Book Club: A miscellany of animals and aliens, Rasputin, revisions and laws

Some extracts from Misc. by the Delayed Gratification team.

The name of this Substack, if you’ve ever wondered, was chosen to rhyme with that of my first book, The Compendium of (Not Quite) Everything, a miscellany of facts and lists and essays on everything from the creation of the universe to famous last words. It did not, it’s fair to say, set the literary world alight; but I’m very proud of it, and would like to note it would make a perfect present for any small children or dads you happen to have in your life.

I love books like this, which is how I came to write one, and which means I was delighted to receive an early copy of Misc., by Rob Orchard, Christian Tate and Marcus Webb. It is, Orchard told me, “the fruit of 13 years of research for Delayed Gratification, the Slow Journalism magazine. We cover lots of weighty topics in the magazine but wanted Misc. to be a repository of all the funny and interesting trivia we’ve discovered along the way, to be a joyful miscellany that will cheer people up”. 

The book covers topics ranging from the world’s most stolen artists to the downsides to life on Mars, and will, according to QI’s Andrew Hunter Murray, make you laugh “so much you won’t realise you’ve learned anything”. It is also, incidentally, beautifully designed, which is why at either end of this post you’ll find screenshots of two particularly pleasing pages. In between, to make sure this email doesn’t end up clogging your spam, you’ll find a couple of other entries as simple text. 

Misc., too, will make a brilliant Christmas present – more information from the Slow Journalism website, here. The extracts begin… now:

Rasputin and the movie disclaimer

Films featuring characters who could potentially be recognised as real-life people have long featured the disclaimer

“This is a work of fiction. any similarities to persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” 

For this we have to thank Russian prince Felix Yusupov. On 30th December 1916, he welcomed mystic Grigori Rasputin, a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II, to his home where he fed him poisoned tea cakes, shot him and threw him into the Neva River, where he drowned. In March 1917, following the February Revolution against the Russian monarchy, Yusupov fled the country with his wife, Princess Irina Alexandrovna. 

On 24th March 1933, MGM released the film Rasputin and the Empress, which featured thinly veiled portrayals of the Yusupovs. The couple sued MGM in the British courts, not for depicting Felix as a murderer, but for implying that Irina and Rasputin had had an affair. They were awarded a then-record payoff of £25,000 (the equivalent of £2.2m today), shocking the movie industry and leading to the widespread adoption of the legal disclaimers.

​​Eponymous epigrams

Sundry principles and heuristics named for their creators

Betteridge’s law

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no’.”

By British technology journalist Ian Betteridge.

Brandolini’s law 

“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it” (AKA the BS asymmetry principle). 

By Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini.

Conquest’s law

“The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”

By British-American novelist and historian George Conquest.

Godwin’s law

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

By American lawyer Mike Godwin.

Hanlon’s razor

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance.”

By American book contributor Robert J. Hanlon.

Lewis’s law

“The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.” 

By British journalist Helen Lewis.

Murphy’s law

“If something can go wrong, it will’ (aka Sod’s law).

By US aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.

Parkinson’s law

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

By British naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson.

Wiio’s law

“The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.”

By Finnish academic Professor Osmo Antero Wiio.

Dramatic numerical revisions 

Major recent recalibrations…

…of age

On 28th June 2023 a new law came into effect in South Korea, dispensing with the ancient ‘Korean age’ system. This defined people as being one year old at birth and gaining a year every 1st January, meaning that a child born on 31st December would be two years old the following day. The old system was replaced by standard calendar age in order to bring it in line with the rest of the world. In a cheering moment of mass rejuvenation, every one of the country’s 52 million inhabitants turned one or two years younger overnight.

…of territory

In 1987, the Coast Guard of Japan counted the number of islands – including anything with a circumference of 100 metres and above – in its archipelago, and concluded that there were precisely 6,852. This remained the official total until February 2023, when the country’s Geospatial Information Authority stepped in with new digital surveying techniques that disaggregated clumps of islands that had originally been counted as one, and included islands in lakes and rivers. The result? The nation’s island count zoomed up to 14,125, a full 7,273 more than previously thought. 

…of population

China’s official population is 1.41 billion. However, according to research released by US demographer Yi Fuxian in 2021, this figure is way off. Yi compared official birth figures with estimated fertility rates and noticed a major discrepancy, which he explained by local governments inflating population numbers, on which their funding is based, and families buying birth certificates to gain more state benefits. Extrapolating his findings to the nation, he claims that China’s actual population is 1.28 billion: if his calculations are correct, there are 130 million fewer Chinese on the planet than previously believed.

If you enjoyed that – and if you didn’t, then what on earth is the matter with you? – then you can find out more about Misc. from the Slow Journalism website – or, if clicking twice sounds too much like hard work, you can buy it from Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmiths or Bloomsbury (use code “MISC30” for 30% off before Wednesday).