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: 鈥淚dentical college twins were accused of cheating in an exam by signaling. They won $1.5 million in damages after a jury decided they hadn鈥檛 cheated because their minds were connected鈥�.
This kind of twins paradox becomes more consequential 鈥� and more extreme 鈥� if we up the level of the allegation. Let鈥檚 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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鈥淚f one twin has committed a murder,鈥� Davis asks, 鈥渉ow can the guilty twin be punished without, at the same time, the innocent twin being unjustly punished as well?鈥� The obvious methods, including 鈥渟eparate the twins and then execute or incarcerate the guilty one鈥�, have drawbacks, to say the least. Davis concludes that the problem brings 鈥渃hallenges that the law is ill equipped to deal with鈥�.
Out of the woodwork
London-based reader Neha Obhrai writes in: 鈥淒uring 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 New 杏吧原创 肠补迟补濒辞驳耻别蝉.鈥�
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 鈥淥UR NEIGHBOUR MARS鈥�, Professor Zdenek Kopal at the University of Manchester, UK, asserts that 鈥渢hree-quarters of its surface is a dusty Sahara. But on the remainder are signs of vegetation 鈥� and even animals may long ago have existed there鈥�.
Elsewhere, a letter signed 鈥淭. T. G.鈥� pleads: 鈥淗ere 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.鈥�
Another, from an 鈥淓. St. John-Smithers鈥�, vents about scientists: 鈥淭heir 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-scientist鈥� What we need is a forum to expose this bogus, not one that encourages it.鈥�
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:
鈥淭here 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 this鈥� Woodworm eradication, however, is a job which a householder can carry out for himself if he conscientiously obeys some simple rules.鈥�
Decomposed alumni
Feedback鈥檚 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 isn鈥檛 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 morning鈥� these are all questions that, studies show, aren鈥檛 easily solved.
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