Newcomb’s Paradox

Flamdor McSqueem is a superintelligent wombat from the planet Zortag. He shows you two boxes. You can choose to take the contents of Box A or the contents of both boxes. He has privately predicted what you will do.

If Flamdor predicted you would choose Box A only, then Box A contains $1 million. If he predicted you’d choose both boxes, then Box A contains nothing. Either way, Box B contains $1,000. What should you do?

Some people reason that Flamdor is very intelligent and his predictions are usually accurate, so it would seem best to choose Box A. Others note that Flamdor has already made his prediction and can’t change the contents of the boxes now, so it seems best to take both boxes.

There’s no correct answer — decision theorists are still arguing about it. What would you do?

| Science & Math

Late Arrival

In 1933, a lifeboat was found drifting in Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island.

It was marked Valencia — the name of a passenger liner that had run aground there 27 years earlier.

It was still in good condition.

| Oddities

Tecumseh’s Curse

“Tecumseh’s curse” refers to an odd coincidence in U.S. history: Every 20 years, we elect a president who dies in office:

  • William Henry Harrison, elected in 1840, died of pneumonia in 1841.
  • Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, was assassinated in 1865.
  • James Garfield, elected in 1880, was assassinated in 1881.
  • William McKinley, elected in 1900, was assassinated in 1901.
  • Warren G. Harding, elected in 1920, died of a heart attack in 1923.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1940, died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1945.
  • John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, was assassinated in 1963.

The curse was supposedly invoked by a Native American chief’s mother as he died. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, for some reason, seem to have escaped.

| History

“De Groote Meid”

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

In June 1625, Frederick V of Bohemia, having heard tales of a “9-year-old being miraculously tall,” summoned young Trijntje Keever to the Hague. The tales, he found, were true — Trijntje was already 6 foot 6, and she would reach 8 foot 4 before dying of cancer at age 17.

She was probably the tallest woman who ever lived — judging from an anonymous portrait in her hometown of Edam, her shoes were 16 inches long.

| Oddities

Protest in Palindrome

In his Remains Concerning Britain (1870), William Camden relates how a “scholar and a gentleman, living in a rude country town, where he had no respect, wrote this with a coal in the Town Hall:–Subi dura à rudibus.”

It means “endure rough treatment from uncultured brutes” — and it reads the same forward and backward.

| Language

Jumbo Jet

Say what you will about the French, they know how to build an elephant:

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

This one, proposed for the Champs-Élysées in 1758, had air conditioning, a spiral staircase, and a drainage system in the trunk.

The French government said no. There’s no accounting for taste.

| History · Oddities

Easy

Write down any number:

886328712442992

Count up the number of even and odd digits, and the total number of digits:

10 5 15

String those together to make a new number, and perform the same operation on that:

10515

1 4 5

And keep iterating:

145

1 2 3

You’ll always arrive at 123.

| Science & Math