Public Information (Horror) Films

This is very nice and hopefully gets the message across to young kids (and maybe some adults):

   

Public information films were a feature of my childhood and there were hundreds of them. I'm sure most of you over 40 will remember the 'Charlie Says' films featuring Charlie the Cat (voiced by Kenny Everett):

   

Others were very dark, like this one voiced by Donald Pleasance:

   

That certainly got the message across. But were we all emotionaly scarred? No.

Some were more light-hearted, such as these featuring Joe and Petunia:

   

But mostly they were just scary. 

Enjoy!

   

Miscellaneous Meander #27

Musings on the Sycamore Gap tree (see blogpost here) and plant vandalism in general, the first parasol mushrooms, seas of rosehips and seeking out potential walking stick materials. 

Another dog walk on the Chiltern Hills with me and Harris the the pug.

    

Plus, the first colours of autumn, another corking hagstone find, sweet chestnuts on a young virgin tree and the first parasol mushrooms. 

Agatha Christie Mystery Solved!

Remember this puzzle from a few days ago? (see here)

It's a poster for a fake play that contains 12 hidden Agatha Christie book titles.

So ... did you get them all?

They were ...

Absent in the Spring (anagaram of Tessa Perth-Binning)

Giant's Bread (Anag. Brian Sadget) 

The Pale Horse (Anag. Lee Hophearst)

The A.B.C. Murders (Anag. Ruth McBreades)

Cards On The Table (Anag. Ancestral Hotbed)

Postern of Fate (Anag. Peter Soffanto)

Dumb Witness (Figure on right with no mouth - or other chap with no head!)

The Big Four (Figure on clock)

Hickory Dickory Dock (Mouse on top of clocvk)

Five Little Pigs (Er ... five little pigs at bottom of page)

The Man in the Brown Suit (Either of the two men)

Unfinished Portrait (Potentially either of the two men)

How many did you get?

Sloe Gin (Part 2)

In Part 1 of my guide to making Sloe Gin we found the sloes and bletted them. 

Now, a week later in Part 2, we get the gin going.

   

Lillian Mountweazel and the Ego Trap

I posted this image on Facebook yesterday. 

Of course, the joke here is that there are two hydrogen atoms in a molecule of water (H2O) and there's only one star in our solar system - the sun. However, the comment is deliberately couched in such a way that it resembles one of those many 'there are more stars in our galaxy than grains of sand on all the beaches of the world'-type factoids that constantly circulate as memes. And it catches a few people out because of that.

What's more interesting is that images like this are sometimes known as ego traps because there will be people who immediately feel the need to point out that this is either 'banal truth and not funny' or suggest that what the caption should say is 'glass, not molecule'. The name ego trap is possibly a little harsh but it stems from the idea that some people feel a compulsion to demonstrate that they are cleverer than those around them - even to complete strangers.

I just thought it was an amusing gag.

Traps of various kinds are also used in printed documents. Do you, for instance, know what a mountweazel is?

A mountweazel is a copyright trap; a deliberately false fact, name or word that the author inserts into a work so that they can track plagiarism. One of the most famous appeared in Fred L Worth’s Trivia Encyclopaedia in the late 1970s when he deliberately (and wrongly) stated that shabby TV detective Columbo’s first name was Philip. This ‘fact’ subsequently appeared in questions for the board game Trivial Pursuit in 1984 and Worth tried to sue the game’s creators. However, in this case, the courts ruled that it was acceptable for a game about trivia to source its facts from books of trivia as facts are common property and not owned by anyone. 

Incidentally, the name 'Mountweazel' was coined by The New Yorker writer Henry Alford in an article that mentioned a fictitious biographical entry intentionally placed as a copyright trap in the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia. The entry described Lillian Virginia Mountweazel as a fountain designer turned photographer, who died in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine. Allegedly, she is widely known for her photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris, and rural American mailboxes. According to the encyclopedia's editor, it is a tradition for encyclopedias to put a fake entry to trap competitors for plagiarism. The surname came to be associated with all such fictitious entries. The term nihilartikel, combining the Latin nihil ("nothing") and German Artikel ("article"), is also sometimes used. 

Oh, and as for Columbo's first name ...  it's Frank. Although it was never used in the TV movies, it is clearly seen on his police badge in a couple of episodes.

Cartographers also put false place names - known as phantom settlements, trap streets, paper towns, or cartographer's follies - on maps as copyright traps. In 1978, the fictional American towns of Beatosu and Goblu in Ohio were inserted into that year's official state of Michigan map as nods to the University of Michigan and its traditional rival, The Ohio State University. Mount Richard, a fictitious peak on the continental divide in the United States, appeared on county maps in the early 1970s. It was believed to be the work of a draftsman, Richard Ciacci. The nonexistence of the mountain was undiscovered for two years. The 2002 Geographers A-Z Map of Manchester also contains traps. For example, Dickinson Street in central Manchester is falsely named Philpott St. 

But the two most famous examples are Agloe and Argleton.

The fictional town of Agloe in New York state was invented by map makers, but eventually became identified as a real place by its county administration because a building, the Agloe General Store, was erected at its fictional location. The 'town' is featured in the novel Paper Towns by John Green and its film adaptation. 

Meanwhile, the fictitious English town of Argleton in Lancashire was investigated by Steve Punt in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Punt PI (You can listen to it here). It appeared on maps and even on Google Earth (though since removed). The programme concluded that the town's entry may well have originated as a copyright trap. There's a nice Guardian article on it here.

If there's a lesson to be learned here it's read once, check twice!

Agatha Christie Mystery!

Facebook reminded me of this today. Seven years ago, as part of the promotion for my first novel A Murder to Die For, I created this puzzle.

This fictitious poster contains the titles of 12 Agatha Christie books.

Can you find them all?

Answers on Wednesday.

Maybe ...

 

Witches' Brew

Welcome to October - the month of Halloween and Samhain and all things witchy.

And on that subject ...

I've seen a few social media posts during  the past day or so claiming that the iconography of the classic witch - pointy hat, association with cats and cauldrons etc. - comes from the history of brewing. Here's an example; it's a letter (I'm not sure what paper/magazine published it so it's already a poor source) from a Mr R S of Goffstown: 

So, let's pick this apart ...

It is true that women did a lot of the brewing in times past. With water quality being an issue (it's how cholera spread, for example), ales were a household staple for most families in England and parts of Europe. Often brewed as a 'small beer' with a low alcohol level, it was drunk by adults and children alike. For the working class, beer provided an important source of nutrients like carbohydrates and proteins. And fermentation into beer was a practical and inexpensive way to preserve grain from the harvests. 

As the Smithsonian Magazine says:

'Because the beverage was such a common part of the average person’s diet, fermenting was, for many women, one of their normal household tasks. Some enterprising women took this household skill to the marketplace and began selling beer. Widows or unmarried women used their fermentation prowess to earn some extra money, while married women partnered with their husbands to run their beer business.So if you travelled back in time to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance and went to a market in England, you’d probably see an oddly familiar sight: women wearing tall, pointy hats. In many instances, they’d be standing in front of big cauldrons. But these women were no witches; they were brewers.'

Up to this point things are fine. And yes, women did sometimes wear tall hats - perhaps fewer pointy hats than 'stovepipe' style (think Welsh national dress) if contemporary paintings are to be believed - but tall hats nonetheless.

And, yes, it's conceivable that the brew was made in a cauldron as this would have been the largest cooking pot in any domestic home. It's even possible that these 'alewives' had working cats to keep mice away from the grain. But it's a big jump from this to assuming that they were responsible for the traditional image of the witch.

Okay, so the arrival of the Reformation and fundamentalist Christianity did create stricter gender norms. So it might be (note: 'might') that male brewers saw an opportunity to eliminate the competition by denouncing female brewers as witches. 

It does seem unlikely though - after all, the men were engaged in exactly the same practices. And there's no documentary evidence to suupport this sugestion. The weight of real evidence is that witch hunts were focused on single, older women who practiced natural medicine and other crafts. As I noted in an earlier blogpost, the fundamentalist church preached that only God had power of life and death and chose who would live or die. Women who cured the sick with medicines rather than prayer were seen as subverting God's will.

The Smithsonian article also states that:

'However, many did believe that women shouldn’t be spending their time making beer. The process took time and dedication: hours to prepare the ale, sweep the floors clean and lift heavy bundles of rye and grain. If women couldn’t brew ale, they would have significantly more time at home to raise their children. In the 1500s some towns, such as Chester, England, actually made it illegal for most women to sell beer, worried that young alewives would grow up into old spinsters.'

Again, this might be true but where is the evidence that they were seen as witches? Nor does it take into account that up until the Victorian age there was pretty much no such things as childhood - children were put to work as soon as they were able. There are authenticated photos of child chimney sweeps aged just four years old. So Mum didn't have quite as much child-minding to do as you might expect. There was certainly no school run as most kids were uneducated. Even when schooling became the norm, parents would need them to work at busy times like the harvest - that's why we still, today, have a six week school holiday in late summer. And as for the 'time and dedication' comment ... have you ever made home-brewed beer? It's grain and water, sugar and yeast and maybe some hops. Most of the brewing time involves no human intervention at all. And they weren't making an award-winning craft beer here. It was rustic and amateur and, by modern standards, probably none too tasty either.

Correlation does not always equal causation as we all know. So when you do read stuff like Mr R S of Goffstown's letter, always remember to take it with a pinch of salt.