GATEMAN, sides reversed, is NAMETAG.
And that sentence is a palindrome.
Month: December 2007
The New World Prophecy
There’s a passage in Seneca’s Medea that seems to have foretold the discovery of America 1400 years before the event:
Venient annis secula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum.
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
“The times will come in later years when ocean may relax the chain of things, and a vast continent may open; the sea may uncover new worlds, and Thule cease to be the last of lands.”
Error
Arriving home early one day, Yogi Berra asked his wife where she’d been that afternoon.
She said she’d taken their son to see Doctor Zhivago.
Berra said, “What the hell’s wrong with him now?”
“An ‘Angry Tree'”
The ‘angry tree,’ a woody plant which grows from ten to twenty-five feet high, and was formerly supposed to exist only in Nevada, has recently been found both in eastern California, and in Arizona, says the Omaha Bee. If disturbed, this peculiar tree shows signs of vexation, even to ruffling up of its leaves like the hair on an angry cat, and giving forth an unpleasant, and sickening odor.
— Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, 1892
Letter Shift
Feedback
Rest the ends of a yardstick on your index fingers. Now slowly draw your fingers together, trying to make them meet at some spot other than the center of the stick.
It’s impossible. When either finger leads, it bears more weight, which creates more friction, and the other catches up.
A Hiking Puzzle
Suppose a man sets out to climb a mountain at sunrise, arriving at the top at sunset. He sleeps at the top and descends the following day, traveling somewhat more quickly downhill. Prove that there’s a point on the path that he will pass at the same time on both days.
In a Word
dyscallignia
n. the dislike of beautiful women
The Brass Menagerie
Amongst the curiosities of his day, Walchius mentions an iron spider of great ingenuity. In size it did not exceed the ordinary inhabitants of our houses, and could creep or climb with any of them, wanting none of their powers, except, of which nothing is said, the formation of the web. Various writers of credit, particularly Kircher, Porta, and Bishop Wilkins, relate that the celebrated Regiomontanus, (John Muller,) of Nuremberg, ventured a loftier flight of art. He is said to have constructed a self-moving wooden eagle, which descended toward the Emperor Maximilian as he approached the gates of Nuremberg, saluted him, and hovered over his person as he entered the town. This philosopher, according to the same authorities, also produced an iron fly, which would start from his hand at table, and after flying round to each of the guests, returned as if wearied, to the protection of his master.
— Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
Moe Berg
Catcher Moe Berg earned his reputation as “the brainiest guy in baseball.” At Princeton, where he studied seven languages, he communicated plays in Latin with the second baseman, and he later attended Columbia Law School and the Sorbonne while reading 10 newspapers a day. After 15 undistinguished seasons as a ballplayer, he went to work as a spy during World War II, parachuting into Yugoslavia for the Office of Strategic Services and interviewing Italian physicists about the German nuclear program. (He chose not to shoot Werner Heisenberg.) His is the only baseball card on display at CIA headquarters.
Berg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1945, but he spent the last 20 years of his life living quietly with siblings. He declined to write a memoir, so much of his life is still a mystery. When asked why he had “wasted” his intellectual gifts on baseball, he said, “I’d rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.” His final words were “How did the Mets do today?”