English wine cask units the mediæval French and Italian "botte") or pipe was half a tun, or 1008 pints. Tradition has it that George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV of England, was drowned in a butt of malmsey on 18 February 1478. (However, Josephine Tey in "The Daughter of Time" suggests that "drowned in a butt of malmsey" means rather that George, Duke of Clarence, drank himself to death rather than literally drowning in a container of wine.) In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".
Brain in a vat Brain in a vat In philosophy, the brain in a vat (BIV; alternately known as brain in a jar) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness, and meaning. It is an updated version of René Descartes's evil demon thought experiment originated by Gilbert Harman. Common to many science fiction stories, it outlines a scenario in which a mad scientist, machine, or other entity might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its