“He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.” — Cato
Author: Greg Ross
“The Best Bridge Problem Ever Invented”
I don’t play bridge, so I’m posting this somewhat blindly. It was devised by W.H. Whitfeld, card editor of the Field, apparently in the late 19th century. The reader who submitted it to the Strand wrote, “If you don’t know the solution, I guarantee that it will take you or any of your staff three or four days.”
“We have a higher opinion of our readers’ skill than to allot them such a time-limit as this,” wrote the editors. “But certainly anyone who can solve this problem in three or four hours will have good cause to be congratulated on his ingenuity.”
Rimshot
This guy takes a gorilla out golfing. At the first tee the gorilla says, “So what am I supposed to do?” The guy says, “You see that green area about 400 yards from here? You’re supposed to hit the ball onto that.” So the gorilla takes a club and whacks the ball and it soars up into the sky and drops down neatly on the green. The guy tees off and makes about 150 yards, so he hits an iron shot and then another iron shot and finally they arrive at the green. The gorilla says, “What do I do now?” The guy says, “Now you hit it into that cup.” The gorilla says, “Why didn’t you tell me that back there?”
In a Word
mussitate
v. to mutter under one’s breath
… Tock
Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart asks, “In what units is the rate of time flow to be measured? Seconds per — what?”
To Whom It May Concern
Visiting France in 1777, Benjamin Franklin received hundreds of inquiries from ardent Frenchmen seeking to join the American army. Finally he penned a “model of a letter of recommendation of a person you are unacquainted with”:
Sir.–The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be; I recommend him however to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to, and I request you will do him all the good offices and show him all the favour that, on acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, &c.
Misc
- Cain killed a quarter of the world’s population.
- Spencer Tracy’s 1937 Oscar was engraved DICK TRACY.
- 15626 = 1 + 56×2-6
- NINE TEN ELEVEN alternates vowels and consonants.
- “Can you play chess without the queen?” — Wittgenstein
Home Tune
It’s said that when Gustave Doré bought a villa on the outskirts of Paris, he had this notation inscribed over the entrance:
Do mi si la do re = “Domicile à Doré.” Get it?
Longfellow wrote, “Music is the universal language of mankind.”
Missing the Boat
We may safely suppose that the ocean ships of a hundred years hence will be driven by energy of some kind transmitted from the shores on either side. It is absolutely unquestionable that no marine engine in the least resembling what we know to-day can meet the requirements of the new age. The expense of driving a steamship increases in such a ratio to its size and speed that the economic limits of steam propulsion are foreseen. Probably the ships of A.D. 2000 will differ entirely in appearance from those we know. Just as road friction is the bugbear of the railway engineer, so water-resistance is the bugbear of the marine engineer. The ships of a hundred years hence will not lie in the water. They will tower above the surface, merely skimming it with their keels, and the only engines they will carry will be those which receive and utilise the energy transmitted to them from the power-houses ashore — perhaps worked by the force of the very tides of the conquered ocean itself.
— T. Baron Russell, A Hundred Years Hence, 1906
The Cable Guy Paradox
The cable guy is coming tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Let’s bet on whether he turns up in the morning or the afternoon.
Both windows are four hours long, so as we sit here today, it seems rational to treat them as equally likely. But suppose you choose the morning. As the clock begins to tick, the morning window will gradually close, making the afternoon seem increasingly preferable. Though your present self regards the two eventualities as equally likely, it seems that your future self won’t. Should that affect your decision today?
(In my experience the guy never turns up at all, so perhaps that solves it.)
Hajek, Alan (2005), “The Cable Guy Paradox,” Analysis 65: 112-19.