Upstanding

You can distinguish a raw egg from a hard-boiled one by spinning it.

The reason for this was puzzled out only in 2002 by mathematicians Keith Moffat of Cambridge University and Yatuka Shimomura of Keio University. Friction between the egg and the table produces a gyroscopic effect, and the egg trades some kinetic energy for potential energy, raising its center of gravity. The raw egg can’t do this because its runny interior lags behind the shell. Moffat wrote:

Place a hard-boiled egg on a table,
And spin it as fast as you’re able;
It will stand on one end
With vectorial blend
Of precession and spin that’s quite stable.

| Science & Math

“The Value of a New Point of View”

Sailing westward from the Island of Fata Morgana, I came upon Pierrot in his little white boat. We were old acquaintances, and I asked him if the gods were still using him kindly, and how things were looking on the Moon, his home.

‘I have been away from home for some time,’ he replied, but am just about to return. ‘Will you come with me?’

So I clambered into his little boat, and told my own ship to return to the Island of Fata Morgana. We sailed on and on, Pierrot enlivening the dim hours with his strange Moon-songs, until at last he brought the boat to anchor in a little bay, and I landed, for the first time, at the pale country of the Moon.

‘You know,’ I said to Pierrot, as we wandered among the fantastic green shadows, ‘I have always longed to visit the Moon. The World is so dull, now, and the Moon always seemed to us such a mad and merry place.’

Pierrot stared — ‘That is very strange! Up here we have always believed the reverse of that. And with good reason. Look for yourself!’ and he led me to the edge of the Moon; we peered over, and there, far below, was the great shining World, looking as big as ten Moons, and a hundred times madder and merrier.

‘Pierrot,’ I cried, ‘I have mis-judged the World! Good-bye, my friend!’ and I leaped into space.

I landed on the roof of the Headquarters of the Society for the Extension of Commercial Careers for Women.

— J.B. Priestley, Brief Diversions, 1922

| Society

Instant Romance

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wimpole_folly.JPG
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This will confuse archaeologists someday: In 1750 Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, commissioned a ruined medieval castle for the grounds of Wimpole Hall, his country house near Cambridge. The earl’s friend Lord Lyttleton described the project to architect Sanderson Miller:

[H]e wants no House or even Room in it, but mearly the Walls and Semblance of an Old castle to make an object from his house. At most he only desires to have a staircase carried up one of the Towers, and a leaded gallery half round it to stand in, and view the Prospect. It will have a fine Wood of Firrs for a backing behind it and will stand on an Eminence at a proper distance from his House. I ventured to promise that you should draw one for his Lordship that would be fitt for his Purpose. … I know that these works are an Amusement to you.

More than 30 sham ruins of castles and abbeys appeared in English landscape gardens in this period; Sanderson acquired a reputation as the “grand master of gothic.” Perhaps some of the ruins we ourselves have unearthed were planted there by ancient artists?

| Oddities

Extra!

Further ill-considered newspaper headlines gathered by readers of the Columbia Journalism Review:

MILK DRINKERS TURN TO POWDER (Detroit Free Press, Nov. 12, 1974)
COLUMNIST GETS UROLOGIST IN TROUBLE WITH HIS PEERS (Lewiston, Idaho, Morning Tribune, March 17, 1975)
STUD TIRES OUT (Ridgewood, N.J., News, March 30, 1978)
ALBANY TURNS TO GARBAGE (New York Daily News, Oct. 3, 1977)
PASTOR AGHAST AT FIRST LADY SEX POSITION (Alamogordo, N.M., Daily News, Aug. 13, 1975)
TIME FOR FOOTBALL AND MEATBALL STEW (Detroit Free Press, Oct. 19, 1977)
CHILD’S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN (Buffalo Courier-Express, June 23, 1977)
FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE (Atlanta Constitution, April 13, 1978)
DEAD EXPECTED TO RISE (Macon, Ga., News, Aug. 11, 1976)
CARIBBEAN ISLANDS DRIFT TO LEFT (Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 26, 1976)
NEW CHURCH PANNED (Albuquerque News, July 22, 1978)
CARTER TICKS OFF BLACK HELP (San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 1978)
DEER KILL 130,000 (Minneapolis Tribune, Dec. 7, 1967)
DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE (Lethbridge Herald, Oct. 30, 1976)
POLICE KILL MAN WITH AX (Charlotte Observer, Nov. 27, 1976)
YOUNG MAKES ZANZIBAR STOP (Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 4, 1977)
CHESTER MORRILL, 92, WAS FED SECRETARY (Washington Post, April 21, 1978)
PROSTITUTES APPEAL TO POPE (Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard, Dec. 18, 1975)

When the Carmichael, Calif., chamber of commerce received relatively few applications for its 1975 beauty pageant, the local Courier ran the headline FEW HAVE ENTERED MISS CARMICHAEL.

See News to Us.

| Language

Waste Not …

A puzzle from Polish mathematician Paul Vaderlind:

John is swimming upstream in a river when he loses his goggles. He lets them go and continues upstream for 10 minutes, then decides to turn around and retrieve them. He catches up with them at a point one half mile from the point where he lost them. Is the river flowing faster than 1 mile per hour? (Assume that John swims at the same strength throughout.)

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Pen Guidance

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

“The secret of playwriting can be given in two maxims: stick to the point and whenever you can, cut.” — W. Somerset Maugham

“I’ll give you the whole secret of short story writing, and here it is: Rule one, write stories that please yourself. There is no rule two. If you can’t write a story that pleases yourself, you’ll never please the public.” — O. Henry

| Literature

Better Safe

http://www.google.com/patents/US4963138

Nohl Braun’s “neonatal net,” patented in 1990, prevents any untoward accidents as you’re entering the world:

The neo-natal device of the present invention comprises, essentially, a net having connecting members on each side thereof adapted for connecting the net between the delivery table and the attending obstetrician, whereby the net is suspended over the space between the delivery table and the obstetrician, to thereby provide a safety net for catching the newborn infant in the event that the baby accidentally slips from the hands of the obstetrician.

This is particularly useful if the mother is whirling on a centrifuge.

| Technology

Twice Blessed

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

When Linus Pauling won his second Nobel Prize in 1962, he joked that receiving his second Nobel was less remarkable than receiving his first: The chance of anyone receiving his first Nobel Prize is one in several billion (the population of the world), while the chance of receiving his second is one in several hundred (the number of living people who have received one prize).

What’s wrong with this argument?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles