A do-it-yourself dancing highlander, from Frank Bellew’s The Art of Amusing (1866). Cut him out, stitch him to a glove, and make little socks for your fingers.
“You move about the fingers, simulating a man dancing the Highland-fling or double-shuffle, and the result will be very curious and eminently satisfactory.”
Here’s an achievement — in 1936 Buckminster Fuller explained Einstein’s theory of relativity in a telegram:
EINSTEIN’S FORMULA DETERMINATION INDIVIDUAL SPECIFICS RELATIVITY READS QUOTE ENERGY EQUALS MASS TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT SQUARED UNQUOTE SPEED OF LIGHT IDENTICAL SPEED ALL RADIATION COSMIC GAMMA X ULTRA VIOLET INFRA RED RAYS ETCETERA ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY SIX THOUSAND MILES PER SECOND WHICH SQUARED IS TOP OR PERFECT SPEED GIVING SCIENCE A FINITE VALUE FOR BASIC FACTOR IN MOTION UNIVERSE STOP SPEED OF RADIANT ENERGY BEING DIRECTIONAL OUTWARD ALL DIRECTIONS EXPANDING WAVE SURFACE DIAMETRIC POLAR SPEED AWAY FROM SELF IS TWICE SPEED IN ONE DIRECTION AND SPEED OF VOLUME INCREASE IS SQUARE OF SPEED IN ONE DIRECTION APPROXIMATELY THIRTY FIVE BILLION VOLUMETRIC MILES PER SECOND STOP FORMULA IS WRITTEN QUOTE LETTER E FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY EQUATION MARK FOLLOWED BY LETTER M FOLLOWED BY LETTER C FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY ELEVATED SMALL FIGURE TWO SYMBOL OF SQUARING UNQUOTE ONLY VARIABLE IN FORMULA IS SPECIFIC MASS SPEED IS A UNIT OF RATE WHICH IS AN INTEGRATED RATIO OF BOTH TIME AND SPACE AND NO GREATER RATE OF SPEED THAN THAT PROVIDED BY ITS CAUSE WHICH IS PURE ENERGY LATENT OR RADIANT IS ATTAINABLE STOP THE FORMULA THEREFORE PROVIDES A UNIT AND A RATE OF PERFECTION TO WHICH THE RELATIVE IMPERFECTION OF INEFFICIENCY OF ENERGY RELEASE IN RADIANT OR CONFINED DIRECTION OF ALL TEMPORAL SPACE PHENOMENA MAY BE COMPARED BY ACTUAL CALCULATION STOP SIGNIFICANCE STOP SPECIFIC QUALITY OF ANIMATES IS CONTROL WILLFUL OR OTHERWISE OF RATE AND DIRECTION ENERGY RELEASE AND APPLICATION NOT ONLY OF SELF MECHANISM BUT OF FROM SELF MACHINE DIVIDED MECHANISMS AND RELATIVITY OF ALL ANIMATES AND INANIMATES IS POTENTIAL OF ESTABLISHMENT THROUGH EINSTEIN FORMULA
The artist Isamu Noguchi was working on a commemorative sculpture in Mexico and had forgotten the precise formula E=mc2. Fuller not only described the formula but explained it — in 264 words.
04/22/2019 UPDATE: In 2009 artist Elisabetta Benassi reproduced the telegram in a carpet.
“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” — Salvador Dali
Two problems that will make you want to throw a chair at someone, from John Jackson, Rational Amusements for Winter Evenings, 1821:
I.
If from six ye take nine, and from nine ye take ten
(Ye youths, now the mystery explain;)
And if fifty from forty be taken, there then,
Shall just half a dozen remain.
II.
One third of twelve, if you divide,
By just one fifth of seven,
The true result (it has been tried,)
Exactly is eleven.
How? Why?
leighster
n. a female liar
In 1920, Gaitley Guise patented a rubber “tongue shield” to prevent “the unpleasantness accompanying the taking of medicine.”
“Medicine will flow over the shield and pass into the throat without affecting the sense of taste so that all unpleasantness of taking the medicine is obviated.”
Presumably it also works with broccoli.
No one knows who compiled the index for George Mivart’s 1889 book The Origin of Human Reason, but apparently he had strong opinions. On page 136 Mivart describes a certain cockatoo that seemed to reply articulately to questions. The indexer made these entries:
Absurd tale about a Cockatoo, 136
Anecdote, absurd one, about a Cockatoo, 136
Bathos and a Cockatoo, 136
Cockatoo, absurd tale concerning one, 136
Discourse held with a Cockatoo, 136
Incredibly absurd tale of a Cockatoo, 136
Invalid Cockatoo, absurd tale about, 136
Mr. —– and tale about a Cockatoo, 136
Preposterous tale about a Cockatoo, 136
Questions answered by a Cockatoo, 136
R—–, Mr. and tale about a Cockatoo, 136
Rational Cockatoo as asserted, 136
Tale about a rational Cockatoo, as asserted, 136
Very absurd tale about a Cockatoo, 136
Wonderfully foolish tale about a Cockatoo, 136
The same index contains entries for “Opening of oysters by monkeys” and “Dough, parrot up to its knees in.” Perhaps the man was just very thorough.
Somebody asked the Baron Rothschild to take venison.—’No,’ said the Baron, ‘I never eatsh wenshon, I don’t think it ish so coot ash mutton.’—’Oh,’ said the Baron’s friend, ‘I wonder at your saying so. If mutton were better than venison, why does venison cost so much more?’ ‘Vy,’ replied the Baron, ‘I vill tell you vy—in dish world de peoples alvaysh prefers vat ish deer to vat is sheep.’
— “Anecdote of Sir Richard Jebb,” recounted in A Collection of Newspaper Extracts, 1842
Anonymous German picture puzzle, 19th century.
Draw your own conclusions.
Imagine two men. The first is standing in a garage. The second runs into the garage carrying a ladder.
Special relativity tells us that a moving object undergoes a length contraction relative to its observer. So the man in the garage sees the ladder shorten to fit in the garage.
But the man with the ladder sees the garage shorten relative to himself — so the ladder doesn’t fit.
How is this possible?
