512 × 1953125 = 1000000000
262144 × 3814697265625 = 1000000000000000000
8589934592 × 116415321826934814453125 = 1000000000000000000000000000000000
Author: Greg Ross
Return to Sender
On Sept. 30, 1826, a beachcomber found a bottle in the surf at Barbados. Inside was a penciled note:
The ship the Kent, Indiaman, is on fire. Elizabeth, Joanna, and myself commit our spirits into the hands of our blessed Redeemer; His grace enables us to be quite composed in the awful prospect of entering eternity. Dun. McGregor. 1st of March, 1825. Bay of Biscay.
Strangely, the note’s author arrived a short time later. Duncan MacGregor, now a lieutenant colonel in the 93rd Highlanders, had been a major bound for India when the Kent took fire. After he and his family had been rescued by a passing brig, an explosion aboard the burning vessel had cast the bottle into the sea, and it had floated across the Atlantic as if to rejoin him.
A regimental historian confirmed the story after MacGregor’s death in 1881. “[The note] is still preserved by his son, who was at the time of the loss of the Kent a child of only five weeks old, and was the first saved from the wreck.”
(Thanks, Evan.)
Great Men
Dr. Franklin had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one-half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbé Raynal. During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of man in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor, at length, noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests at table, ‘Come,’ says he, ‘M. l’Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one-half Americans and one-half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated.’ It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those on the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one.
— Thomas Jefferson, quoted in James Parton, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, 1864
Unquote
“Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” — Gertrude Stein
Skyward
In 1964, as the Apollo program prepared to land a man on the moon, it received unexpected news from Zambia. “I’ll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965,” announced Edward Mukaka Nkoloso, a grade-school science teacher and director-general of the Zambian National Academy of Space Research.
“We are using our own system, derived from the catapult,” he explained. It would fire a 10-foot aluminum and copper rocket that would carry 10 Zambian astronauts ultimately to Mars.
“I’m getting them acclimatized to space travel by placing them in my space capsule every day. It’s a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope — this produces the feeling of free fall.”
Unfortunately, “I’ve had trouble with my spacemen and spacewomen,” Nkoloso complained. “They won’t concentrate on spaceflight; there’s too much lovemaking when they should be studying the moon. Matha Mwamba, the 17-year-old girl who has been chosen to be the first woman on Mars, has also to feed her 10 cats, who will be her companions on her long space flight.”
The U.N. denied the £700 million Nkoloso needed “to really get going,” but his enthusiasm remained undiminished. In 1968 he congratulated the returning Apollo 8 team but urged: “Let us make a Zambian rocket today. We shall never be content to remain behind other races. This is our heavenly destiny, our natural ambition and cultural hegemony.”
Black and White
“A Tragic Calendar”
JANet was quite ill one day.
FEBrile troubles came her way.
MARtyr-like she lay in bed;
APRoned nurses softly sped.
“MAYbe,” said the leech judicial,
“JUNket would be beneficial.”
JULeps, too, though freely tried,
AUGured ill, for Janet died.
SEPulcher was sadly made;
OCTaves pealed and prayers were said.
NOVices with many a tear
DECorated Janet’s bier.
— Carolyn Wells, Folly for the Wise, 1904
Cheaters’ Chopsticks
In 1987, Gerald L. Printz addressed a familiar problem:
The use of chopsticks requires a great deal of dexterity, making their use impossible by those without training, and often making their use undesirable by those who do not use them regularly, but who do not wish to risk the embarrassment of dropping or otherwise mishandling the food they are eating. … Accordingly, those wishing to avoid embarrassment while eating often must break with Oriental custom by opting for the less-embarrassing and less enjoyable alternative of using Western-style utensils when eating Oriental cuisine.
Printz’s invention solves this by adding detachable Western-style utensil heads (forks, spoons, etc.) to the sticks’ ends, “which does not require the skilled manipulation of chopsticks.” He notes that even skilled users of chopsticks might prefer this when eating rice or noodles, “due to the tweezerlike manner in which chopsticks grasp such foods.”
Invention
To find a rhyme for silver
Or any “rhymeless” rhyme
Requires only will, ver-
Bosity and time.
— Stephen Sondheim
Round Trip
A problem by Hungarian mathematician Laszlo Lovász:
A track has n arbitrarily spaced fuel depots. Each depot contains a quantity of gasoline; the total amount of gas is exactly enough to take us around the track once. Prove that, no matter how the gas is distributed, there will be a depot at which an empty car can fill up, proceed around the track picking up gas at each depot, and complete a full round trip back to its starting depot.