Pointing machines, population pyramids, post office scandal, type species, and horse urine
I recently wondered if explainer posts might go extinct. In response, you all assured me that I have nothing to worry about, because you already don’t care about my explanations—you just like it when I point at stuff.
Well OK then!
Pointing machines
How did Michelangelo make this?
What I mean is—marble is unforgiving. If you accidentally remove some material, it’s gone. You can’t fix it by adding another layer of paint. Did Michelangelo somehow plan everything out in advance and then execute everything perfectly the first time, with no mistakes?
I learned a few years ago that sculptors have long used a simple but ingenious invention called a pointing machine. This allows you to create a sculpture in clay and, in effect, “copy” it into stone. That sounds magical, but it’s really just an articulated pointer that you move between anchor points attached to the (finished) clay and the (incomplete) stone sculpture. If you position the pointer based on the clay sculpture and then move it to the stone sculpture, anything the pointer hits should be removed. Repeat that thousands of times and the sculpture is copied.
I was sad to learn that Michelangelo was a talentless hack, but I dutifully spent the last few years telling everyone that all sculptures were made this way and actually sculpture is extremely easy, etc.
Last week I noticed that Michelangelo died in 1564, which was over 200 years before the pointing machine was invented.
Except, apparently since ancient times sculptors have used a technique sometimes called the “compass method” which is sort of like a pointing machine except more complex and involving a variety of tools and measurements. This was used by the ancient Romans to make copies of older Greek sculptures. And most people seem to think that Michelangelo probably did use that.
Population pyramids
I think this is one of the greatest data visualizations ever invented.
Sure, it’s basically just a histogram turned on the side. But compare India’s smooth and calm teardrop with China’s jagged chaos. There aren’t many charts that simultaneously tell you so much about the past and the future.
It turns out that this visualization was invented by Francis Amasa Walker. He was apparently such an impressive person that this invention doesn’t even merit a mention on his Wikipedia page, but he used it in creating these visualizations for the 1874 US atlas:
I think those are the first population pyramids ever made. The atlas also contains many other beautiful visualizations, for example this one of church attendance:
Or this one on debt and public expenditures:
Post office scandal
If you haven’t heard about the British Post Office scandal, here’s what happened: In 1999, Fujitsu delivered buggy accounting software to the British Post Office that incorrectly determined that thousands of subpostmasters were stealing. Based on this faulty data, the post office prosecuted and convicted close to a thousand people, of whom 236 went to prison. Many others lost their jobs or were forced to “pay back” the “shortfalls” from their own pockets.
Of course, this is infuriating. But beyond that, I notice I am confused. It doesn’t seem like anyone wanted to hurt all those subpostmasters. The cause seems to be only arrogance, stupidity, and negligence.
I would have predicted that before you could punish thousands of people based on the same piece of fake evidence, something would happen that would stop you. Obviously, I was wrong. But I find it hard to think of good historical analogies. Maybe negligence in police crime labs or convictions of parents for “shaken baby syndrome”? Neither of these is a good analogy.
One theory is that the post office scandal happened because the post office—the “victim”—had the power to itself bring prosecutions. But in hundreds of cases things were done the normal way, with police “investigating” the alleged crimes and then sending the cases to be brought by normal prosecutors. Many cases were also pursued in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the Post Office lacks this power.
Another theory would be:
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Prosecutors have incredible latitude in choosing who they want to prosecute.
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Like other humans, some prosecutors are arrogant/stupid/negligent.
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It’s actually pretty easy for prosecutors to convict an innocent person if they really want to, as long as they have some kind of vaguely-incriminating evidence.
Under this theory, similar miscarriages of justice happen frequently. But they only involve a single person, and so they don’t make the news.
Type species
I link to this not because it’s interesting but because it’s so impressively incomprehensible. If there’s someone nearby, I challenge you to read this to them without losing composure.
In zoological nomenclature, a type species (species typica) is the species whose name is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated with the name of a genus or subgenus. In other words, it is the species that contains the biological type specimen or specimens of the genus or subgenus. A similar concept is used for groups ranked above the genus and called a type genus.
In botanical nomenclature, these terms have no formal standing under the code of nomenclature, but are sometimes borrowed from zoological nomenclature. In botany, the type of a genus name is a specimen (or, rarely, an illustration) which is also the type of a species name. The species name with that type can also be referred to as the type of the genus name. Names of genus and family ranks, the various subdivisions of those ranks, and some higher-rank names based on genus names, have such types.
In bacteriology, a type species is assigned for each genus. Whether or not currently recognized as valid, every named genus or subgenus in zoology is theoretically associated with a type species. In practice, however, there is a backlog of untypified names defined in older publications when it was not required to specify a type.
Can such a thing be created unintentionally? I tried to parody this by creating an equally-useless description of an everyday object. But in the end, I don’t think it’s very funny, because it’s almost impossible to create something worse than the above passage.
A funnel is a tool first created in antiquity with rudimentary versions fabricated from organic substrates such as cucurbitaceae or broadleaf foliage by early hominid cultures. The etymology of fundibulum (Latin), provides limited insight into its functional parameters, despite its characteristic broad proximal aperture and a constricted distal orifice.
Compositionally, funnels may comprise organic polymers or inorganic compounds, including but not limited to, synthetic plastics or metallic alloys and may range in weight from several grams to multiple kilograms. Geometrically, the device exhibits a truncated conical or pyramidal morphology, featuring an internal declination angle generally between 30 and 60 degrees.
Within cultural semiotics, funnels frequently manifest in artistic representations, serving as an emblem of domestic ephemerality.
The good news is that the Sri Lankan elephant is the type species for the Asian elephant, whatever that is.
Hormones
I previously mentioned that some hormonal medications used to be made from the urine of pregnant mares. But only after reading The History of Estrogen Therapy (h/t SCPantera) did I realize that it’s right there in the name:
Premarin = PREgnant MARe’s urINe
If you—like me—struggle to believe that a pharmaceutical company would actually do this, note that was in 1941. Even earlier, the urine of pregnant humans was used. Tragically, this was marketed as “Emmenin” rather than “Prehumin”.