Greg Ross's Blog

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy of Portland, Maine, alleging that they’d been unfairly denied four years’ worth of overtime pay. Maine law generally required time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked above 40 hours, but it listed exemptions for:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

That’s not quite clear. Does the law exempt the distribution of the three categories listed, or does it exempt packing for shipment or distribution of them? The confusion shows the value of the so-called Oxford comma, the often-skipped comma that follows the next-to-last item in a series, as in “A, B, and C.” A comma after “shipment” would have eliminated the ambiguity in the language above; the drivers’ lawyer said, “That comma would have sunk our ship.” But without the comma, the court ruled, the meaning is uncertain, and the dairy had to pay the drivers $5 million.

In 2017 the state legislature replaced the troublesome passage with this:

The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

The New York Times wrote, “So now we get to replace Oxford comma pedantry with semicolon pedantry.”

See Details.

(Thanks, Edward.)

Questions put by Benjamin Franklin to his Junto, a club for mutual improvement that he founded in Philadelphia in 1727:

How shall we judge of the goodness of a writing? Or what qualities should a writing have to be good and perfect in its kind? (His own answer: “It should be smooth, clear, and short.”)Can a man arrive at perfection in this life, as some believe; or is it impossible, as others believe?Wherein consists the happiness of a rational creature?What is wisdom? (“The knowledge of what will be best for us on all occasions, and the best ways of attaining it.”)Is any man wise at all times and in all things? (“No, but some are more frequently wise than others.”)Whether those meats and drinks are not the best that contain nothing in their natural taste, nor have anything added by art, so pleasing as to induce us to eat or drink when we are not thirsty or hungry, or after thirst and hunger are satisfied; water, for instance, for drink, and bread or the like for meat?Is there any difference between knowledge and prudence? If there is any, which of the two is most eligible?Is it justifiable to put private men to death, for the sake of public safety or tranquillity, who have committed no crime? As, in the case of the plague, to stop infection; or as in the case of the Welshmen here executed?If the sovereign power attempts to deprive a subject of his right (or, which is the same thing, of what he thinks his right), is it justifiable in him to resist, if he is able?Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?Does it not, in a general way, require great study and intense application for a poor man to become rich and powerful, if he would do it without the forfeiture of honesty?Does it not require as much pains, study, and application to become truly wise and strictly virtuous as to become rich?Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?

From Carl Van Doren’s biography. “New members had to stand up with their hands on their breasts and say they loved mankind in general and truth for truth’s sake. … In time the Junto had so many applications for membership it was at a loss to know how to limit itself to the twelve originally planned.”

From Lee Sallows:

(Thanks, Lee!)

She’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring
That drives the rod that turns the knob that works the thingumebob,
And it’s the girl that makes the thing that holds that oil that oils the ring
That works the thingumebob THAT’S GOING TO WIN THE WAR!

— Popular song of 1942

“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales”

— Popular song of 1927

Dr. Polycarp was, as you all know, an unusually sallow bimetallist. ‘There,’ people of wide experience would say, ‘There goes the sallowest bimetallist in Cheshire.’

— G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904

From Gerald Lynton Kaufman’s The Book of Modern Puzzles (1954):

All DROONS are the same size and shape.All green SLACKENS are the same size and shape.Twenty DROONS just fill up a MULDRUFF.All WALLAXES contain green SLACKENS.A green SLACKEN is 10% bigger than a DROON.A WALLAX is smaller than a MULDRUFF.

“If all MULDRUFFS and all WALLAXES are predominantly RED throughout, what is the largest possible number of green SLACKENS in a WALLAX?”

Eight. If a MULDRUFF holds 20 DROONS, and a green SLACKEN is 10% bigger than a DROON, then a MULDRUFF can accommodate at most 18 green SLACKENS. And if a WALLAX is smaller than this, then it can hold at most 17 green SLACKENS. But if each WALLAX is predominantly red, then the proportion of green SLACKENS in its contents can’t be more than one-half. So the largest number of green SLACKENS it can contain is 8.

“Hallelujah!” was the only observation
That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane,
When she tumbled off the platform in the station,
And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Mary Jane, the train is through yer:
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
We will gather up the fragments that remain.

— A.E. Housman

Visiting Hamburg in 1878, Mark Twain heard a cuckoo calling in the woods.

“First cuckoo I ever heard outside of a clock,” he wrote. “Was surprised how closely it imitated the clock — and yet of course it could never have heard a clock.”

He added, “The hatefulest thing in the world is a cuckoo clock.”

(From his Notebook.)

English essayist Henry W. Nevinson defined chivalry as “going about releasing beautiful maidens from other men’s castles, and taking them to your own castle.”

In 1814, as the British burned Washington, commander Sir George Cockburn targeted the offices of the National Intelligencer newspaper, telling his troops, “Be sure that all the C’s are destroyed, so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name.”

British politician Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) had such an enormous ego that, it was said, one newspaper had to curtail its coverage because its “stock of capital I’s was quite exhausted.”

Alsatian pastor J.G. Stuber composed this puzzle canon in the late 18th century.

“It was always a great delight to me, in riding my horse from one village to another, to hear in the fields and among the heights the melodies which I had taught,” he wrote. “I could often distinguish very beautiful and harmonious voices.”