I attempted to post something this afternoon on this subject but it went, as they say, a little pear-shaped. A little reflection has led me to believe that it was unlikely to be of any interest to anyone other than myself, though, frankly, this is not a consideration that weighs heavily with me most of the time. If you have any curiosity at all about it I suggest you look at C.E.W. Bean’s ‘Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918’ Vol. IV. The Australian Imperial Force in France 1917. (11th ed. 1941), Chapter XXI The Plan Breaks Down – Passchendaele 1 – Oct 9th.
There are many footnotes in this chapter (and of course all the other chapters). Almost any one will do.
This from Stupefying New Zealand Trivia No 2 (Collins 1981):
The Queen Mother first saw a tea trolley at Wairakei, New Zealand. King George was very taken with it, pushing it backwards and forwards. It was pointed out to him that the invention was an especially practical one for NZ conditions, as most of our houses were bungalows with kitchen and dining and sitting rooms on one level, and there was little household help used. Royal tour observers believed that the pair were more impressed by tea trolleys than by any of the official events or sightseeing on the tour.
( That was in 1927 when the couple were the Duke and Duchess of York. They travelled on HMS Renown.)
HMS Renown
I haven’t. I don’t own a gun. I think it unlikely that I will. I’m not really friends with anyone who owns a gun. Very few people in NZ own a gun and those that do are best avoided. There’s not really much else to say on the point.
I really wanted to say something about C.E.M. Joad. I was disappointed to see that he isn’t included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for his “It all depends what you mean by…” Sometimes I wonder if I expect a bit too much. However, there is always the serendipitous element when you look in the ODQ which in some way compensated for the omission of Mr (or Professor) Joad. I came across a quote by Horace, a little line in Latin that I recognised (from yet another serendipitous event), and which was borrowed by Cole Porter and used in Kiss Me Kate. After having scanned and photocopied all the music of Kiss Me Kate for the school production in a volume that left me hovering on the brink of madness I had seen the song title “Always True to You in My Fashion” many times. What I didn’t know then was that Porter had borrowed it from Horace. But I do now.
I tweeted a quote today from Gustave Flaubert about poetry and geometry. Fond as I am of (good) poetry I realise that I understand geometry much better. Not that it matters much, I suppose.
Not long after that I came across Srinivasa Ramanujan’s reply to G. H. Hardy’s comment on how dull the taxi cab number 1729 was. SR pointed out that it was the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways. [The two ways being 1 cubed plus 12 cubed, and 9 cubed plus 10 cubed]. I don’t know if he had that fact at his fingertips, but I’m pleased that he bothered to remark upon it.
Euclid
‘Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.’ G. H. Hardy.
A bull.
gryphonelle 