Puzzles and Trains - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

While not wishing to offend members of the high-IQ social club Mensa, I decided many years ago that I would choose my friends based on very different criteria than the ability to solve certain puzzles in a certain amount of time.

I don't quarrel with the need of some very bright people to find other bright people to talk to. But I've never run out of people worth knowing and spending time with in the ordinary course of my life, and I never felt the need to check their IQ scores before deciding whether they were my friends or not.

Besides, there was always the fear that their IQ score would be higher than mine.

Still, though I didn't join Mensa back when my brain worked well enough for me to get in (which makes me wonder -- do aging members of Mensa have to keep getting retested to make sure they still qualify?), I do appreciate their puzzle books.

Ranging from chess problems to cryptic crosswords, from lateral-thinking puzzles to a variety of games and crosswords for children, the Mensa game-book publishing program is terrific.

I just finished Fraser Simpson's 102 Cryptic Crosswords. Simpson authored a series of small (eight squares by ten) cryptics for the New Yorker for a while, and these follow the same pattern, with deft but solvable clues. In fact, while it bears the Mensa Puzzle Book logo, this is actually a sequel to Simpson's earlier (but now out-of-print) 101 Cryptic Crosswords: From the New Yorker.

Simpson also created or co-created several other puzzle books for Mensa (as well as for the Sit & Solve toilet-puzzle book series), but I wish he'd get busy and give me another book of cryptics.

Mensa and Sit & Solve aren't the only games in town, for those who like to stretch their minds. One should never forget the variety of puzzles in Games Magazine, of course. AARP has an excellent series of crossword books with "To Keep You Sharp" in the titles.

Peter Gordon's two excellent series of gradually-more-difficult books, like Killer Thursday Crosswords, have now made way for his equally delightful but not so murderous Tasty Tuesday Crosswords, Delicious Wednesday Crosswords, and so on. And then there's the USA Today puzzle series.

The thing about crosswords today is that the novelty has long since worn off. After a while, it's like Hangman: Who really cares what word the other person is thinking about?

That's why we expect more from our crossword puzzles than just asking us to fill in the blanks based on clues. We're looking for additional games-within-games -- puzzles with embedded jokes or entries that require us to massage the answers a little in order to fit them into place.

One USA Today puzzle book, Nine Minute Crosswords, by Richard Silvestri, does a superb job of this, so that when I finish one I don't just feel that I've accomplished a task, I feel as if I've been playing one-on-one with a very witty opponent.

However, if there are people who can regularly do these puzzles in nine minutes, I'm certainly not one of them.

After having just ridden across half of Poland on trains -- while comfortably writing chapters of my novel on my laptop the whole way -- I find I am as much in love with train travel as ever. Not that everything is equal on every train.

For instance, on my way from Warsaw to Katowice, I was in a train comparable to first class on a northeast-corridor Amtrak: Wide, comfortable, somewhat reclinable seats, each with a reasonable-size table. Some of the seats faced each other, some were placed in rows like church pews. It was pleasant and comfortable.

The train from Krakow to Warsaw, however, had my wife and me seated across from each other in one of those six-person compartments, three to a bench. There was no table -- my laptop really did have to perch on my lap.

The compartment was air-conditioned and the temperature was adjustable, but unfortunately it was a cool day (autumn apparently begins earlier in Poland than here) and an elderly couple seated near the window kept asking for the heat to be pumped up, since they were cold.

I, near the door and with the sun beating in my window, was uncomfortably warm. But, being an American, I felt the obligation to try to defer to everyone else so I didn't cause an uptick in anti-American sentiment abroad. I also didn't speak enough Polish to explain myself. I just sweated a lot while I wrote.

Even with those discomforts, however -- and having to shlep our luggage with us and find places to stash it where we could keep an eye on it -- the train just seemed like a more civilized way to travel, at least on a smooth, well-maintained track (which there's a dearth of in America).

As for the luggage situation, my wife and I resolved that we're going to rethink our luggage on long international trips. We each took one overstuffed suitcase, but then had to fuss with finding places where they would fit on the trains and in small foreign cars.

It was especially challenging when we had to lift them onto overhead racks. We can foresee a time when that won't be possible for us physically, and even now, if I dropped one on somebody I might find myself up for manslaughter in a foreign court.

So we're heading for Sharon Luggage sometime in the next few weeks to find smaller suitcases. The idea is that when we take side trips, we can take only one small bag for each of us (or even a single bag between us), leaving the rest -- including the steadily increasing supply of dirty laundry -- behind with the bellman at our main hotel.

Two rolling bags each won't do the job, however. I've seen people in airports trying to roll two bags at once and it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work, if for no other reason than that it makes you so wide as you try to thread through crowds of travelers. And getting two rolling bags at once down a train aisle? No thanks.

So we'll come up with a stackable arrangement where one bag rides atop the other. It's the luggage arrangement we can grow old with.

Meanwhile, out of China comes word of an experimental train that may be able to bring rail travel up to airplane speeds at a relatively low cost.

Maglev trains have been around for a while. These are trains that don't actually touch the track -- they use the principle of magnetic repulsion to remain levitated. This greatly reduces friction -- but not completely. There's still air resistance to deal with, which has kept maglev trains to speeds not much higher than standard high-speed rail.

The new Chinese system, however, maintains a partial vacuum in the tube the train passes through. This allows speeds to rise greatly. The skeptic in me, however, wonders what happens when there's a leak that suddenly lets air into the system.

Besides, I like to look out the window -- it's one of the best things about train travel. Nowadays from airplanes you pretty much see only clouds; it's relatively rare to get a good clear view of the scenery below, and even then, people are yelling at you to close the window shade so they can watch the movie.

Traveling in a vacuum tube doesn't sound to me as if it would offer much of a view.

Still, a maglev train can be powered by electricity, while airplanes will require fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Right now, electricity also comes mostly from fossil fuels, but can also come from renewable sources such as wind and sunlight and dams.

Trains like this -- as well as converting American rail to electricity system wide, which is long overdue and should have been one of the primary accomplishments of Obama's "stimulus" -- can take us a long way toward switching away from oil before a crisis forces it.

Check out the full article on the Chinese maglev (as well as the interesting criticisms by other readers).

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Thursday, Sept. 2 -- Empty Treasury Day

On this day in 1789, Congress established the Treasury Department, with the Secretary of the Treasury as the third member of the Presidential Cabinet. Charged with minting money, collecting taxes, and disbursing expenditures, the Treasury Department has evolved into the magical fairyland where congressional and presidential wishes are granted ... for a while.

After a four-week siege, on Sept. 2^nd 1864, Union troops under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman entered Atlanta, the last remaining Confederate center of manufacturing and trade. Confederate General John B. Hood was widely blamed for failing to hold the city, but in fact he inherited an unwinnable situation from his predecessor, Joseph Johnston, who was probably the worst general ever to serve the Confederacy in an important role. Pathologically unwilling either to exercise command or commit his forces to any action whatsoever, he made timid Union General McClellan look bold and aggressive. At least Hood attempted to fight.

From Atlanta, Sherman abandoned his supply lines and marched to Savannah following a scorched-earth policy. The theory -- supported completely by Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant -- was that by destroying a significant percentage of the South's food supply and economic base, Sherman would exhaust the South's ability to continue to fight, thus shortening the war and, in the long run, saving many thousands of lives on both sides.

While the South still remembers Sherman as a monster, in fact the strategy worked -- especially because it largely broke the will of the people, so that they did not support a continuing guerrilla war after the surrender of the main armies. America was thus spared the agony that Iraq is going through. Where Sherman's army went, the people knew they had lost the war and had no desire to start it up again.

Friday, Sept. 3 -- Treaty of Paris Day

John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris on this day in 1783, officially ending the American Revolutionary War and recognizing the United States of America as an independent nation.

On this day in 1838, dressed as a sailor and carrying identification papers borrowed from a retired merchant seaman, Frederick Douglass boarded a train at Baltimore, Maryland, a slave state, and rode to Wilmington, Delaware (also a slave state), where he caught a steamboat to the free city of Philadelphia. He then transferred to a train headed for New York City, where he entered the protection of the Underground Railway network. Douglass later became a great orator and one of the leaders of the antislavery struggle.

The Abolitionist movement, of which Douglass was a prominent leader and spokesman, was and continues to be the victim of vicious slanders -- but in my opinion their continuous, heroic, faith-based efforts to free slaves regardless of what the law allowed stand as an example to people who stand for freedom and justice in any oppressive society. Slavery was one of the two great shames of America (our treatment of Indians being the other), and until the Civil War, only the achievements of the abolitionist movement served to wipe away any part of that stain.

Saturday, Sept. 4 -- Newspaper Carrier Day

This is the anniversary of the hiring of the first "newsboy" in the U.S., 10-year-old Barney Flaherty, who is said to have answered the following classified advertisement which appeared on The New York Sun in 1833: "To the Unemployed -- a number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again."

In English, this meant that the Sun would either take you on as an employee or allow you to buy the paper outright at a discount, sell it yourself at full price, and keep the difference. With the latter plan, the more you sold, the more you made, and becoming a paperboy (or "paper carrier" in more recent times) was the first step on the entrepreneurial road for many thousands of budding capitalists.

Los Angeles, California, was founded on this day in 1781. The official decree named it "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula." "El Pueblo" means "village," and it was named for the river beside which it was built: "River of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula." Before the village was founded, the Los Angeles River was commonly called the "Porciuncula River."

And what does "Porciuncula" mean? It comes from the Italian word "porziuncola," which means "very small parcel (portion) of land." Early in the career of St. Francis of Assisi, the Benedictine Order allowed him the use of a tiny, rundown chapel on a very small piece of land; as his fame grew, so did the fame of the chapel on the porziuncola.

That chapel became the center of celebration of the Feast of the Perdono on August 2^nd in the Church Calendar, so when the Los Angeles River was discovered by a Spanish expedition on August 2^nd in 1769, it was named for the chapel where that feast day was celebrated.

So the name of Los Angeles -- the largest city and most populous county in California -- originated with a "very small parcel of land" that St. Francis made holy to all Christians of his time.

Sunday, Sept. 5 -- National Waffle Week begins

As a family that owns three waffle irons so that nobody has to wait very long for fresh hot waffles, you can bet that we take National Waffle Week very seriously.

On this day in 1914, Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional ballplayer for the Providence, Rhode Island, team in the International League -- a minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. Naturally, this did not count toward his major-league home run record of 714, since surpassed by Hank Aaron (755), and Barry Bonds (762). The all-time, all-world record (excluding the American Negro Leagues) for the most home runs by a professional ballplayer is held by Japanese player Sadaharu Oh, with 868 home runs in his career.

The Negro Leagues are excluded from this tally because, alas, the record-keeping was not particularly careful or reliable. But Negro League slugger Josh Gibson's plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame says he hit "nearly 800" home runs, but this includes exhibition games as well as official league games. In terms of homers-per-game-played, the best estimates show Gibson to be on a par with Babe Ruth, with approximately two homers every seven games.

Monday, Sept. 6 -- Labor Day

The first observance of Labor Day was a parade on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, probably organized by Peter McGuire, secretary of a chapter of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

While today labor unions -- especially unions representing government employees -- are criticized for making it impossible to fire nonperforming workers and for making American-made goods too expensive to compete in the world market, it is good to remember that labor unions ended the era of sweatshops and wages so low that a family could starve while everyone of employable age in the family was working every hour that they could.

Between labor unions and paternalistic employers like Henry Ford, the incomes of the American working class rose to levels comparable to the middle class, turning them into customers and greatly increasing the wealth and profitability of the companies they worked for. Capitalism has acquired its relatively benign reputation in the U.S. only because labor unions and pro-labor legislation have kept the free market from driving wages down to unsurvivable levels; and we lose jobs to foreign workers only because they lack a strong labor movement and therefore, victimized by the conscienceless free market, provide their labor at starvation wages.

While I believe that the excesses of the labor unions in America need to be kept in check in the public interest, I would not want to live in a society where workers did not have unions and responsible pro-labor government agencies to watch out for their interests and keep the natural cruelties of capitalism at bay.

Tuesday, Sept. 7 -- Google Day

Who knew that when Sergey Brin and Larry Page incorporated the Internet search engine company Google in Menlo Park, Calif., in 1998, their little websearch tool would become a giant with the potential to challenge Microsoft in its dominance of the software industry -- or that their company name would become the common English-language verb that it is today?

Brazilian Independence Day. In 1822, Emperor Dom João VI of Portugal declared Brazil to be an independent nation. Wait, that can't be right -- the royal ruler of Portugal declared independence from Portugal? Indeed it's so. During the French invasion of Spain and Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars, the royal family of Portugal fled to their huge America province of Brazil (spelled Brasil in Portuguese).

Once he was there, Dom João VI ended the colonial regulations that kept Brazil from trading openly with other nations, marking the beginning of an era of prosperity for the colony. When Napoleon was defeated, João decided to stay in Brazil and make it an independent kingdom equal in status to Portugal. Naturally, the Portuguese government disapproved and sent troops to bring him home, where they installed him as a figurehead monarch in a constitutional government.

But Dom João's son, Pedro, remained in Brazil, where the people and their elected senate declared him to be "Perpetual Defender and Protector" of their nation. Pedro declared Brazil's independence near the Ipiranga River in São Paulo, saying, "By my blood, by my honor, and by God: I will make Brazil free." He declared that the motto of his revolution would be "Independence or Death," which became famous as the Grito do Ipiranga ("Shout of Ipiranga").

After several years of largely bloodless struggle -- including hiring Thomas Cochrane, the British naval captain who served as the model for the fictional characters Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, to expel the Portuguese fleet from various Brazilian ports -- Portugal recognized Brazilian independence in 1825.

Brazil thus became the only American colony to begin its independent nationhood as a monarchy.