Can a fraction whose numerator is less than its denominator be equal to a fraction whose numerator is greater than its denominator? If not, how can
In the proportion
+6 : -3 :: -10 : +5
is not either extreme greater than either mean? What has become of the old rule, ‘greater is to less as greater is to less’?
— William Frank White, A Scrap-Book of Elementary Mathematics, 1908
Green River, Wyo., is certainly neighborly: In 1994, when NASA determined that up to six meteors might strike Jupiter, Green River’s city council designated an airstrip south of town as the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. They asked NASA to broadcast the news to any fleeing Jovians and warned residents to “prepare themselves to make welcome any refugees who might cast themselves upon our mercy.”
Mayor George Eckman told the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner, “I feel it is a gesture that could be made and should be made by someone on the planet Earth to fellow citizens of the solar system.”
The two council members who opposed the resolution pointed out that the region already has a problem with illegal aliens and noted the local housing shortage. But the mile-long runway remains open.
LONDON — Mrs. Kathleen Cameron, 19, was amazed at how hard and fast carpenters worked to tear down the pre-fab house next door at 10 Jardin Street.
‘I didn’t become suspicious of the four men until they skipped their tea break to continue working,’ she said.
Sure enough, the carpenters were thieves who stole the five-room house in its entirety. By the time police arrived, they were gone.
— Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Sept. 12, 1971
In July 2008 an unrecognizable creature washed up on a beach on Long Island. Local resident Jenna Hewitt took this photo, which appeared in the local newspaper The Independent. What is it? No explanation quite adds up:
Some speculate that the animal was an escapee from the nearby Plum Island Animal Disease Center. William Wise, director of Stony Brook University’s Living Marine Resources Institute, flatly calls it a fake, the product of “someone who got very creative with latex.” The carcass has since been lost, so we’ll never know for sure.
Allain Eustis’ “device for assisting infirm persons,” patented in 1895, is essentially a plate for shoving old people up stairs.
Eustis notes that the arrangement of the harness “avoids chafing the assistant.” Evidently he’d had a lot of experience at this.
What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!
When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off without apol.
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realize that time is mon.
My sense remains as clear as cryst.,
My style as pure as any duch.
Who does not boast a bar sinist.
Upon her fam. escutch.,
And I can treat with scornful pit.
The sneers of ev’ry captious crit.
I gladly publish to the pop.
A scheme of which I make no myst.,
And beg my fellow scribes to cop.
This labor-saving syst.
I offer it to the consid.
Of ev’ry thoughtful individ.
The author, working like a beav.,
His readers’ pleasure could redoub.,
Did he but now and then abbrev.
The works he gives his pub.,
Did Upton Sinc. or Edith Whart.
Curtail their output by a quart.
If Mr. Caine rewrote “The Scape.”,
And Miss Corell. condensed “Barabb.”,
What could they save in foolscap pape.
Did they but cultivate the hab.
Which teaches people to suppress
All syllables that are unnec.!
If playwrights would but thus dimin.
The length of time each drama takes
(“The Second Mrs. Tanq.” by Pin.
Or even “Ham.” by Shakes.),
We could maintain a wakeful att.
When at a mat. on Wed. or Sat.
Foll. my examp., O Maurice Hewl.
When next you cater for the mill.;
You, too, immortal Mr. Dool.
And Ella Wheeler Wil.;
And share with me the grave respons.
Of writing this amazing nons.!
— Harry Graham, in Life, December 1909
What’s the longest “narrow” word — the longest word whose handwritten letters keep tidily to the middle of the line?
Dmitri Borgmann considered this question in 1965 and came up with overnervousnesses and overnumerousnesses — 17 and 18 letters.
In 1973 Darryl Francis sought the opposite — “tall” words made up entirely of letters that ascend above the mean line or descend below it. He discovered if, hip, glib, lipid, highly, fifthly, filthify, flightily, and lillypilly.
“I must tell you that my wife has a theory that only thin people can talk English well,” Bismarck told journalist Henri de Blowitz in 1878. “According to this, neither you nor I will make our mark in that language.”
Psychologist Adelbert Ames, inventor of the Ames room, also devised this illusion. In which direction is the window turning?
“Don’t waste your time on the branches small,”
Said the farmer to his son,
“But lay your axe at the root of the tree,
So your work is sooner done.”
Then, like a good and obedient boy,
Not a word back did he say,
But he laid his axe at the root of the tree,
And went off and fished all day.
— Newton Mackintosh, Precious Nonsense!, 1895
John VI of Portugal was hard of hearing, so he had a throne built whose leonine arms captured sound and directed it to a listening tube.
“Requiring anyone who wishes to speak with you to kneel and address you through the jaws of your carved lion might be fun for an hour or so,” notes neuroscientist Jan Schnupp, “but few psychologically well-balanced individuals would choose to hold the majority of conversations in that manner.”
Alfonso XIII of Spain was “the most tone-deaf man I ever knew,” remembered Artur Rubinstein. “From the time he was seven, he was accompanied by a man assigned to nudge him whenever the national anthem was played.”
