Double jeopardy
One approach to solving a tough problem is to tackle the most extreme version of it you can imagine. Find a solution to that, and the simpler variations become easy. Jane Ridley assesses a tough legal problem in an with an extremely long headline: āIdentical college twins were accused of cheating in an exam by signaling. They won $1.5 million in damages after a jury decided they hadnāt cheated because their minds were connectedā.
This kind of twins paradox becomes more consequential ā and more extreme ā if we up the level of the allegation. Letās make it murder. And conjoined twins. That exact combination got six pages of analysis in the Alternative Law Journal in 2017. In it, Colleen Davis at Griffith University in Australia navigated the complexities in a paper entitled .
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āIf one twin has committed a murder,ā Davis asks, āhow can the guilty twin be punished without, at the same time, the innocent twin being unjustly punished as well?ā The obvious methods, including āseparate the twins and then execute or incarcerate the guilty oneā, have drawbacks, to say the least. Davis concludes that the problem brings āchallenges that the law is ill equipped to deal withā.
Out of the woodwork
London-based reader Neha Obhrai writes in: āDuring the renovation of our flat in Marylebone we found a sealed cupboard, and on opening it up to secure some utility storage found some very old The Ā鶹“«Ć½ ³¦²¹³Ł²¹±ō“Ē²µ³Ü±š²õ.ā
Obhrai supplied photos that show the now-unsealed wooden cupboard and some of the magazines that, like pharaohs entombed in the Egyptian pyramids for a static journey towards forever, had lain for a long time concealed within. This includes a copy of the inaugural, 22 November 1956 issue (pictured below).
Digging into our own archives, Feedback has found this contains an article showing off the hopeful heights attained by astronomers. Under the headline āOUR NEIGHBOUR MARSā, Professor Zdenek Kopal at the University of Manchester, UK, asserts that āthree-quarters of its surface is a dusty Sahara. But on the remainder are signs of vegetation ā and even animals may long ago have existed thereā.
Elsewhere, a letter signed āT. T. G.ā pleads: āHere is the dilemma: on the one hand we must, to save this country from ruin, press strenuously for more applied science; on the other hand we must restrain the engineers from driving us and our children mad.ā
Another, from an āE. St. John-Smithersā, vents about scientists: āTheir continual claims to be heard on general matters, to receive ever-increasing support from public funds, to have privileges at work denied to lesser mortals, are beginning to annoy the non-scientistā¦ What we need is a forum to expose this bogus, not one that encourages it.ā
The 19 June 1958 magazine, also found by Obhrai, has an by Dr. Norman E. Hickin, Technical Director of Woodworm & Dry Rot Control, Ltd. One passage now reads like a challenge that maybe inspired somebody to experimentally squirrel those magazines in that woodwork:
āThere are certain well-known situations where Furniture beetle attacks originate, and these are all places where one would expect a little higher humidity than elsewhere in the house. The cupboard under the stairs and certain parts of the roof-void are examples of thisā¦ Woodworm eradication, however, is a job which a householder can carry out for himself if he conscientiously obeys some simple rules.ā
Decomposed alumni
Feedbackās Ambiguously Titled Research Study of the Month (submissions for which are welcome) sets a standard, or a model, that higher education institutions can use as they strive to achieve total quality management and business excellence. The study is called . Total Quality Management & Business Excellence published it in 2016.
The decomposed alumni study cites a paper in New Directions for Institutional Research. Sensing the possible stink raised by a decomposed alumni study, one could detect morbid ambiguity in its title: .
Contemplation of the alumni outcomes study almost inevitably leads to a discussion of dead reckoning. This concerns an entirely different body of knowledge, exemplified by a study called .
But that isnāt the end of this journey backwards into the murk of ambiguity. The personal positioning study mentions, maybe ominously, a 2002 paper entitled: . Where things lead, what steps one should or should not take, indeed whether one should even leave the house of a morningā¦ these are all questions that, studies show, arenāt easily solved.
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