This week's E2MQ is about Razors and Laws

A well-known adage comes to us from William of Ockham, an early XIVth century English Franciscan friar and scholar.  Ockham's Razor* states, Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, “Plurality must never be posited without necessity."  Basically, you'll do well by sticking with simplicity.

Another popular adage is Murphy's Law, sometimes referred to as, "The fourth law of thermodynamics," which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."


We've pulled together a collection of 15 other adages, and you are challenged with connecting each with its author.  To make things more exciting, we're offering a couple of extra potential authors for these razors or laws.  But we've also put in a couple of easy ones so you won't get discouraged.  Also, hints will be provided on Twitter every day starting tomorrow.


See how many sources (list follows) you can correctly associate with each of these sayings:


1. War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.
2. Those who are most moral are furthest from the problem.
3.  Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
4.  Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered;    there is only error to be exposed.
5.  Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do.
6.  The quality of food in restaurants is in inverse proportion to the number of signed celebrity photographs on the walls.
7.  People become progressively less competent for jobs they once were well equipped to handle.
8.  History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely one they have exhausted all other alternatives.
9.  Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
10. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible that you haven’t understood the situation.
11. In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
12. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
13. Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.
14. If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it.
15. If you can explain what you’re doing in simple English, you are probably doing something wrong.

You will find the sources in this list:

A.  Saul Alinsky

B.  Paul Armer

C.  Les Aspin

D.  Robert Benchley

E.  Fred Bucy

F.  Carl von Clausewitz

G.  Charles Dickens

H.  Abba Eban

I.   Ralph Waldo Emerson

J.  Aldous Huxley

K.  Alfred Kahn

L.  Jean Kerr

M.  H.L. Mencken

N.  Bryan Miller

O.  Laurence Peter

P.  Theodore Roosevelt

Q.  Benjamin Spock
R.  Adlai Stevenson

See how many you can get.  First with most wins this week's prize!




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*  Footnotes on Razors

The archaic term "razor" comes to us from the translation from German of "Ockhams Messer" -- Ockham's Knife, because William of O encourages shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get at the heart of the matter.

The first electric razor was patented in 1929 by Col. Jacob Schick, a US Army officer who conceived of the product while bedridden, recovering from dysentery, and unable to move to a sink for his daily shave.  Schick introduced to the market just over 80 years ago, on March 18th 1931.

Speaking of close shaves, to avoid an investigation by a Joint Congressional Committee on Tax Evasion & Avoidance, Schick skipped out of the U.S. in 1935 and became a Canadian citizen.  Before he died in 1937 Schick had transferred most of his wealth to a series of holding companies in the Bahamas.

What's My Line? This week's E2MQ

We are forced to lower the bar for this week's E2MQ.
There has been a deluge of complaints that our questions are just too difficult.
In reply we quote last week's winner who suggests, "Early to bed. Early to rise. And you can out Google the other guys."


This week's E2MQ is offered in two parts with a total of six easy questions.

PART A

This woman...

...and this man...

...have a skill in common.
One could say they share a piece of working wisdom.

He was born in Arkansas in 1942 and died in 1999.

She was born in Germany in 1928 and is still alive.

Both are American citizens despite both being born outside the U.S.

(Okay, Arkansas's part of the Union again...) 

To my knowledge, the two have never met.

Part A questions are...

1. Who are these two people?  
2. What are their respective nicknames?  
3. What discipline do they both share?

PART B

These two gentlemen may have something in common.  

Questions of Part B are...

1. Who are they?
2. What do each of them do?  
3. What connects them?

The winner will be the first person to correctly answer all six questions.

As always one can respond by commenting below, click the button above, or send an email to e2mq@edisonet.org.

Good luck!

Paraprosdokians* and Contrafibularity**

* Despite popular belief, the Lincoln Tunnel is not named after Abraham Tunnel.

Material for last week’s E2MQ is thanks to a highly amusing book that comes to us from across the pond.  John Lloyd, producer of the British comedy shows Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, and Spitting Image, collaborated with John Mitchinson, who writes for the brilliantly-funny comedy panel show, QI (Quite Interesting).

Their UK bestseller, The Book of General Ignorance – Everything You Think You Know is Wrong, published in 2006, has been one of our favourite [sic] finds in recent years and has been the source of much amusing and heated discussion.

But on to the proper answers:

• What shape did medieval scholars believe the Earth to be?  Nope, the answer isn’t FLAT.  The idea of a flat earth first appeared in the 19^th Century and may have been influenced by Washington Irving’s Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828).  Probably as a result of Irving’s fabrication, school children have been taught that Columbus’s mission was to prove the world is round.  The flat-earth gauntlet was picked up by Englishmen S.B. Rowbotham  (Zetetic Astronomy) and Samuel Shenton (Flat Earth Society).  The latter died in 1971 but not before he claimed that the Apollo landings were a Hollywood hoax and photos of the round earth were fabricated.  For those who thought or answered, "Flat," please click here.

• In what year did World War II officially end?  The answer is 1990.  Hostilities ended when Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, but the Cold War created something of a mess.  A number of interim peace treaties were signed in 1950 and again in 1955.  However, no peace treaty was ever signed with the GDR (East Germany).  So it was Germany’s reunification, October 2, 1990, that marked the official end of WW II.  As long as I’ve got your attention, what was the longest war fought by the United States?

• Why are flamingos pink?  Not because they eat shrimp!  It’s because they eat a lot of blue-green algae, which, despite its name, can be red, yellow, orange, or violet.  By the way, did you know that flamingos are 10 million years old, they are monogamous, and they lay only one egg per year?  They also feed their young with a bright red “milk” produced from their throats.  Flamingos are only one of two birds that produce milk.  The other is...   Give a guess!

• What is the world's strongest wood?  Most everyone got this right.  Balsa is the strongest wood  when measured by stiffness, bendability, and compressibility.  Balsa wood is also mothproof.

• What is the normal state of glass?  Pretty much everyone correctly said that glass is a solid.  Somehow in the past there developed an assertion that glass was a cooled, but not yet crystallized, liquid.  Ain’t true!  Scientists categorize solids as either crystalline or amorphous.  Glass is the latter. 

• What metal is the best conductor?  Most everyone also correctly said that silver is the best conductor.   You know what else is really cool about silver?  Since the 5^th Century BC it has been successfully used to sterilize water!  When travelling, King Cyrus the Great always kept his personal water supply in silver containers and the Greeks and Romans found that food stored in silver spoiled less quickly.

• The air we breathe is mostly nitrogen (78%).  Can you explain why?  This was a tough question.  Scientists claim that the reason nitrogen is so much a part of our air comes as the result of volcanic eruptions during the earth’s formation.  Since nitrogen’s heavier that hydrogen and helium it stayed closer to the earth’s surface.  By the way, oxygen represents another 21% of our air, and there are other gases, but only one represents as much as 1%.   Do you know what it is?

• What African animal kills the most number of people each year?  Well, we should have clarified by saying, “Mammal,” but most everyone got it.  And those who didn’t give the orthodox answer, hippopotamus, answered equally correctly with mosquito.   Did you know that hippos were once thought to be related to pigs, but now are considered close relatives of whales?  Hippos are very irritable creatures who've been known to bite crocs in half and hold full-sized lions under water to drown them.  Humans mostly are victims when their boat is overturned or they are trampled by a startled hippo.  Nothing like these three beauties...

• What was Napoleon's most humiliating defeat?  This is our favorite, and some of you got it correctly.  Waterloo may have been, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, “The nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” and a crushing defeat for the French, but Boney’s most humiliating defeat came in July 1807.  As part of a treaty to be signed in the Prussian village of Tilsit (now part of Russia and known as Sovetsk), they decided to have a rabbit shoot to entertain the dignitaries.  Someone screwed up and released, instead of wild rabbits for the hunt, domesticated ones.  These furry creatures collectively saw a little man, and mistaking him for the gamekeeper who fed them, charged Napoleon en masse at 35 mph.  Despite the dissuading efforts of the other attendees,  the bunny horde drove the emperor off the field and back to his carriage which sped off. 

• What was King Tut's curse? This was NOT a trick question, but the answer is, “There was no such thing.”  The whole curse story was made up by the newspapers just after Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.  Seems the Cairo correspondent for the Daily Express started a story of an inscription, a pharaoh’s curse, which read, “They who enter this sacred tomb shall swiftly be visited by wings of death.”  There is no such inscription, and, in fact, no curse has been found in any  Egyptian tomb to date.  One interesting discovery was made in 2005 when the mummy-in-question was run through a CAT scan.  He was 5 feet 6 inches tall, skinny with a severe overbite.  And it looks like he died from an infected knee.

This concludes our official posting of last week's E2MQ answers.  But, what about the WINNER?  From the dark recesses of my past emerged a dark horse contestant.  He was my prep school roommate 45 years ago and remains a true friend today.  This week's winner, Mr. Frank E. Masland, IV, will be receiving a copy of  Lloyd and Mitchinson's General Ignorance because, despite his winning the contest, he scored only 80% on the quiz and needs further study.

________________________

** For those diligent few who have waded this far, we offer, as a recessional, a bit on wisdom from one of the shows written and produced by the above-referenced authors.

Welcome Vernal Equinox, whatever that means. The E2MQ

We've always called it, "The First Day of Spring," but did you know that's not a universal concept?  According to Wikipedia some places refer to the vernal equinox as, "Mid Spring."

Some East Asian cultures claim that spring begins on February 4th and ends on May 5th. Similarly, according to certain Celtic traditions, based solely on daylight and the strength of the noon sun, spring begins in early February (Ground Hog Day?) and continues until early May.

What a marvelous segue into this week's E2MQ, which is all about commonly-held misconceptions.

But before going to our quiz, we'd like to mention Snopes.com, an urban legends reference website launched in 1995.   These folks have collected a large store of rumors, popular myths, and stories of questionable integrity and investigate the validity of each.  For those unfamiliar with this treasure trove of debunking and authenticating, we heartily recommend it.  Obviously, a very healthy group of skeptics regularly use this resource because Snopes.com gets some 300,000 visitors every day!

Here are 5 of the more-intriguing items found on Snopes.com that have circulated in recent years:

• President Obama canceled May's National Day of Prayer in order to not offend anyone.
• Bacteria found in cut onions and potatoes are responsible for more food poisoning than from spoiled mayonnaise.
• There is to be a Congressional vote to grant Social Security benefits to illegal aliens, and a petition is being circulated to thwart this action.
• Asparagus has miraculous cancer-fighting properties.
• There is a risk that failing to press the "clear" button on self-service pumps can lead to additional charges on customers' credit or debit cards.

Four of these five are absolutely false.  One is somewhat true with reservations.  

You can guess or simply go to Snopes.com to discover which is which.

Over the years every one of us gathers a host of common knowledge "facts" supposedly supported by academic studies, scientific experiments, or sophisticated observation.  As we age, some of these become indelibly fused in our minds.  Do you harbor some totally fallacious knowledge?

Here's this week's E2MQ, a collection of 10 pieces of UFI* to amuse and annoy you on Monday morning:

1. What shape did medieval scholars believe the Earth to be?
2. In what year did World War II officially end?
3. Why are flamingos pink?
4. What is the world's strongest wood?
5. What is the normal state of glass?
6. What metal is the best conductor?
7. The air we breathe is mostly nitrogen (78%).  Can you explain why?
8. What African animal kills the most number of people each year?
9. What was Napoleon's most humiliating defeat?
10. What was King Tut's curse?

First person with 10 correct answers automatically wins.
If there is no clear winner by week's end, the individual offering the most correct answers is the winner.

As always you can respond in the blog's comment block below or send an email to E2MQ@edisonet.org.

Good luck!



* Useless Frigging Information

What is Edisonet?

EDISONET'S MISSION and DISTINCTIVE APPROACH

Encouraged by a group of friends in the fall of 2010, I began an effort that, ideally, will someday help improve the lives of countless individuals. The concept is Edisonet, a learning-focused endeavor whose mission is to gather Working Wisdom, efficiently organize it, and distribute it to a broad range of users.

Working Wisdom is the collection of insights gained from lifetimes of success and failure. It is what individuals understand now that, had they known it, could have made a difference earlier in their lives. Certainly, one can live without Working Wisdom, but our lives are greatly enriched by having it.

To implement this mission Edisonet plans to offer a variety of interactive multimedia venues. This valuable wisdom is captured not only in print, but through concise, 2 to 3 minute, videos that can be freely viewed, downloaded, and shared.

Distinguishing Edisonet is the opportunity for users to benefit from direct connection with those experienced individuals featured in the Working Wisdom video modules.

Users gain targeted guidance from an array of experienced Edisonet Navigators who have agreed to share their lifetime of success and failure and thereby, improve users' chances for success.

E2MQ Rules of Engagement

The Edisonet Monday Morning Quiz (“E2MQ”) provides challenging fun at the start of every week. Each Monday a new contest will tax your weekend-addled brains, offer some small entertainment, and reward those on whom the fates look favorably with a prize of some not-insignificant value.

But more importantly, each week we shall enlighten the minds of our readers with some obscure fact, or encourage them to consider a profoundly-new perspective or share some enigmatic tidbit of working wisdom.

As with all contests, a set of rules must be followed to ensure fair play:

Edisonet Monday Morning Quiz ("E2MQ") Rules

1. Contests will be posted every Monday BEFORE 1200 EST (1700 GMT).
2. Contests close at 0001 EST (0501) the following Friday
3. To qualify answers must be received AFTER 1200 EST (1700 GMT) each Monday and BEFORE 0001 EST (0501 GMT) the following Friday.
4. Thus, a level playing field is created for respondents from various European, UK and US time zones.
5. Each week's winner (and maybe runners-up) will receive:
A. Extrinsic rewards - Book/DVD/CD/T-shirt/etc.
B. Intrinsic rewards - Recognition of their superior knowledge/skill/wisdom/intellect/etc.
6. Check your answers before submitting because contestants get only one chance per quiz!
7. Determinations by the Edisonet judge is firm and final.

7. Responses can be via comment on the Edisonet blog (www.wisdomsparks.blogspot.com) or email to E2MQ@edisonet.org
8. Answers will be given and winners announced as a blog post every Friday before 1200 EST.
9. Winners will need to provide mailing addresses if they expect to get a prize.
Alternatively, they can send their chauffeur to collect it, as desired.
Overconfident respondents may provide shipping address together with their responses, but nothing's guaranteed.
10. Should the question prove too challenging, HINTS may be provided every Wednesday.
11. E2MQs should offer challenging fun and interesting information to everyone who participates. Readers may actually learn how a carburetor works!

All one has to do is add a comment to the blog post or send an email to us at E2MQ@edisonet.org (not case sensitive).

Breaking with Syrus

Years ago in my intemperate youth, I offered an injudicious comment to a WSJ reporter regarding my employer, a large money center bank. The term, "Stink Eye," hadn't yet been invented, but, following publication of said quote, a precursor of that look was leveled at me by most of the bank's senior management. Shortly thereafter, I received a one-line letter from a consultant pal of mine. It read, "I often regret my speech -- rarely my silence."



The consultant was quoting Publilius (sometimes Publius) Syrus (85 BC - 43 BC) who Wikipedia describes as a Syrian slave who gained both fame and his freedom through his wit. Not a bad deal! Possibly someone to emulate.



Over the succeeding years, despite my efforts to adhere to similar counsel suggesting, "A closed mouth gathers no feet," my success has been, at best, marginal. Sadly, this effort has been both physically and emotionally taxing and, I am sure, cause for some not-insignificant premature aging.



However, today I cast off the governor of silence by formally opening the Edisonet blog. I invite all Friends of Edisonet to continue graciously offering suggestions and advice and following our progress through this blog. By gathering and organizing your thoughts and suggestions, we will be better prepared to implement Edisonet's mission.



Sparks of wisdom come from a broad range of experience and reside in a distributed population. Our mission is extracting wisdom from those who don't realize they have it and exchanging it with those who could use it but don't know where to find it. This blog is our first step in that effort of gathering, organizing and distributing working wisdom.



For many Friends of Edisonet who are unfamiliar with blogs, our goal is to make you comfortable. Following the tenets of Edisonet, we want to gather and distribute your suggestions and wisdom regarding development of our vision. Not only can you follow our development, you can put in your two-cents and comment on other suggestions.

Won't you please join us in breaking with Syrus by actively sharing your wisdom and commenting on our posts?


And don't forget the E2MQ's! From now on the Edisonet Monday Morning Quiz will be posted on this blog site. This venue will provide opportunity for you to respond and make witty comments for which, like Publilius, you might gain both fame and freedom!

Welcome to the Edisonet blog!