Another puzzle from Henry Ernest Dudeney:
"In the illustration Professor Rackbrane is seen demonstrating one of the little posers with which he is accustomed to entertain his class. He believes that by taking his pupils off the beaten tracks he is the better able to secure their attention, and to induce original and ingenious methods of thought. He has, it will be seen, just shown how four 5's may be written with simple arithmetical signs so as to represent 100. Every juvenile reader will see at a glance that his example is quite correct. Now, what he wants you to do is this: Arrange four 7's (neither more nor less) with arithmetical signs so that they shall represent 100. If he had said we were to use four 9's we might at once have written 99 9/9, but the four 7's call for rather more ingenuity. Can you discover the little trick?"
I'll post the solution tomorrow.
|W|P|113026727865279746|W|P|"The Four Sevens"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
|W|P|77/.77 = 100 :)Hollywood has stopped developing The Incomparable Atuk, a comedy about an Eskimo hunter adapting to life in the big city. The project is said to be cursed -- four successive actors died after being offered the lead role:
- John Belushi
- Sam Kinison
- John Candy
- Chris Farley
Farley also showed the script to Phil Hartman in 1998, encouraging him to take a co-starring role. Hartman was murdered later that year.
|W|P|113526376026411252|W|P|"The Atuk Curse"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe longest war in history lasted from 1650 to 1985, between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (located off the southwest coast of the United Kingdom).
The Dutch had declared it against the Royalists there during the Second English Civil War, and then forgot about it. In 335 years, no shots were fired and no lives were lost.
The shortest war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar in 1896. It lasted 45 minutes. Kudos.
|W|P|113527595071659874|W|P|Let's Get This Over With|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Bill Gates is always being called an insect -- now someone has called an insect Bill Gates.
Meet Eristalis gatesi, the "Bill Gates flower fly," an insect found only in the Costa Rican forest. The epithet honors Gates' contributions to dipterology.
|W|P|113519702081154891|W|P|Currently Eaten by the Firefox|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1979 author Stephen Pile published The Book of Heroic Failures, a celebration of human ineptitude.
The first edition included an application to join the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain; this was removed when the club received more than 30,000 applications and was judged a "failure as a failure."
The club held two "disastrously successful" meetings, during which president Pile was deposed for showing "alarming competence" by preventing a mishap involving a soup tureen. Shameful.
|W|P|113519890719175159|W|P|Dud Bust|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comOnne Ruddeborne bank twa pynynge Maydens fate,
Theire teares faste dryppeynge to the waterre cleere;
Echone bementynge for her absente mate,
Who atte Seyncte Albonns shouke the morthynge speare.
The nottebrowne Elinoure to Juga fayre
Dydde speke acroole, wythe languishment of eyne,
Lyche droppes of pearlie dew, lemed the quyvryng brine.
That's from "Elenoure and Juga," a pastoral poem by Thomas Rowley, a 15th-century monk.
Actually, no, it's not. Its real author was Thomas Chatterton, a 17-year-old boy who faked medieval manuscripts and "aged" them by holding them over candles or smearing them with glue or varnish.
He fooled everyone -- this poem was published in Town and Country Magazine in May 1769, and Chatterton published several others in the following months. Starving and unable to reveal his secret, he was driven to suicide shortly afterward, but his work was discovered and praised posthumously by Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats.
|W|P|113409486164799616|W|P|An Unacknowledged Genius|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
This is Hase, a 200-foot bunny erected in September on an Italian mountainside by the Viennese art group Gelatin.
You're welcome to climb around on it. No rush -- it'll be there until 2025.
|W|P|113527614847886046|W|P|Hare Raising|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAt Oxford, Oscar Wilde was required to translate a passage from the Greek version of the New Testament. Satisfied, the examiner stopped him.
"Oh, do let me go on," said Wilde. "I want to see how it ends."
|W|P|113447294154679117|W|P|Suspense|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn the 15th century, among the Ojibwa people of Lake Superior, a prophet dreamed of "men who had come across the great water ... their skins are white like snow, and on their faces long hair grows. These people have come ... in wonderfully large canoes which have great white wings like those of a giant bird. The men have long and sharp knives, and they have long black tubes which they point at birds and animals. The tubes make a smoke that rises into the air ... from them come fire and ... a terrific noise."
After this prophecy was made, a group of Ojibwa traveled down the St. Lawrence waterway to investigate and made their first contact with white men, possibly a party from John Cabot's (1497) or Jacques Cartier's (1535) expedition.
|W|P|113534184377800349|W|P|Ojibwa Prophecy|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
If you visit the Edinburgh Zoo, be prepared to salute -- in August a penguin named Nils Olav was promoted to colonel-in-chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard.
Apparently penguins are pretty active in the Guard -- since 1982 they've held the ranks of lance corporal, sergeant, and regimental sergeant major. They're certainly dressed for it.
|W|P|113527585847604532|W|P|Reviewing the Troops|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFrom Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle, 1896:
The following case illustrative of the tenacity of virulence of snake-venom was reported by Mr. Temple, Chief Justice of Honduras, and quoted by a London authority.
While working at some wood-cutting a man was struck on a heavy boot by a snake, which he killed with an axe. He imagined that he had been efficiently protected by the boot, and he thought little of the incident. Shortly afterward he began to feel ill, sank into a stupor, and succumbed.
His boots were sold after his death, as they were quite well made and a luxury in that country. In a few hours the purchaser of the boots was a corpse, and every one attributed his death to apoplexy or some similar cause.
The boots were again sold, and the next unfortunate owner died in an equally short time.
It was then thought wise to examine the boots, and in one of them was found, firmly embedded, the fang of the serpent. It was supposed that in pulling on the boots each of the subsequent owners had scratched himself and became fatally inoculated with the venom, which was unsuspected and not combated.
"The case is so strange as to appear hypothetic, but the authority seems reliable."
|W|P|113286195406017657|W|P|"A Case of Snake-bite"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do." -- Jean-Paul Sartre
|W|P|113456460049785073|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Every seven years, the Eiffel Tower is repainted with 5.5 tons of paint.
|W|P|113479176983910014|W|P|Keeping Up Appearances|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFREE � FREE
A TRIP TO MARS
FOR 900
EMPTY JARS
BURMA-SHAVE
The Burma-Shave folks intended that as an amusing roadside rhyme in 1955, but Arliss "Frenchy" French took it seriously.
The Wisconsin supermarket manager sponsored an elaborate "Send Frenchy to Mars" campaign and sent 900 jars to Burma-Shave headquarters in an armored car.
After some hasty thinking, the company agreed to send French on vacation to Moers -- a little town in Germany that pronounced its name mars. He went.
|W|P|113467697531910671|W|P|Read the Fine Print|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comsal�si�po�tent
adj. ruling the salt seas
Koalas sleep up to 22 hours a day.
|W|P|113479293073200544|W|P|Resting Up|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comO lovely O most charming pug
Thy graceful air and heavenly mug ...
His noses cast is of the roman
He is a very pretty weoman
I could not get a rhyme for roman
And was oblidged to call it weoman.
-- "Sonnet," Marjory Fleming (1803-1811)
|W|P|113418249333121031|W|P|Uncertain Verse|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comBorn in 1849, "Blind Tom" Wiggins found himself with three burdens and a gift: He was blind, he was mentally challenged, he was a slave, and he was a musical prodigy.
He was playing piano by ear at age 4, before he could speak. At 5 he composed a tune and found he could reproduce perfectly any piece from memory. His vocabulary was only about 100 words, and he spoke of himself in the third person ("Tom is pleased to meet you"), but in time he learned 7,000 piano pieces, mostly classics.
At age 8 a successful concert in Columbus, Ga., led to a tour. He played for James Buchanan and Mark Twain, accepting challenges to repeat original compositions to show there was no trickery. By age 16, he was touring the world.
He retired in 1883 but returned briefly for a series of New York concerts in 1904. He died in 1908.
|W|P|113245595225174702|W|P|Blind Tom Wiggins|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
It's dangerous to make history. Schoolchildren learn that Oliver Cromwell overthrew the British monarchy, but they're less often told of the grisly price he paid.
Three years after his death of malaria, Cromwell's body was dug up and underwent a "posthumous execution" for treason by the restored monarchy: It was hanged, drawn and quartered, decapitated and thrown into a common pit, and the severed head was mounted on a pole and displayed outside Westminster Abbey for four years, until 1685.
Even that wasn't enough. The head passed among various owners for 275 years; it wasn't buried until 1960, on the grounds of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
And Cromwell was only the most prominent of the regicides of Charles I. Three others were also "punished" posthumously, and those still alive were imprisoned or chased out of England.
|W|P|113467507436365287|W|P|Head of State|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAll the gold ever mined would make a cube 66 feet on a side.
|W|P|113479200757024124|W|P|Golden Numbers|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1844, Sir David Brewster discovered an iron nail in a block of stone in Scotland's Kingoodie Quarry. The nail was embedded in a Cretaceous block from the Mesozoic era; in 1985, the British Geological Survey dated the bed at between 360 and 408 million years old.
An iron nail has no business in the Mesozoic era, and no ordinary nail could avoid oxidation for more than 400 million years.
So how'd it get there? No one knows.
|W|P|113416504889190428|W|P|The Kingoodie Hammer|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Letter from a California resident to an officer of Bodie, a gold-rush boom town, circa 1881:
Kind and Respected Cir:
I see in the paper that a man named John Sipes was attacted and et up by a bare whose kubs he was trying to get when the she bare came up and stopt him by eating him in the mountains near your town.
What I want to know is did it kill him ded or was he only partly et up and is he from this plaice and all about the bare. I don't know but he is a distant husband of mine. My first husband was of the name and I supposed he was killed in the war, but the name of the man the bare et being the same I thought it might be him after all and I ought to know if he wasn't killed either in the war or by the bare, for I have been married twise since and there ought to be divorse papers got out by him or me if the bare did not eat him up. If it is him you will know by him having six toes on his left foot.
He also had a spreadagle tattooed on his front chest and a anker on his right arm which you will know him by if the bare did not eat up these sines of it being him.
Find out all yu kin about him without him knowing what it is for, that is if the bare did not eat him all up. If it did I don't see as you kin do anything and you needn't to trouble. Please ancer back.
She added a postscript: "Was the bare killed?"
|W|P|113487677136528483|W|P|Marriage on the Frontier|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1973, over Ivory Coast, an aircraft collided with a R�ppell's griffon, a kind of vulture.
It had been flying at 37,000 feet -- that's seven miles high.
|W|P|113479313400466865|W|P|Air Hazard|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSolution to "One Lump or Two?", from Tuesday:
Put five lumps in the first cup, two in the second, and three in the third.
Then sit the third cup in the second cup.
|W|P|113418224519772995|W|P|One Lump or Two?: Solution|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Dioniso Pulido must have angered the gods.
On Feb. 20, 1943, the Mexican farmer watched a volcanic fissure open in the middle of his cornfield. Within 24 hours the cone was 50 meters high; within a week it was twice that. By August his whole town was buried in lava and ash.
The new volcano, called Paricutin, eventually grew to be 10,000 feet high, and it didn't go quiet until 1952.
And the gods got their due. No one died in the eruption -- but three people were killed by associated lightning strikes.
|W|P|113479143045050187|W|P|Always Hire a Good Real Estate Agent|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHow can you put 10 lumps of sugar into three cups so there is an odd number of lumps in each cup?
I'll give the answer tomorrow.
|W|P|113418212649815470|W|P|One Lump or Two?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Who would write, who had any thing better to do?" -- Lord Byron
|W|P|113435025087449071|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
A race among all the world's creatures would show some surprising results. Top speeds:
- Tortoise: 0.23 mph
- Sea trout: 15 mph
- Dragonfly: 18 mph
- Human sprinter: 22 mph
- African elephant: 25 mph
- Cat: 30 mph
- Racehorse: 43 mph
- Ostrich: 45 mph
- Bluefin tuna: 46 mph
- Racing pigeon: 53 mph
- Pronghorn: 55 mph
- Cheetah: 62 mph
- Mallard: 65 mph
- Sailfish: 68 mph
The winner would be the peregrine falcon, which has been clocked in level flight at 217 mph.
|W|P|113482655819203419|W|P|Twice Around Noah's Ark|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comAM IN MARKET HARBOROUGH. WHERE OUGHT I TO BE?
-- G.K. Chesterton, telegram to his wife
|W|P|113435059727026100|W|P|Stop|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comTo find the actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, MGM shot 149,000 feet of black-and-white test film and another 13,000 feet of color with 60 actresses, none of whom got the part.
Vivien Leigh eventually got it, but MGM also considered Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, Irene Dunne, Merle Oberon, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Miriam Hopkins, Jean Arthur, Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Lucille Ball.
|W|P|113292968388925837|W|P|Frankly, My Dear ...|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
This iron pillar, part of a complex of monuments in Delhi, India, has stood for 1,600 years without rusting, despite harsh weather.
Metallurgists think it's protected by a thin layer of "misawite", a compound of iron, oxygen and hydrogen, that formed shortly after it was made.
|W|P|113416511204761517|W|P|Apparently Rust Does Sleep|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comLetter from Jeannette Linn to Santa Claus, Dec. 21, 1899:
Dear Santa, I thought I would drop you a few lines and tell you a few things what I want. Well, I want a pair of skates, because I think by the time Christmas comes it will be frozen up. And for another thing, I want a pair of leggings so that it will keep my feet warm and I want them so that they will come up above my shoe-tops, and I want a little slate like those that have pictures of cats and rabbits and dogs on and like those that are almost like a slate, and if it don't cost too much I would like a large doll, so large that it would look about four years old. I will tell you where to find it. If you look in the basement of the Arcade on the place where the dolls are, you will see a large doll with real long curly hair and it is jointed and it is as pretty as I am. And I don't think I want much, but dear Santa, I know that I want more than you can afford to give, for there are more little boys and girls and they want something too. But I would like to have so much a nice tricycle that would cost three dollars and that is too much, I think, to pay for anything, but that is really the price of it because I saw the price on it and it said $3.00 as plain as this letter is written and I think it is written pretty plain.
She finished: "Well Santa, I must close because it is getting late and I think if I don't close you will not bring me anything. I have got as much as I can think of."
|W|P|113487770252822416|W|P|Some Things Never Change|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comso�pho�ma�ni�a
n. delusion that one is incredibly intelligent
After he'd been stung by almost everything, entomologist Justin O. Schmidt created the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, a four-point scale comparing the overall pain of insect stings:
- 1.0 - Sweat bee: "Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm."
- 1.2 - Fire ant: "Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch."
- 1.8 - Bullhorn acacia ant: "A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek."
- 2.0 - Bald-faced hornet: "Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door."
- 2.0 - Yellowjacket: "Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W.C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue."
- 3.0 - Red harvester ant: "Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail."
- 3.0 - Paper wasp: "Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut."
- 4.0 - Pepsis wasp: "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream)."
- 4.0+ - Bullet ant: "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel."
In bloom of life
She's snatched from hence
She had not room
To make defence;
For Tiger fierce
Took life away,
And here she lies
In a bed of clay
Until the Resurrection Day.
-- Epitaph of Hannah Twynnoy, killed by a tiger escaped from a traveling circus, Malmesbury, England, 1703
|W|P|113447274390299616|W|P|R.I.P.|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comRobert Wallace had a noble impulse when he discovered a new species of monkey in Bolivia's Madidi National Park. Rather than name the species after himself, he would auction off the naming rights to raise money for the park.
The marketers of the world are not so noble: $650,000 changed hands and the new species was named after an Internet casino. It's officially called the "GoldenPalace.com Monkey."
|W|P|113458356054702431|W|P|What Would Darwin Say?|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The largest known flying animal of all time was Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a pterosaur that flapped around Texas 80 million years ago.
Its wingspan was estimated at 39.37 feet -- the length of a school bus.
|W|P|113435091378800597|W|P|Sky King|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comPalindrome fans who lamented the closing of California's Yreka Bakery can take heart -- it's been reopened, on the same site, as the Yrella Gallery.
|W|P|113227841058981855|W|P|Eureka|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comOne day we all set out on a tour to the Farm. Jack and Frank had gone on first, while my wife and I were as yet close to the Cave. All at once the boys came back, and Fritz said, "Look at that strange thing on its way up the path. What can it be?"
I cast my eye on the spot and cried out, "Fly all of you to the Cave! fly for your lives!" for I saw it was a huge snake, or boa, that would make a meal of one of us, if we did not get out of its way.
We all ran in doors, and put bars up to the door of the Cave. A large dove cote had been made on the roof, and to this we got up through a hole in the rock.
Ernest took aim with his gun, and shot at the snake, so did Fritz and Jack, but it gave no sign that they had hit it. I then tried my skill, but it did not seem to feel my shot any more than theirs, though I was sure I must have struck its head. Just as we took aim at it once more, we saw it turn round and glide through the reeds in the marsh.
-- From The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin (1784-1864)
|W|P|113461858048545011|W|P|"No Ass to Be Found Here"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Miss Wendy Eileen|W|P|oohh! i love swiss family robinson
In 1900, sponge divers were retrieving relics from an ancient Greek shipwreck when archaeologist Spyridon Stais noticed a rock with a gear wheel in it. He had discovered the Antikythera mechanism, a remarkable clockwork computer that modeled the movements of heavenly objects as early as 87 B.C.
Using x-ray analysis, historians of science and technology have studied the mechanism closely and devised several working reconstructions. British orrery maker John Gleave believes the front dial tracked the sun and moon through the zodiac year against the Egyptian calendar. Others believe it modeled the motions of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- every celestial body known to the ancient Greeks.
That last interpretation is significant: In the first century B.C. Cicero had written of an instrument "recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets." It may have been used to calculate celestial positions at the times of certain events or births.
Whatever the details, the device was remarkably sophisticated for its day: Among other things, it uses a differential gear, which historians had previously thought was invented in the 16th century. Complex Greek creations like this may have passed through the Arab world and eventually informed European clockmaking. What other ancient technology has been lost?
|W|P|113285056905527537|W|P|An Ancient Computer|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"If you don't find it in the Index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue."
-- Consumer's Guide, Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1897
|W|P|113435019872733484|W|P|Self-Service|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1998, Carol Weihrer was undergoing eye surgery when she woke up. Desperate and in agony, she could feel everything that was happening to her, but the muscle relaxants kept her from moving or speaking.
This happens to 4,000 people each year, largely due to anesthesiologists' errors, and the psychological trauma can lead to years of nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, and alcoholism. It's called "anesthesia awareness."
|W|P|112998853496157893|W|P|Anesthesia Awareness|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Miss Wendy Eileen|W|P|I know...I saw a documentary on this the other day. Its frightening that the person who is under could know whats happening to them but be unable to respond because of the drugs.
On seeing Niagara Falls, Gustav Mahler exclaimed: "Fortissimo at last!"
|W|P|113435051668095830|W|P|Water Music|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"The following singular inscription is to be seen carved on a tomb situated at the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo. The explanation is that the tomb was erected by a king named Silo, and the inscription is so written that it can be read 270 ways by beginning with the large S in the center. The words are Latin, SILO PRINCEPS FECIT."
T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S P C C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P E E N I R P O L I S I L O P R I N C E P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S P E C I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T
"Besides this singular inscription, the letters H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L. are also carved on the tomb, but of these no explanation is given. Silo, Prince of Oviedo, or King of the Asturias, succeeded Aurelius in 774, and died in 785. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Charlemagne. No doubt the above inscription was the composition of some ingenious and learned Spanish monk."
-- Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
|W|P|113115183870573889|W|P|"Remarkable Inscription"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comUninspiring land speed records:
- 39.24 mph, Dec. 18, 1898, Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
- 41.42 mph, Jan. 17, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)
- 43.69 mph, Jan. 17, 1899 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
- 49.93 mph, Jan. 27, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)
- 57.65 mph, March 4, 1899 Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat (France)
- 65.79 mph, April 29, 1899 Camille Jenatzy (Belgium)
Interestingly, these were all set with electric vehicles.
|W|P|113434980951563275|W|P|Pull Over|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Solution to "Source Forge," from Monday:
The image on the right, The Supper at Emmaus, was created by Dutch forger Han van Meegeren. A perfectionist, van Meegeren would find a 17th-century canvas to paint on, create his own paints, and use Vermeer's style of brush. Afterward he would bake the finished painting, roll it over a drum to crack it somewhat, and wash it in black ink to fill in the cracks.
Van Meegeren was wildly successful with this method, producing seven fake Vermeers between 1938 and 1945 that sold for millions of guilders. When he finally confessed, the police didn't believe him -- he had to create an entirely new painting to convince them.
|W|P|113418359808682208|W|P|Source Forge: Solution|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man." -- Charles Lamb
|W|P|113236824684952869|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comExcerpts from "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema," a paper published by Horace Miner in the June 1956 edition of American Anthropologist:
- "They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east."
- "The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose."
- "In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client."
- "There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee."
It's a satire. What's Nacirema spelled backward?
|W|P|113413402707896767|W|P|"A Magic-Ridden People"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
One of these Vermeers is a forgery. Which is it? I'll post the answer tomorrow.
|W|P|113409470166739680|W|P|Source Forge|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn January 1892, Rhode Island farmer George Brown buried his daughter Mercy. She had died of consumption, as had her mother and sister.
Two months later George's son, Edwin, also became sick, and the farmer decided that one of his dead family members was returning from the grave as a vampire to cause his son's illness.
So he dug up his daughter's body, cut out her heart, mixed it into a potion, and told his son to drink it.
Edwin died two months later.
|W|P|113409549903450689|W|P|How to Treat Tuberculosis|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIf Earth were the size of a tennis ball, the sun would be 249 feet away.
And the nearest star would still be 12,890 miles away.
|W|P|113433567787286397|W|P|Privacy|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The June 1851 issue of Scientific American reported that a zinc and silver vase had been blasted from solid rock 15 feet below the surface of Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, Mass. The bell-shaped vessel had floral designs inlaid with silver.
Experts at the time estimated it to be about 100,000 years old, which would obviously throw everything we know out the window.
Unfortunately, it disappeared after circulating through several museums. What's the real story? Who knows?
|W|P|113416497816524877|W|P|Dorchester Pot|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comla�tro�ci�nate
v. to engage in highway robbery
Think of any number and write it out in words. Count the number of letters and write that down in words. And so on:
- SEVENTY-SEVEN (12 letters)
- TWELVE (six letters)
- SIX (three letters)
- THREE (five letters)
- FIVE (four letters)
- FOUR (four letters)
If your spelling is good, you'll always arrive at FOUR.
|W|P|113427478518339616|W|P|The Pull of Four|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The Uffington White Horse was cut out of the turf on a hill in southern England, exposing the chalk beneath.
Some say it's really a dragon -- the figure is 3,000 years old.
|W|P|113347776489639504|W|P|Hill Figure|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com Yesterdays_ashes|W|P|What a cool picture. It could look like a dragon!! :-)Thanks for posting this.
Irish sayings:
- "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was."
- "It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life."
- "A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures."
- "You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind."
- "Both your friend and your enemy think you will never die."
- "Don't give cherries to pigs or advice to fools."
- "Anything will fit a naked man."
- "The only cure for love is marriage."
And "He who gets a name for early rising can stay in bed until midday."
|W|P|113415155830871119|W|P|"Beware of People Who Dislike Cats"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comGioacchino Rossini died at age 76 -- shortly after his 18th birthday.
How is this possible? He was born on a leap day, Feb. 29, 1792.
|W|P|113418204259511303|W|P|Rossini's Birthday|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The word zombie is never used in Night of the Living Dead.
|W|P|113409035046080678|W|P|"They're All Messed Up"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Humankind cannot stand very much reality." -- T.S. Eliot
|W|P|112972100101255368|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1805, the French writer �mile Deschamps was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger, Monsieur de Fontgibu.
Ten years later, Deschamps ordered plum pudding at a Paris restaurant, but the waiter told him the last dish had already been served to another customer -- to M. de Fontgibu, as it turned out.
Seventeen years after that, in 1832, Deschamps was once again offered plum pudding, and he told his friends about the strange coincidence.
At that moment, M. de Fontgibu entered the room by mistake.
|W|P|113245627014179612|W|P|Synchronicity|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
When Captain Cook visited Tonga in 1777, he gave a tortoise to the royal family as a gift. They named it Tui Malila. Tongans must be good with tortoises, because Tui lived through the French Revolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the invention of the telegraph, the American Civil War, the first telephone, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, X-rays, the Spanish-American War, McKinley's assassination, the first zeppelin, Einstein's relativity, the Model T, the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the Russian Revolution, Lindbergh's flight, the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the founding of the United Nations, the breaking of the sound barrier, Gandhi's assassination, the Korean War, the first nuclear submarine, I Love Lucy, Sputnik, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, and Kennedy's assassination, dying finally in 1965 at age 188.
Compare that to Timothy, pictured here, an English celebrity who led a dashing life: Found aboard a Portuguese privateer in 1854, Timothy served as a mascot on a series of Royal Navy vessels until 1892, when she retired. ("He" was discovered to be female at age 82.) She was taken in by the Earl of Devon, who etched his family motto on her underside: "Where have I fallen? What have I done?" She died in 2004 and was buried near the earl's home, Powderham Castle, at age 160.
Moral: Live hard and you'll die young.
|W|P|113292926207831321|W|P|Fast Living|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comA familiar nursery rhyme rewritten to omit the letter s:
Mary had a little lamb,
With fleece a pale white hue,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb kept in her view;
To academe he went with her,
Illegal, and quite rare;
It made the children laugh and play
To view a lamb in there.
-- A. Ross Eckler
|W|P|113228146007667632|W|P|Mary Sans S|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comShout loud enough and people can understand you up to 590 feet away.
That's the limit for human vocal communication ... unless you're on the Canary Island of La Gomera, whose inhabitants have developed a unique whistled language called Silbo.
It can be understood at distances up to 5 miles.
|W|P|113292863784099876|W|P|Speak Up|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The mutiny on the Bounty is a landmark of sea law, but it also has a curious linguistic sequel. After setting Captain Bligh adrift, Fletcher Christian fled to Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific. With him were eight other crewmen, six Tahitian men, and 11 women. In order to understand each other, they developed a creole mix of English and Tahitian known as "Pitcairnese":
| English | Pitkern |
| How are you? | Whata way ye? |
| Where are you going? | About ye gwen? |
| Are you going to cook dinner? | You gwen whihi up suppa? |
| Would you like some food? | Ye like-a sum whettles? |
| I don't think so | I nor believe |
| It doesn't matter | Do' mine |
The mutineers were a diverse lot, with origins from Scotland to the West Indies, so the mix is a linguistic hodgepodge. For instance, "whettles," above, meaning food, is a throwback to the Old English victuals.
|W|P|113292775513766424|W|P|"Pitkern"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe Guinness Book of Records is in The Guinness Book of Records.
It's the world's best-selling copyrighted book.
|W|P|113183465315102061|W|P|A Meta-Record|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"With drunkenness, gambling, and dancing, theater-going dates from the beginning of history, and with these it is not only questionable in morals, but it is positively bad. Every one who knows any thing about the institution of the theater, as such, knows that it always has been corrupting in its influence. Not only those who attend the theater pronounce it bad, as a whole, but it is frowned upon by play-writers, and by actors and actresses themselves."
-- J.M. Judy, Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes, 1904
|W|P|113097142482839106|W|P|The Evils of Broadway|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
The couch used by Sigmund Freud during psychoanalytic sessions. "I have found little that is good about human beings," he wrote. "In my experience most of them are trash."
|W|P|113347685037518998|W|P|Freud's Couch|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis poem takes a pretty dark view of marriage -- unless you read only the alternate lines:
That man must lead a happy life
Who's free from matrimonial chains,
Who is directed by a wife
Is sure to suffer for his pains.
Adam could find no solid peace
When Eve was given for a mate;
Until he saw a woman's face
Adam was in a happy state.
In all the female race appear
Hypocrisy, deceit, and pride;
Truth, darling of a heart sincere,
In woman never did reside.
What tongue is able to unfold
The failings that in woman dwell;
The worths in woman we behold
Are almost imperceptible.
Confusion take the man, I say,
Who changes from his singleness,
Who will not yield to woman's sway,
Is sure of earthly blessedness.
-- W.S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892
|W|P|113228277186117030|W|P|Another Equivoque|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWinona Ryder and Uma Thurman have the same godfather.
Timothy Leary.
|W|P|113366430283016915|W|P|... Tune In ...|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comHere's one explanation for crop circles:
This English woodcut pamphlet was published in 1678. It tells of a farmer who swore he would rather have the devil mow his field than pay the high price demanded by a laborer.
According to the pamphlet, that night his field appeared to be in flames, and the next morning it was found to be mowed to supernatural perfection.
Maybe so, but if that's what causes these things, the devil's been getting awfully fancy lately:
The fastest ticket sales in history took place in 1993 when Paul McCartney announced two shows in Sydney, Australia.
20,000 tickets sold out in eight minutes.
|W|P|113183445107186083|W|P|Fastest Ticket Sales|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1924, university professor Eisaburo Ueno brought his dog, Hachiko, to Tokyo. Every morning Hachiko saw his master off at the front door, and every evening he greeted him at the nearby train station.
Ueno died in May 1925, but the dog still went to the station every day to wait for him.
He did this for 11 years.
|W|P|113148686208016241|W|P|Good Boy|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
"The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful." -- Aristotle
|W|P|113270536998509071|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comNumber of years of formal education required to understand selected magazines, according to the Gunning-Fog readability index:
- Atlantic Monthly: 12
- TIME, Harper's: 11
- Newsweek: 10
- Reader's Digest: 9
- Ladies' Home Journal: 8
- True Confessions: 7
- comic books: 6
to�mo�ma�ni�a
n. irrational predilection for performing surgery
Now remembered chiefly for establishing Rhodes scholarships, South African diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes left an alarming provision in his will -- he hoped to take over the world:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.
"I contend that we (the British) are the finest race in the world," he once wrote, "and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race."
|W|P|112675048522562220|W|P|Cecil Rhodes' Secret Ambition|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com111111111 × 111111111 = 12345678987654321
|W|P|112913218743033549|W|P|A Mathematical Palindrome|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comShall we all die?
We shall die all;
All die shall we --
Die all we shall.
-- Epitaph, St. Winwalloe's churchyard, Gunwalloe, Cornwall
|W|P|113227813780033753|W|P|Magic Epitaph|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comSolution to "The Bridges of Konigsberg," from Thursday:
No, it's not possible. Here's the map again:
An "Euler circuit" is possible only if every bank and island is served by an even number of bridgeheads. Otherwise you'll eventually get stranded or find yourself unable to return home.
You can prove this to yourself -- draw a map as complex as you like and try it out.
|W|P|113338646125051024|W|P|The Bridges of Konigsberg: Solution|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." -- A.A. Milne
|W|P|113029131056723867|W|P|Unquote|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe world's largest food fight takes place each year on the last Wednesday in August, when the town of Bu�ol, Spain, holds its annual tomato festival. Local trucks dump more than 100 metric tons of overripe tomatoes into the streets, and there's a general free-for-all among up to 25,000 people.
Reportedly, when it's over, rivers of tomato juice up to 12 inches deep run through the town, and area fire engines hose down the streets.
This has been going on since 1944, and apparently it has no political or religious significance -- they do it just for fun.
|W|P|113292949198012756|W|P|"The Tomatina"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn old Konigsberg there were seven bridges:
Villagers used to wonder: Is it possible to leave your door, walk through the town, and return home having crossed each bridge exactly once?
Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler had to invent graph theory to answer the question rigorously, but there's a fairly intuitive informal proof. Can you find it?
I'll post the answer tomorrow.
|W|P|113338638475912818|W|P|The Bridges of Konigsberg|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comIn 1803, Australian Joseph Samuel was sentenced to hang for murder. The first attempt failed when the rope broke. A replacement rope stretched, letting Samuel's feet touched the ground. And the third rope broke.
So they let him go.
|W|P|113292896031064559|W|P|Most Hangings Survived|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comFrance's Michel Lotito, better known as Monsieur Mangetout, eats metal and glass for a living. He began eating unusual materials compulsively as a child and has made it into a career, performing publicly since 1966.
Thanks to an unusually thick stomach lining, Mangetout can safely consume 2 pounds of metal a day with no ill effects. Generally he cuts large items -- bicycles, television sets, shopping carts, a coffin -- into 1-kilogram pieces, which he washes down with mineral oil and plenty of water.
In 1978 he started eating a small plane, a Cessna 150. He finished it in 1980.
|W|P|113292852745605179|W|P|"Mister Eat-Everything"|W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com