“Today Is Yesterday’s Pupil”

The 17th-century churchman Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) had a gift for pithy maxims:

  • Every horse thinks its own pack heaviest.
  • There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.
  • He that has a great nose, thinks everybody is speaking of it.
  • It is more difficult to praise rightly than to blame.
  • Eaten bread is forgotten.
  • A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools.
  • Bad excuses are worse than none.
  • A book that is shut is but a block.
  • Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools.
  • A man is not good or bad for one action.
  • Unseasonable kindness gets no thanks.
  • ‘Tis skill, not strength, that governs a ship.
  • Abused patience turns to fury.
  • All things are difficult before they are easy.
  • Poor men’s reasons are not heard.
  • The more wit the less courage.
  • Travel makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

And “Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.” “Wit,” wrote Coleridge, “was the stuff and substance of Fuller’s intellect.”

Pull!

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=TRJ2AAAAEBAJ

Bicycles are great for exercising the lower body, but what about the back? In 1900 Louis S. Burbank had a bright idea — by mounting a pair of sculls on the frame, the modern cyclist can row his way to total fitness.

The levers are used for both pedaling and steering. The patent says nothing about brakes.

First Impressions

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rain_Steam_and_Speed_the_Great_Western_Railway.jpg

In 1842, a Mrs. Simon was traveling by train through the English countryside when a torrential downpour began. The kind-looking elderly gentleman sitting opposite her suddenly arose, opened the window, put his head out, and kept it out for nearly nine minutes. Finally he withdrew it, dripping with water, closed the window, and sat with his eyes closed for a quarter of an hour.

Unable to suppress her curiosity, the young lady arose, opened the window, and put her own head out.

At the next year’s Academy, as she was viewing Rain, Steam, and Speed, someone behind her said, “Just like Turner, ain’t it. Whoever saw such a ridiculous conglomeration?”

She said quietly, “I did.”

Misc

  • Can one keep a promise unintentionally?
  • The plural of u is us.
  • 1676 = 11 + 62 + 73 + 64
  • DISMANTLEMENT and SKEPTICISM are typed with alternating hands.
  • “He was lucky and he knew it.” — Clark Gable’s proposed epitaph

Spot Work

A set of dominoes can be arranged into a valid arithmetic sum:
domino sum

and into a magic square:

domino magic square

From Joseph S. Madachy, Madachy’s Mathematical Recreations, 1966, and W.W. Rouse Ball, Mathematical Recreations and Essays, 1919.

Chapter and Verse

As he was visiting his parishioners one Saturday afternoon, a new pastor stopped at one house and found that no one answered the door. It was clear that someone was home, but he knocked repeatedly and no one appeared. Finally he pulled out his card, wrote “Revelation 3:20” on the back, and left it in the door.

That Sunday he found the card in the collection basket. Below his message someone had written “Genesis 3:10.”

Revelation 3:20 reads, “Behold I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.”

Genesis 3:10 reads, “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked.”