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Editor's note: Browser readers in and around New York are invited to join publisher Uri Bram for a party next Thursday evening, 20th July, to mark the launch of his new book, Book. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. (The link will take you to a Partiful page.)
Quiz Of The Week- Which African country existed from 1982-1989 only?
(i) Republic of Transkei
(ii) Senegambia
(iii) Western Sahara
(iv) Central African Empire - Who or what used to occupy "dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James’s Park Tube station in London"?
(i) MI6 in the 1960s
(ii) The BBC in the 1930s
(iii) De Gaulle's Free French in the early 1940s
(iv) T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in the 1920s - What is a saccade?
(i) A song for three voices
(ii) An armoured breastplate
(iii) A locust-like insect
(iv) A quick movement of the eyes - You are watching kokpar, listening to a dombra, and drinking kumis. Where are you likely to be?
(i) In Turkey
(ii) In the Basque country
(iii) In Kazakhstan
(iv) In Rajastan - Where might you find a Skinner Box?
(i) In a laboratory
(ii) On a rugby player
(iii) In a jazz band
(iv) At a seance
Answers at the foot of the page
From The Browser Nine Years AgoA Fasinatng Histry of Autocorrect
Gideon Lewis-Kraus | Wired | 22nd July 2014 | B
Early Microsoft Word came with a feature called glossary, which allowed a user to insert stock phrases using short-cuts. Microsoft soon saw that glossary could also remedy spelling errors; hitting the space-bar could trigger the substitution automatically. Autocorrect was born. Not everyone was happy: "Goldman Sachs was mad that Word was always turning it into Goddamn Sachs" (3,030 words) From The Browser Seven Years AgoHow Not To Name Your Child
Phoenicia Hebebe Dobson-Mouawad | The Guardian | 16th July 2016 | U
Parents should choose a child’s name with the child's future happiness in mind, not as a way of displaying their own coolness, or creativity, or nonconformism. “My experience of living with an unusual name has been, to put it lightly, difficult. There has not been one occasion when making a new acquaintance has not resulted in a remark about it, or some degree of confusion." (809 words)
Borat At Kennedy Center Sacha Baron Cohen reprises his character Borat before an audience including President Joe Biden and U2 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, on 4th June 2022. According to The Guardian, "The Bidens appeared to enjoy Baron Cohen’s routine, but it also came as a shock in typically staid and buttoned up Washington"
Problem Of The WeekI repeatedly toss a fair coin and record the outcome as H (heads) or T (tails). What is the probability that the sequence HHH will occur before the sequence THH? — from Mathigon Solution below, after the crossword
Book Of The WeekThe Controversialist
Martin Peretz | Wicked Son | 2023 Recommended by Jacob Heilbrunn in Washington Monthly:
"Martin Peretz offers a gritty, propulsive, and fascinating account of his career. While he may be known for his pugnacity, his memoir largely steers clear of cheap shots and tedious self-justifications. It is the great book he never wrote at Harvard, a profound accounting of the passions that for several decades propelled him to the center of intellectual disputes about liberalism, Judaism, and America"
Chart Of The WeekWomen's World Cup 2023: Probabilities According to mbmuccurdy, who published this chart on Reddit, the data for the visualisation was obtained by feeding the FIFA rankings for each team into a million simulations of the tournament. "The area of each region is proportional to the chance of that team succeeding at that stage — getting out of the group or winning a knockout match. The pathways show which match each team might progress too, with the final in the middle". Reddit commenters' reactions to the chart varied from "the most confusing thing I’ve ever seen", to "interesting and unique", by way of "visually striking but utterly incomprehensible".
Image Of The WeekBarbenheimer, By Sean Longmore "While Barbie and Oppenheimer were originally pitted as rivals, the two movies have started to uplift one another in recent weeks. AMC Theatres reported on July 10th that over 20,000 members of its AMC Stubs program have purchased tickets to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day" — Variety
Poem Of The Weekfrom Umbrella
by Connie Wanek | Poetry Foundation | 2010 Such a headwind!
Sometimes it requires
all my strength
just to end a line.
But when the wind is at
my back, we're likely
to get carried away, and say
something we can never retract,
something saturated from the ribs
down, an old stony
word like ruin. You're what roof
I have, frail thing,
you're my argument
against the whole sky.
You're the fundamental difference
between wet and dry. Continue reading at Poetry Foundation
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Click here to solve the Browser Sevens Editor's note: Today's cryptic by Viresh Ratnakar conceals a hidden final answer. Can you find the titular "Pioneer" in the completed puzzle? Email the name to crossword@thebrowser.com by midnight Eastern, Sunday, July 23. One correct entry will be chosen at random to win a Browser tote — Dan Feyer
Problem SolvedProblem: I repeatedly toss a fair coin and record the outcome as H ("heads") or T ("tails"). What is the probability that the sequence HHH will occur before the sequence THH? Solution: The only way that HHH can occur before THH is if the first three coin tosses are Heads. Otherwise, as soon as you get a single T, THH will always happen before HHH: Since you already have a T, you just need two more Hs to get THH – but you need three more Hs for HHH. This means that the probability of HHH occurring before THH is also the probability that your first three tosses are all Heads. Since it is a fair coin, the probability of throwing one Heads is 0.5, and the probability of throwing three Heads in succession is 0.5×0.5×0.5=0.125, or, 12.5%. — from Mathigon
Quiz Answers- Which African country existed from 1982-1989 only?
(i) Republic of Transkei
(ii) Senegambia
(iii) Western Sahara
(iv) Central African Empire
Senegambia was formed in 1982 from a union of Gambia and Senegal; but the union was dissolved in 1989 at Gambia's initiative. Gambia was and is an enclave within Senegal, so the union had much geographical logic. But Gambian elites apparently felt that the larger and richer Senegal had assumed a disproportionate amount of power in Senegambia; so they took advantage of a border war with Mauritania in 1989, when the army was distracted, to reclaim independence. The Central African Empire existed from 1976 to 1979; Transkei from 1976 to 1994; sovereignty over the Western Sahara has been disputed since Spain withdrew from the territory in 1975. - Who or what used to occupy "dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James’s Park Tube station in London"?
(i) MI6 in the 1960s
(ii) The BBC in the 1930s
(iii) De Gaulle's Free French in the early 1940s
(iv) T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in the 1920s
According to John Le Carré, it was the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, which occupied those dusky suites at 54 Broadway near St James's Park. "The higher you went, the more secret. The chief himself – Control in my books – lived on the fourth floor of a crooked little building at the end of a creepy, spidery corridor and then up a small staircase". In 1994 the SIS moved to new purpose-built headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, a building so conspicuous that the British government, which had previously treated everything relating to MI6 as an official secret, was obliged to acknowledge publicly that it possessed an intelligence service. - What is a saccade?
(i) A song for three voices
(ii) An armoured breastplate
(iii) A locust-like insect
(iv) A quick movement of the eyes
The 19C French opthalmologist Emile Javal introduced the term saccade, from the French for “jerk,” as a clinical term for a quick movement of the eyes from one focal point to another, as when reading. Javal theorized that too much saccadic movement degraded the eyes, such that reading was a main cause of myopia. - You are watching kokpar, listening to a dombra, and drinking kumis. Where are you likely to be?
(i) In Turkey
(ii) In the Basque country
(iii) In Kazakhstan
(iv) In Rajastan
The runaway winner on probability is that you are in Kazakhstan, where kokpar is a national sport, the dombra is a two-stringed lute, and kumis is a drink made of fermented mare's milk that is beloved of former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kokpar ("goat-grabbing") is said to have originated among Genghis Khan's Mongols in the 13th century, and is played by opposing teams of mounted riders, who fight to gain possession of a 35 kg headless goat and to throw the goat into the opponent's goal. - Where might you find a Skinner Box?
(i) In a laboratory
(ii) On a rugby player
(iii) In a jazz band
(iv) At a seance
A Skinner Box, a variant of what scientists call an operant conditioning chamber, was a piece of laboratory equipment devised by the behavioural psychologist B.F. Skinner. It was large enough to contain a live animal, and was also equipped with a food chute and with a panel of lights and buttons and levers, enabling Skinner and his assistants to investigate how far the animal in the box could be trained to respond to various stimuli and rewards.
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