glory

But potrzebie came to mean ever so much more than that, because the editors of Mad fell in love with the word, as did Geoffrey Chaucer:

Whon thot Aprille swithin potrzebie,
The burgid prillie gives one heebie-jeebie.

It joined such terms as axolotl (the critter illustrated at top of article), veeblefetzer, furshlugginer (a word I occasionally use to this day), and hoohah. As it happens, I am now way too sophisticated to read Mad, but half a century ago, it was my meat and drink. It was also my introduction to Yiddish, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I had forgotten these words over the years, but now they are like the zahir of Jorge Luis Borges in the story of the same name. The zahir was a coin which, if one ever saw it, one could think of nothing else.

So, all I could say now is hoo-hah!

 

 

 

 

War on Xmas Begins in Earnest

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Papa Bear Told Us This Would Happen

Papa Bear Warned Us This Would Happen

Just as Bill O’Reilly predicted, the War on Christmas has begun in earnest. Guantanamo is being stripped of terrorist chauffeurs and brothers-in-law to make room for the Clauses and their adherents, including a particularly sinister lot of elves. Breaking news has reported the death of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, whose bleeding carcass was last seen draped over the front of a Humvee, and of the Little Drummer Boy, who took a load of PAHRUPPAPUMMPUMM between the eyes. Grim, sooty smoke spiraled up from stacks of burning greeting cards and gift wrapping paper. Creches were attacked with anti-tank weapons and blown to smithereens.

People who voted in Obama over Mitt Romney in November 2012 are shaking their heads in dismay. Even losing candidate Mitt Romney commented: “Look, fellas, I may be a Mormon; but we’re all Christians here, aren’t we? Aren’t we?”

You wouldn’t think so if you saw the forces arraigned to fight The Former Holiday, as it’s now being called in the news media. In a brave show of resistance, the Faux News Channel began calling itself The Christmas Station until the Federal Communications Commission threatened to shut them down with an attack column headed toward their broadcast headquarters. With many of its pundits under arrest, including O’Reilly, for promoting Christian values, the channel has turned mostly to agricultural reports and generic ethical sermonizing until the situation is clarified.

According to General Mohammed al Scroogey, the Pentagon spokesman, “We have made contact with the forces of Christmas and, on a large scale, torn down their flocked trees and ripped out their strings of lights. Our aim is to confiscate all Santas, elves, sleighs, bells, snowflakes, and other holiday paraphernalia until all that remains is devoid of religious or other celebratory intent.”

All radios played martial music while the brave heroes of the attack brigades wipe out every trace of the despised holiday. President Barack Hussein Obama offered prayers to Allah for the speedy success of what has come to be known as Operation Grinch.

 

 

 

How Elves Came To Be Born

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We’re Talking Icelandic Elves Here

We’re Talking Icelandic Elves Here

If your idea of elves comes straight out of Tolkien, you might not want to read any further. In Iceland, elves are not quite the smooth white-skinned Liv Taylor, Cate Blanchett, and Orlando Bloom types. Icelandic elves are much more grotty. The following was submitted by my favorite contributor to The Iceland Review, Jóhannes Benediktsson and is a direct quote from his November 14 posting:

There are few theories about where elves come from, according to the Icelandic folktales.

The one most commonly cited, describes God’s journey to Paradise. He visits Adam and Eve, who salute him and show him how they live. They introduce him to the kids, but leave out the dirty ones. God knows about this and states, that what is to be hidden from him, shall also be hidden from everyone else. The unclean children then go on living in hills and stones, and their descendants are what we call elves.

There are more stories about elves and their origin, all referring to some Bible events in one way or another. My favorite is a bit strange. It includes Adam and Eve, like the one mentioned above, but takes another approach. It describes their relationship problem.

I have re-written this story as a two-hander play. I call it Trouble in Paradise and have very high hopes that it will one day reach Broadway.

TIME: Close to midnight.
PLACE: Paradise.
MUSIC: Barry White.

The scene starts with Eve entering the room. Adam is lying on a bed of roses, running his index finger suggestively over Eve’s side of the bed.

ADAM: Hello, cupcakes! How about getting naked?

EVE: You mean lose the fig leaf?

ADAM: Yeah!

EVE: Knock it off, you idiot! I’m not in the mood.

ADAM: Oh, come on! You never are!

Eve starts to get into the bed and goes to sleep, leaving Adam heartbroken once again.  He walks away from her and talks to the audience.

ADAM: This is my life. God has sentenced me to live with a frigid woman for all eternity and calls it Paradise. That’s rubbish! I’m a passionate man, who needs a flame in his life – a fire!  Why didn’t he create someone like that for me? 

He looks at Eve, sights and then looks back to the audience.

ADAM: I guess I’ll have to do with some solo-action once again. Enjoy your popcorn.

Curtains fall.

[Part 2]

TIME: Nine months later.
PLACE: Paradise.
MUSIC: Not Barry White.

Eve walks back and forth on the stage. She is furious. This morning, a bunch of babies appeared out of nowhere on their doorsteps.  They all look like little versions of Adam.

EVE: Who is she?!

ADAM: Who?

EVE: That bimbo you’ve been cheating with!

ADAM: I promise. You are literally the only woman in my life.

EVE: I don’t believe you. How do you explain the children?

ADAM: A miracle of God?

Eve starts throwing apples at Adam, who runs in a silly manner around the stage.  A thundering voice comes from above, overwhelming both of them.  It’s God.

GOD: Stop this nonsense, both of you.  I’ll explain what happened.  Do you remember, Adam, nine months ago when you did that… guy thing?

ADAM:  Erm… are you talking about the …

GOD: Yes, yes!

EVE: What guy thing?

GOD (ignoring Eve): Well… some of that got into a hole in the soil. And that soil somehow got pregnant and… well… these are your children. Their descendants will be known as elves.

ADAM: What!

Eve starts shouting and the throwing of apples once again and Adam seeks a shelter behind a tree. Avoiding the missiles, Adam turns his head humbly to the sky with one final question.

ADAM: God. Can you tell me one thing?

GOD: Sure.

ADAM: Why did you make her like that?

GOD: It amuses me.

ADAM: I thought so.

Curtains fall again. The show’s over.

By the way, Gin unlike Tolkien, Icelandic elves can do nasty things. Perhaps I’ll tell you about some of them one of these days.

Text: Jabberwocky Spell-Checked

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

`Twas billing, and the smithy toes
Did gyre and gamble in the wage:
All missy were the brogues,
And the mime rats outrage.

“Beware the Jabber Wick, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujube bird, and shun
The furious Bender Snatch!”

He took his viral sword in hand:
Long time the Manxwomen foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tutu tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in offish thought he stood,
The Jabber Wick, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffing through the tulle wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The viral blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabber Wick?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O crablouse day! Callow! Allay!’
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas billing, and the smithy toes
Did gyre and gamble in the wage;
All missy were the brogues
And the mime rats outrage.

—Futility Closet

Subatomic Physics Can Be Fun

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What Looks Confusing Here ... Is Actually VERY Confusing

What Looks Confusing Here … Is Actually VERY Confusing

The trick with subatomic particles is not to photograph them without their permission—and preferably get them to sign a release beforehand. We are led to believe that the history of elementary particle physics has followed a very different course from that of cosmetology. Progress, when it came, was only when the following particles were identified:

  • Kleptons (K€), when an electron “steals” another electron and “stashes” it somewhere
  • Futons (Fu), which are electrons which have been identified while in “sleep” mode
  • Quacks (Q§), which occur when an electron “ducks” an attempt by a wannabe klepton to “steal” it

When an electron meets another electron “coming through the rye,” the result are three quantities, or quantons, called, respectively Q¹, Q², and Q®. The solution found in the 1980s was a new quantum field theory of the demented nuclear forces. This pattern was initially patterned after quantum electrodynamics, but later incorporated quantum electrodynamics by the exchange of photons, gifts, Christmas cards, HIV, and identities. The demented nuclear force in this “electrolux” theory is transmitted by the exchange of Q¹, Q², and Q® quantons in collision with a late-model Porsche Carrera.

Speculations of this sort run into an obvious difficulty: photons do not attend Mass, while any new particles such as Q¹, Q², and Q® would have to be very sexy, or they would have been discovered (and ogled) decades earlier—the sexier the particle, the more intense the energy needed to penetrate it in a particle decelerator, and the cheaper and more tawdry the decelerator.

There was also the stubborn problem of infinities. The solution lay in an idea known as broken field running, which had been developed and successfully applied by the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s.

In the late 1970s, the right theory was discovered. Like the successful electrolux theory, it turned out to resemble quantum electrodynamics, only now with a quantity called “wackiness” taking the place of electrical charge. In this theory, known as Krazy Kromodynamics, the demented forces between kleptons are produced by the exchange of civilities of eight kinds of quasi-particles known as wackons, comprising of blue, red, pink, gray, orange, green, purple, and yellow futons emitting loud quacks.

This is as far as I got in reading Steven Weinberg’s “Physics: What We Do and Don’t Know” in the November 7, 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books. As you can see, it’s all starting to come together, and frankly, I’m scared.

 

Can It Ever Get This Bad Here?

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Mariano Melgarejo, Dictator of Brazil 1864-1871

Mariano Melgarejo, Dictator of Bolivia 1864-1871

I have just finished re-reading Eric Lawlor’s In Bolivia. In the process, I found a political leader who was probably the most incompetent, yet tyrannical ever to rule outside of North Korea. I am referring to General Mariano Melgarejo (1829-1871), the 18th President of Bolivia. Following are a few anecdotes about his rule—some of which may be apocryphal—but all with enough truth in them to be believable.

At a diplomatic function in 1867, the British ambassador refused to drink a glass of chicha, a cloudy but potent drink made of fermented maize. This incensed Melgarejo so much that he made him drink a whole bowl of liquid chocolate and then had him mounted ass-backwards and naked on a donkey and paraded three times around the Plaza Murillo, afterwards ordering him back to London. When the ambassador explained to Queen Victoria how he was treated, Her Majesty promptly ordered the British fleet to shell La Paz, the capital. Fortunately, someone in the Admiralty had the good sense to remind Her Majesty that Bolivia was a landlocked country, and that his ships’ projectiles could not penetrate that far. Whereupon, good Queen Vicky asked for a map of South America and drew a big letter “X” over it, declaring, “Bolivia does not exist.” In fact, diplomatic relations were not restored until 1910.

During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Melgarejo wished to come out on the side of Napoleon III and the Second Empire. Unfortunately, he had no idea where France was located, so he sent his army marching eastward. When some brave soul on his general staff commented that the army would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean, the generalissimo shot back, “Don’t be stupid! We’ll take a short cut through the brush!”

In another version of this story, which sounds equally apocryphal, the Bolivian army sent to relieve France ran into some rainy weather. As Lawlor tells it, “Melgarejo, jealous of his comfort, ordered his soldiers back to their barracks.” The rest is history: The Germans overran France and sent Napoleon III packing.

Lawlor continues:

Another told of Melgarejo returning to La Paz after touring the provinces to discover that a former president, Manuel Isidoro Belzú, had deposed him. Anticipating trouble, Belzú had filled Plaza Murillo with thousands of his followers. But Melgarejo was not cowed so easily. Drawing his pistol, he strode into the presidential palace and shot the interloper dead.

The gun still smoking in his hand, Melgarejo then addressed the mob. “Belzú is no more,” he said. “Who rules Bolivia now?” The crowd pondered the question but a moment. “Viva Melgarejo!,” it called back. “Viva la patria!”

From the comfort of our couches, we can laugh at Bolivia; but remember it could get that bad over here. If some miserably ignorant Tea Partier ever got to be president, we would have to look away from Kim Kardashian’s ass for a second to consider how far we have sunk.

A Physicist Disproves the Existence of Vampires

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Bela Lugosi as Dracula

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

It was bound to happen. According to University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou, there is a simple mathematical argument against the existence of vampires. I saw it on Livescience.Com. (If you follow this link, click on slide #5 for the reference.)

According to Efthimiou, there were 536,870,911 human beings on January 1, 1600. Let us assume that the very first vampire came into existence on that day and bit one person a month so that he could sustain himself with his victim’s blood and change his victim into another vampire. By February 1, 1600, there would be two vampires; by March 1, four vampires; by April 1, eight vampires. If vampirism spread at that rate, it would take only two and a half years for the entire population of the earth to be converted into undead bloodsucking beasts. If that happened, there would be no one left to feed on.

Even if you played with the equation a bit and allowed vampires to feed less often, the constant doubling of the vampire population would have consumed the entire non-vampire population rapidly.

In the end, the proof resembles the story of the ancient king and the grains of wheat on the chessboard. If you’re interested in pursuing that tale, here is a charming re-telling of it on a Canadian website.

So when you go to bed tonight, you needn’t festoon all the entryways with wreaths of garlic. Instead, just eat the garlic. It’s good for you!

And Now the Lawsuits!

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It Was Bound to Happen!

It Was Bound to Happen!

There have been some new developments since the quasi-filibuster of Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate, which ended up proving nothing more than the man has no excretory functions:

  • White Castle has decided to declare a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. “I had no idea,” said CEO E. W. Ingram III, “that we were so downmarket.”
  • The Moon has decided to seek a more appreciative planet as a satellite. It is now somewhere between Venus and Mercury.
  • The two or three Democrats who spent the night listening to the Cruz-o-Matic Rant were dismayed to have no access to duct tape.
  • Ashton Kutcher hanged himself from a Baltimore lamp post with an extension cord,
  • Ted Cruz is now the answer to twelve questions in the latest edition of Trivial Pursuit, all of which include the word “moronic” in them.
  • The Estate of Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) is suing Cruz for misappropriating Green Eggs and Ham.
  • The World Wrestling Federation has released a white paper explaining that their matches are less rigged than Tea Party candidate elections.

If you don’t understand all the above references, you might want to see this slideshow.