I probably did mean to produce an updated version of a post that I originally published in November 2011 to mark the 500th post on the blog when the 1000th and then the 2000th posts appeared – both some while ago now – but either forgot, or thought better of it; I can't remember now. But here it is, heavily tinkered with, for no better reason than I'm in need of a way to distract and entertain myself, as I'm suffering from an unpleasant bout of tonsillitis. Which is ironic, if irony ever applies in medical matters, as my tonsils were surgically removed when I was a child, which seems to have been the go-to solution in those days for any childhood ailment short of an actual broken bone. Your boy gets into mischief, or has too much imagination? Let's take his tonsils out, and see how it goes.
Fashions in medical intervention aside, we are surrounded by many mysteries, and of these the ultimate destination of vast quantities of time, and the reasons behind our precious but really rather miserly share of it, must rank among the greatest. As so many have asked, whether as the verbal equivalent of a deep sigh or in moments of profound philosophical reflection: where does the time go? Great question! (as in: pointless question, with no known answer!).Personally, I favour the theory that, shortly after the Big Bang, some kind of collateralized loan obligation scam was perpetrated by Big Time, and large quantities of time shares ended up hidden within various as yet featureless rocks by certain malevolent parties, resulting in the subsequent uneven distribution, inflated value and short supply of time. This does sound awfully like Terry Pratchett, but it's possible I may have made it up myself, but I really can't be bothered to check. Time is definitely too short for what John Keats called, in his definition of "negative capability", such "irritable reaching after fact and reason". Although I suppose that much-quoted Keatsian "negative capability" might also justifiably be defined as "lazy complacency", and I'm never sure why we're supposed to regard this as such a Good Thing just because some 22-year-old med-school drop-out said it was. Decent poet, though.
Anyway, thinking about the passing of time, it has often pleased me to speculate that a hypothetical very, very old man, who had been sitting on the same bench every day since the year 1000 CE, would have heard our language change from Anglo-Saxon through Middle English all the way to whatever it is we're speaking now; Post-Modern English? The changes would generally have been even more imperceptible than trying to observe the movement of the hour hand on an analogue clock – the so-called Great Vowel Shift didn't happen during one Thursday afternoon in June 1447, hilarious as that would have been – but those changes were happening, all the same. So one day he's going to a church which is little more than a wattle-and-daub hut, and hearing the Lord's Prayer intoned as "Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum", and then, in the blink of a geological eye, various stone structures have been erected, levelled, and rebuilt on the same site, and the few people who are still going to church are now thinking that "Our Father, which art in heaven" sounds incomprehensibly old-fashioned. I mean, FFS, that's Old English, innit? Actually, no, since you ask, it's not.
But now that voices can be recorded you don't have to be 1000 years old to experience this. Listen to any archived radio programme and the voices will be as dated (and dateable) as the graphical style of vintage adverts or book dust-jackets. When I was a child in the 1950s/60s, broadcasters were still expected to acquire the clipped accents of the 1930s as the price of entry into the BBC. So-called RP ("received pronunciation") was a clear and non-negotiable marker of class and aspiration. "End nigh, the knee-ooze!" No longer, thank goodness. Although I'm really not sure whether that continuity guy with the preposterously fruity and poshed-up Caribbean bass-baritone who is all over Radio 4 these days counts as progress. I'm sorry, there is no such thing as the Bayou Tapestry, Neil, or the Kunservative Party, although I can see where you're going with that one. But to notice that "your" language is being bent into new shapes by the young is finally to take your place on that bench alongside the 1000-year-old man.
A thousand years ago, of course, the Vikings were busily carrying out their own aggressively proactive programme of linguistic intervention on these shores, once they'd got the raiding and looting thing out of their system. Consequently, bits of Scandi-talk are embedded deep in our mongrel language, so-called "English". As it happened, around the time I was writing the original 500th-post post the latest Big Thing on TV was Scandinavian thrillers – subtitled, of course – and I noticed that after I had watched a few I was experiencing a curious sensation, which felt like the awakening of some semi-dormant, atavistic elements in the deeper language-oriented parts of my brain. Not unlike a full-immersion language course, I felt I could almost, but not quite, understand Norwegian or Swedish. Although not Danish, obviously; even the Swedes scratch their heads over that Nordic-language smoothie. So, after watching enough episodes of The Killing, Wallander, and The Bridge, the ancient Viking synapses were lighting up, and I was gasping "Va fan?!" (roughly = "WTF?!") with every new plot twist.
Apparently Benjamin Franklin started one of these mad investments in 1790 in his will. Here's the quote from the Lapham's Quarterly article:
Anyway, thinking about the passing of time, it has often pleased me to speculate that a hypothetical very, very old man, who had been sitting on the same bench every day since the year 1000 CE, would have heard our language change from Anglo-Saxon through Middle English all the way to whatever it is we're speaking now; Post-Modern English? The changes would generally have been even more imperceptible than trying to observe the movement of the hour hand on an analogue clock – the so-called Great Vowel Shift didn't happen during one Thursday afternoon in June 1447, hilarious as that would have been – but those changes were happening, all the same. So one day he's going to a church which is little more than a wattle-and-daub hut, and hearing the Lord's Prayer intoned as "Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum", and then, in the blink of a geological eye, various stone structures have been erected, levelled, and rebuilt on the same site, and the few people who are still going to church are now thinking that "Our Father, which art in heaven" sounds incomprehensibly old-fashioned. I mean, FFS, that's Old English, innit? Actually, no, since you ask, it's not.
But now that voices can be recorded you don't have to be 1000 years old to experience this. Listen to any archived radio programme and the voices will be as dated (and dateable) as the graphical style of vintage adverts or book dust-jackets. When I was a child in the 1950s/60s, broadcasters were still expected to acquire the clipped accents of the 1930s as the price of entry into the BBC. So-called RP ("received pronunciation") was a clear and non-negotiable marker of class and aspiration. "End nigh, the knee-ooze!" No longer, thank goodness. Although I'm really not sure whether that continuity guy with the preposterously fruity and poshed-up Caribbean bass-baritone who is all over Radio 4 these days counts as progress. I'm sorry, there is no such thing as the Bayou Tapestry, Neil, or the Kunservative Party, although I can see where you're going with that one. But to notice that "your" language is being bent into new shapes by the young is finally to take your place on that bench alongside the 1000-year-old man.
A thousand years ago, of course, the Vikings were busily carrying out their own aggressively proactive programme of linguistic intervention on these shores, once they'd got the raiding and looting thing out of their system. Consequently, bits of Scandi-talk are embedded deep in our mongrel language, so-called "English". As it happened, around the time I was writing the original 500th-post post the latest Big Thing on TV was Scandinavian thrillers – subtitled, of course – and I noticed that after I had watched a few I was experiencing a curious sensation, which felt like the awakening of some semi-dormant, atavistic elements in the deeper language-oriented parts of my brain. Not unlike a full-immersion language course, I felt I could almost, but not quite, understand Norwegian or Swedish. Although not Danish, obviously; even the Swedes scratch their heads over that Nordic-language smoothie. So, after watching enough episodes of The Killing, Wallander, and The Bridge, the ancient Viking synapses were lighting up, and I was gasping "Va fan?!" (roughly = "WTF?!") with every new plot twist.
Back in 2011 I had also come across a link to a piece on so-called "Methuselah trusts" in Lapham's Quarterly. Methuselah being the grandfather of the more famous Biblical Noah, who apparently died just 31 years short of his 1000th birthday, although how much time he spent sitting on the same bench is unrecorded. (A lot, if he was typical of 1000-year-old men). The startling idea is that a very modest amount of money placed in a single "1000-year trust" and invested at compound interest could, if actually brought to maturity, trash the world economy (although I think we have now found better ways to do that job on a far shorter timescale); essentially, a Methuselah trust would eventually require a payout that would far exceed anyone's ability to meet it. It's reminiscent of the proposition that if you were able to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, you'd find that it reaches the moon. Which, on the face of it, does sound an awful lot cheaper and simpler than rocket travel, although to ask whether anyone could actually sit on the top of a sheet of paper folded in half 42 times is a classic example of that "irritable reaching after fact and reason".
Apparently Benjamin Franklin started one of these mad investments in 1790 in his will. Here's the quote from the Lapham's Quarterly article:
A few years before Franklin drafted his will, philosopher Richard Price rhapsodized in a sober treatise on the national debt, “One penny, put out at our Savior’s birth to 5 percent compound interest, would, in the present year 1781, have increased to a greater sum than would be contained in two hundred millions of earths, all solid gold. But, if put out to simple interest, it would, in the same time, have amounted to no more than seven shillings and sixpence.”Hmm, that certainly puts the frankincense and myrrh in their place, but show your working, please. Otherwise that's surely just the 18th century equivalent of Hunter S. Thompson-esque "gonzo journalism": too much coffee and snuff, probably.
But, no, it turns out that it wasn't the snuff talking. As I'd hoped, my old friend Andy, a.k.a. Science Man, came up with the mathematical goods:
1 penny (d) invested for 1780 years at 5% would yield 1 x 1.05^1780 = 5.2 x 10^37 dActually, most online sources say that Newton, in his role as Master of the Royal Mint, fixed the price of gold at £3 17s 10p per troy ounce, but I can't be bothered to redo the sums (well, let's be honest and admit that I probably can't do that, bothered or not). But, point taken; to quibble over a few million solid gold "Earth masses" here or there would be nothing more than the worst sort of "irritable reaching after fact and reason", wouldn't it. But, I suddenly wonder, has anyone checked Franklin's or indeed Newton's savings accounts lately? Could this be another of those collateralized-loan-obligation-style scams in progress? If so, why, Ben, why?
Price of gold was fixed by Isaac Newton in 1717 at £4 8s 9d per troy ounce (it stayed this way for about 200 years)
1 troy ounce = 31.03g
Therefore price of gold = 4x240 + 8x12 + 9 d/troy ounce = 1065 d/troy ounce
1065d/31.103g = 34.32d/g = 34,320d/kg
Therefore 5.2 x 10^37d could buy (5.2 x 10^37)/(34320) kg of gold = 1.52 x 10^33 kg
The mass of the Earth is about 5.978 x 10^24 kg (OU Science Data Book 1978)
Therefore 1.52 x 10^33 represents (1.52 x10^33)/(5.978 x 10^24) Earth masses = 2.54 x 10^8 Earth masses
i.e. about 250 million Earth masses (at 1780 gold prices)
The mention of pounds, shillings and pence and difficult arithmetic is a salutary reminder of the now long-ago pre-decimal days in Britain. It's easy to forget the sheer oddness of calculating twelve pennies to the shilling, and twenty shillings to the pound (not to mention one pound and one shilling to the guinea for upscale purchases like racing horses or golden planets). In those days before electronic tills, shop assistants had to be pretty nimble with their mental arithmetic. Thinking about this, for me the penny finally dropped (sorry!) that the only reason our children are still being made to learn their eleven and twelve "times tables" is because, over half a century ago, we had an insane system of coinage, not to mention our weights and measures. It seems other, more rational countries only make their kids learn multiplication tables up to a sensible ten. Wimps! Makes you proud to be British, and the inheritor of multiple systems based on our national negative capability, doesn't it? To quote John Keats again, "Time is money, and money time, that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" (Ode On What Does A Grecian Earn).
So, here's a fairly typical primary-school level question of the sort we grappled with back in 1960:
Mister Brown has ordered half a ton of coal: how much will that cost him at 11s and 6d per hundredweight sack? Quick, boy, quick, the lorry driver is waiting! [1]
But just look at the time! Where does it go? I have my next appointment with various medicinal compounds coming up, including 500 mg of Amoxicillin or, if you prefer, 7.72 troy grains "in old money" (a little boilerplate joke we Brits have yet to tire of making. Give it time: it's only been fifty-five years...). But I have to say that fiddling about with this post has done the trick, and taken my mind off the sore throat, the coughing, the croak, and general medicated wooziness for the past few mornings, and today I'm feeling a lot better. Time to stop polishing this one into a mirror shine, and start on another.
Someone has surely got their quantities wrong with these mint humbugs?
(We're going to need a bigger jar)
1. The answer is £5 15s 0d. How? There are 20 hundredweights (cwt) in a ton (not 100, duh!), so half a ton is 10 cwt. Multiply the units separately: 11 shillings × 10 = 110 shillings; 6 pence × 10 = 60 pence. Convert the pence to shillings: 60 pence ÷ 12 = 5 shillings exactly, no pennies left over. Add the shillings: 110s + 5s = 115 shillings. Now convert the shillings to pounds:115 shillings ÷ 20 = 5 pounds with a remainder of 15 shillings. Simple! What took you so long?
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