Georgian Sexual Affairs

One very striking indicator of the way the 18th-century sexual revolution petered out was embodied in the Royal Family. It used to be said that George III had 58 grandchildren, only one of whom was legitimate.

Willem IV of the United Kingdom

This turns out to be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is nonetheless true that the sexual antics of Queen Victoria’s dissolute uncles — the Duke of Clarence (later William IV) with his ten illegitimate children by the actress Mrs Jordan, the innumerable mistresses of the Prince Regent and so on — do make our Prince Harry’s occasional indiscretions in nightclubs seem pretty tame.

Prince Edward, Victoria’s father, lived with his mistress, Madame St Laurent, for 27 years until the only heir to the English throne — Princess Charlotte — died in 1817. He duly did his duty, chucked his mistress and married a German princess in order to produce the future Queen Victoria.

His brother, the Duke of Clarence, was trying the same in a race to produce an heir. He dumped Mrs Jordan and had a baby by the future Queen Adelaide — sadly, they lost the child.

The Victorian era, noted for its middle-class values of homely monogamous prudery, introduced quite a different tradition at court.

Schools of Ethics Compared

Deontological ethics
Analyses the actual action.

• Goal: Morality is a question of adhering to a set of rules.
• How it works: Judge which norm (moral rule) is the most important in which particular situation.
• Pitfall: “Befehl ist Befehl” (an order is an order).

Teleological ethics (Consequentialism)
Analyses the consequences of the action.

• Goal: Morality is a question of realising ideals.
• How it works: Judge what behaviour contributes most to realising the requested ideal.
• Pitfall: “The ends justify the means.”

Virtue ethics
Analyses the intention of the action (behaviour) in question.

• Goal: Morality is question of wanting to be a good (virtuous) human being.
• How it works: Look in the mirror and decide who you want to be.
• Pitfall: “I meant no harm.”

Non-monogamy

For centuries, the Judeo-Christian moral code has defined the official relationship standard in western-society – the monogamous relationship:

• monogamy, an exclusive relationship with one partner.

There are quite a number of variations on the ‘standard’ monogamous relationship. The blanket term is non-monogamy. This phenomenon is also defined as polyamory, in which participants have not one but multiple romantic and/or sexual partners. Forms of non-monogamy include:

• infidelity, in which a person has a sexual ‘affair’ outside of an otherwise monogamous relationship;
• casual relationship, an emotional relationship between two unmarried people who may also have a sexual relationship;
• open marriage, in which one or both members of a committed couple may become sexually active with other partners;
• swinging, several open relationships which are commonly conducted as an organized social activity;
• ménage à trois, a sexual (or sometimes domestic) arrangement involving three people of either sex;
• orgy (also known as, a sexual relationship involving more than two sexual participants at the same time;
• polyfidelity, in which participants have multiple partners but restrict sexual activity to within a certain group;
• polygynandry (also known as a group marriage), in which several people form a single family unit, with all considered to be married to one another;
• polygamy, in which one person in a relationship has married multiple partners;
• polyandry, in which women have multiple husbands;
• polygyny, in which men have multiple wives;
• plural marriage, a form of polygyny associated with the Latter Day Saint movement in the 19th-century and with present-day splinter groups from that faith.

Fianchetto

In chess, the fianchetto, ‘little flank’ in Italian, is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward.

The fianchetto is a staple of many hypermodern openings, whose philosophy is to delay direct occupation of the centre with the plan of undermining and destroying the opponent’s central outpost.

One of the major benefits of the fianchetto is that it often allows the fianchettoed bishop to become more active. Because the bishop is placed on a long diagonal, it controls a lot of squares and can become a powerful offensive weapon.

However, a fianchettoed position also presents some opportunities for the opposing player: if the fianchettoed bishop can be exchanged, the squares the bishop was formerly protecting will become weak and can form the basis of an attack. Therefore, exchanging the fianchettoed bishop should not be done lightly, especially if the enemy bishop of the same colour is still on the board.

‘Strictly speaking, fianchetto is a noun – a diminutive of an Italian word meaning wing or flank – but the English have long misused it as a verb. The true pedant, however, will always refer to a ‘bishop in fianchetto’, and never a ‘fianchettoed bishop’.’

- Hartston. B. 1997. Better Chess London, United Kingdom: Hodder Headline (2004) p. 26

Linguistic Diversity

According to the Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall: ‘Languages are very unevenly distributed among the countries of the world.’ He lists the world’s countries with the largest number of languages:

1. Papua New Guinea [823]
2. Indonesia [726]
3. Nigeria [505]
4. India [387]
5. Mexico [288]
6. Cameroon [279]
7. Australia [235]
8. DR Congo [218]
9. China [201]
10. Brazil [192]
11. United States [176]
12. Philippines [169]

It’s curious how the linguistically most diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea – because it’s also the place with the biggest biodiversity anywhere, one of the last places in the world where new species get discovered regularly. It leads one to wonder whether there could there be a single explanation for both phenomena?

15/v mmxiii

The biblical statement ‘all flesh is grass’ (Isaiah 40:6) and (I Peter 1:24) is almost literally true. Grass is the staple diet of nearly all human beings. Wheat, rice, barley, millet and corn are all grasses, and cattle, sheep and goats (our main sources of meat) survive entirely on grass.

Federico García Lorca in 1914

Landslides carrying millions of tons of rubble can reach speeds of 100 mph, but leave the grass on the hill beneath them completely untouched. This is because air, trapped and compressed, acts as a cushion allowing the moving debris to travel a few inches above the ground.

An agelast is someone who never laughs. The word derives from Crassus Agelastus (the grandfather of the legendarily rich Crassus) who was said to have laughed only once in his life – on seeing an ass eating thistles.

From 1931 to 1941, all graduating candidates of the Japanese Naval Academy were asked the question ‘How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour?’

The career of Federico Garcia Lorca, the greatest Spanish writer of the 20th century, lasted just 19 years. He was killed during mass executions in Andalusia in the Spanish Civil War and is buried in an unmarked grave.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

Incongruity Theory

‘The incongruity theory was described rather badly by Immanuel Kant in 1790 when he said that laughter ‘is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of strained expectation into nothing’. His grouchy compatriot Schopenhauer later elaborated on this, defining humour as ‘the incongruity between a concept and the real object to which it was to relate’. And what hilarious gag did Arthur Schopenhauer put forward to support his theory? ‘… for example, the amusing look of the angle formed by the meeting of the tangent and the curve of the circle’. Yes, Frankfurt positively rocked with laughter in the 1840s – the golden age of German comedy.

“Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
- George Burns

The set-up of a joke creates a scenario with an assumed conclusion; the punchline provides quite a different conclusion, which subverts your previously held assumptions about the joke scenario. [...] For example:

How do you make a dog drink?
Put him in a blender.

[...] It’s not just the words that make the joke work. The best jokes use language with skill and economy to conjure up mental pictures which are hilarious by virtue of their incongruity, shock value, or just sheer silliness. Here’s a lovely one:

Two monkeys are having a bath. One of them turns to the other and says, ‘Oo oo ah ah!’ The other replies, ‘Well, put the cold tap on, then.’

It’s clear that even the shortest one-liner can be prodded and poked and analysed until an inch of its life [...].’

- Carr J., Greeves L. 2006. The Naked Jape – Uncovering The Hidden World Of Jokes London, Great Britain: Penguin Books (2007) p. 92-93

Zyklon B‏

After June 1941, the Nazi Einsatzgruppen experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children.

Entrance gate and main track to Auschwitz Birkenau

Gassing also proved to be less costly. Einsatzgruppen gassed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and mentally ill people.

In 1941, the SS concluded that the deportation of Jews to extermination camps was the most efficient way of achieving the Final Solution. That same year, the Nazis opened the Chelmno camp in Poland. Jews from the Lodz area of Poland and Roma were killed there in mobile gas vans.

In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers began at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Poland. The victims were unloaded from cattle cars, they were told that they had to be disinfected in showers. The victims were ordered to enter the showers with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chambers. The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated.

The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B by gassing some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941.

Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz.

At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 people were gassed each day at Auschwitz – a figure which equals one death every 15 seconds. To put that in perspective: about four people would have died in the time you read this article.

Advanced Mistakes (i)

Source: Swan. M. 2005. Practical English Usage Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press (2011).

Practical English Usage lists over a hundred common mistakes in the English language. Even advanced students of English make mistakes. Swan (2005) has listed a number of them.

“I’ll ask you in case I need help.” = I’ll ask you if I need help.
(271.3) In case and if are normally used in quite different ways. ‘Do A in case B happens’ means ‘Do A (first) because B might happen later’. ‘Do A if B happens’ means ‘Do A if B has already happened’.

“I object to tell them my age.” = I object to telling them my age.
(298.2) To is actually two different words. It can be an infinitive marker, used to show that the next word is an infinitive (e.g. to swim, to laugh). It can also be a preposition, followed for example by a noun (e.g. She’s gone to the park, I look forward to Christmas). (298.1) When we put a verb after preposition, we normally use an -ing form (‘gerund’), not an infinitive.

“I like the 60s music.” = I like the music of the 60s. / … 60s music.
(69.3) Some expressions are ‘half-general’- in the middle between general and particular.

“ten thousand, a hundred and six.” = ten thousand, one hundred and six.
(389.11) We can say an eighth or one eighth, a hundred or one hundred, a thousand or one thousand, a million or one million, etc. One is more formal. A can only be used at the beginning of a number.

“‘Who’s that?’ – ‘He’s John.’” = ‘Who’s that?’ – ‘It’s John.’
(428.9) We use it for a person when we are identifying him or her.

“I don’t like to be shouted.” = I don’t like to be shouted at.
(416.1) The objects of prepositional verbs can become subjects in passive structures. We have looked at the plan carefully. – The plan has been carefully looked at. Note the word order. The preposition cannot be dropped.

“It’s ages since she’s arrived.” = It’s ages since she arrived.
(522.2) In British English, present and past tenses are common in the structure It is / was … since …

“The police is looking for him.” = The police are looking for him.
(524.7) Cattle is a plural word used to talk collectively about bulls, cows and calves; it has no singular, and cannot be used for counting individual animals. Police, staff and crew are generally used in the same way.