Havana Rollers

If you know some Spanish, it turns out that the sentence "The cat adores fish" can be parsed in two ways. I learnt today that catador means 'cigar factory' and also, according to this Wikipedia entry, a person that

"... sits in the front of the torcedores (cigar rollers) and reads from a daily newspaper or a book so that they do not get bored by the monotonous work."

Things like this and the Buena Vista Social Club make Cuba sound rather fun. The warm weather probably helps.

Two wrongs make a right

Talking of adders, I have always enjoyed sums like this one

+ WRONG

    WRONG

     RIGHT

     =====

where you have to substitute distinct digits for the letters so that the arithmetic is correct. As in this case, the digits are usually specified to be non-zero.

I have been trying to devise some puzzles involving either the capital Greek letter, or the word, 'sigma'. In the spirit of the above sum, I need solutions for this multiplication:

HELP x ME = SIGMA.

I have found one but suspect there are more -- all suggestions gratefully received.

Junctural Metanalysis

In an earlier post I expressed wonder at the human brain's ability to parse a stream of spoken sounds and hear them as a sequence of recognised words that convey meaning. Sometimes, it seems, the process fails. For instance, there are a number of modern English words that arise from misplacing the space between the indefinite article 'an' and a noun with an initial vowel. Take the word newt, for example. The noun was once ewt, from the Old English eft, but 'an ewt' became 'a newt'. Sometimes it works the other way round. For instance, 'an adder' was once 'a nadder' from the Old English word naedre for a snake. In everyday parlance, his process is called rebracketing, false splitting or misdivision, rather than the technical name of the title.

Many nice examples can be found in this Wikipedia rebracketing article, including the derivation of the expression apple pie order from a mishearing of the French nappes-pliées, meaning "neatly folden linen". (I wonder if you can mis(s)hear sheep.)

C'est bien!

On a recent visit to France, we bought a packet of BNs, or Biscuiterie Nantais biscuits, consisting of two layers of crust sandwiching various flavoured fillings, a little like custard creams with smiley faces. They have not been sold in the UK since 2000, when United Biscuits sold the brand back to Lefèvre-Utile. There is even a "Bring back BNs!" Facebook page, with 659,000 followers.

My family informed me the name is intended to suggest the affirming French word "bien", but I prefer to think they were designed for the French mathematician, Jaques Tits, who devised the powerful concept of a (B,N) - pair for studying linear algebraic groups. Tits, Belgian by birth, was obliged to change his nationality in order to teach in the Collège de France.

A (B,N)-pair?

The Matadors Fish ...

... and the cat adores fish. The brain has an impressive space-bar function for parsing an audio stream.

(Solution to cryptic clue in previous entry: mange tout)

Mind the Gaps

In the previous blog entry, the position of the spaces dramatically affects the meaning of a string of letters. It reminds me of the following cryptic crossword clue:

Vegetable for a dismissive feminist ? (5, 4)

(See next entry for solution.)

Lock up your Daughters

URL spotted on the back of a VW camper van in the Lake District this week:

http://www.therapistcumbria.co.uk

Sundowners

"When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain.”   from The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto

Reading a review of the recently-reprinted book quoted above brought back happy memories of my decadent past: ruminating as the daylight faded on a Ugandan verandah, clinking the ice in my gin and tonic; or rushing through the closing items of the Governing Body agenda so as not to miss the College’s monthly largesse of spirits (rather than sherry) before High Table. Halcyon days!

My eldest son is spending his long vacation studying chimpanzees in the Semliki forest in Western Uganda, in the shadow of the Mountains of the Moon. I must encourage him to stock up with gin on his next visit to Fort Portal so that he too can look back with the same pleasure on magical Martini moments at the end of a tropical day. Duncan, take note:

"In short, the author of "The Hour" is a purist. Martinis must always be prepared just before serving, and any leftover in a pitcher should be thrown out once the first round has been poured. A smidgen of lemon rind is acceptable but not essential. The recommended proportion of gin to vermouth should be 3.7 to 1, though 4 to 1 may be allowed in the case of those who have trouble with fractions.
Like many right-thinking people, I myself incline toward W.H. Auden's view that the vermouth bottle should simply be waved over the tumbler of Tanqueray. But then -- horrors! -- I do sip the gin on the rocks: Being of a meditative character, I like to study the ice cubes while slowly jiggling the glass."   Michael Dirda, reviewer

Regular Read

So many good books to read, so little time to read them; On the Origin of Species for instance.

One answer is the excellent free service offered by the Daily Lit, bringing you a 5-minute literary shot in the arm to go with your morning coffee or afternoon tea. Receive your quotidian quota delivered by email or RSS to your preferred device, in shorter or longer chunks, a.m. or p.m. according to taste. Put it on hold at super-busy times, or order instant next instalments at cliff-hanger moments. My Daily Lit books so far this year: The Call of the Wild, The Woman in White and currently Charles Darwin's world-changing work.

Too Many Kangaroos in the Top Paddock

“Take the case of a carnivorous quadruped, of which the number that can be supported in any country has long ago arrived at its full average.”

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapter 4

Was Darwin right? Why, when Australia is widely populated with large docile herbivores, is the dingo its best attempt at a meat-eater; and then it is as much a scavenger as a carnivore. How come evolution didn’t move into the obvious ecological niche before man arrived? What is so special about Australia habitats that when, for instance, the rabbit was introduced, it ran out of control for want of a decent predator?

Thought experiment: Try to imagine what would transpire if a viable population of lions (or other large cat) were introduced into the outback.

iPad Limitations

Geogebra is one of my favourite programs, a lean and powerful tool for displaying and manipulating mathematical objects defined in geometric, algebraic or spreadsheet form. It can be installed as a very small file on your hard drive or run as a Java applet in your browser.

As long as Apple restrict apps to those written in C, C++, and objective-C, we'll never see Geogebra on the iPad. That makes me sad.

Top Turnout

I live in the Warwick and Leamington constituency and yesterday was Polling Day 2010. It is one of the marginals that turned from red to blue. Remarkably our voter turnout of 84.49% was the highest in the country. I wonder why.

The second highest was the abutting constituency of Kenilworth and Southam with 81.2%. That is a safe conservative seat with a 12,000 plus majority -- even more remarkable.