The Scenic Route

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Interplanetary_Superhighway.jpg

A thrifty space traveler can explore the solar system by following the Interplanetary Transport Network, a series of pathways determined by gravitation among the various bodies. By plotting the course carefully, a navigator can choose a route among the Lagrange points that exist between large masses, where it’s possible to change trajectory using very little energy.

In the NASA image above, the “tube” represents the highway along which it’s mathematically possible to travel, and the green ribbon is one such route.

The good news is that these paths lead to some interesting destinations, such as Earth’s moon and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. The bad news is that such a trip would take many generations. Virginia Tech’s Shane Ross writes, “Due to the long time needed to achieve the low energy transfers between planets, the Interplanetary Superhighway is impractical for transfers such as from Earth to Mars at present.”

| Science & Math

Podcast Episode 168: The Destruction of the Doves Type

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_T_J_Cobden-Sanderson_(1840-1922)_by_William_Rothenstein.png

In March 1913, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson threw the most beautiful typeface in the world off of London’s Hammersmith Bridge to keep it out of the hands of his estranged printing partner. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll explore what would lead a man to destroy the culmination of his life’s work — and what led one modern admirer to try to revive it.

We’ll also scrutinize a housekeeper and puzzle over a slumped child.

See full show notes …

| Art · History · Literature · Podcast · Technology

Ends and Means

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mydoglikes/27249865650
Image: Flickr

“I find to my delight that I can make my dog happy by wagging its tail for it.” — Reveille, letter to the editor, quoted in Michael Bateman, ed., This England, 1969

| Oddities

Black and White

piccinini chess puzzle

By Augusto Piccinini. Imagine that the board is a vertical cylinder, that is, that the a-file and the h-file are joined so that pieces can move across the border. How can White mate Black in two moves?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Lament

i'm tired of being a zero vector
i'm tired of being a zero vector
with no direction
         no dimension
                and no magnitude;
         what i need is another element
            -- but that would be
                 a contradiction
            of my definition

— Eileen Tupaz, a student at Ateneo University, Quezon City, Philippines, in Crux Mathematicorum 26:6 (June 2000), 337

| Poems

Wakeful Watchers

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xochimilco_Dolls%27_Island.jpg Image: Wikimedia Commons
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Mexico’s Isla de las Muñecas is a floating garden festooned with dolls — the story goes that a local man discovered a drowned girl, hung her doll from a tree as a gesture of remembrance, and was haunted by her spirit ever after, no matter how many dolls he hung. Today, inevitably, it’s a tourist attraction, but it’s still effective — photographer Cindy Vasko called it the creepiest place she’s ever visited.

Below: As her village has dwindled from 300 residents to 30, Japanese artist Ayano Tsukimi has been replacing them with dolls, life-sized figures made of cloth and stuffed with cotton and newspapers. The first was intended to be a scarecrow, but because it resembled her father she found that her neighbors interacted with it. In the ensuing 10 years she’s made hundreds.

“Every morning, I just greet them,” she told NPR. “I say ‘good morning’ or ‘have a nice day!’ I never get a response, but that doesn’t make a difference. I go around talking to them anyway.”

| Oddities

Mix and Match

{7442, 28658, 148583, 177458, 763442}

The sum of any two of these numbers is a perfect square:

7442 + 28658 = 1902

7442 + 148583 = 3952

7442 + 177458 = 4302

7442 + 763442 = 8782

28658 + 148583 = 4212

28658 + 177458 = 4542

28658 + 763442 = 8902

148583 + 177458 = 5712

148583 + 763442 = 9552

177458 + 763442 = 9702

Two other such sets:

{-15863902, 17798783, 21126338, 49064546, 82221218, 447422978}

{30823058, 63849842, 150187058, 352514183, 1727301842}

Whether there’s a set of six positive integers with this property is an open question.

(A.R. Thatcher, “Five Integers Which Sum in Pairs to Squares,” Mathematical Gazette 62:419 [March 1978], 25-29.)

| Science & Math

Wit and Sense

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johannes_Moreelse_-_Democritus_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

There is an association in men’s minds between dullness and wisdom, amusement and folly, which has a very powerful influence in decision upon character, and is not overcome without considerable difficulty. The reason is that the outward signs of a dull man and a wise man are the same, and so are the outward signs of a frivolous man and a witty man; and we are not to expect that the majority will be disposed to look to much more than the outward sign. I believe the fact to be that wit is very seldom the only eminent quality in the mind of any man; it is commonly accompanied by many other talents of every description, and ought to be considered as a strong evidence of a fertile and superior understanding.

— Sydney Smith, quoted in The Ladies’ Repository, September 1858

| Quotations · Society

A Tree to Climb

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stairs_carved_into_an_ancient_kauri_trunk_(Ancient_Kauri_Museum).jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

This enormous kauri tree towered for a thousand years over prehistoric New Zealand before it fell into a swamp, where the lack of oxygen and fungus preserved it for 45,000 years. Workers snapped two 90-ton-capacity winch cables trying to extract it in October 1994; finally they cut it into two sections of 110 and 30 tons and hauled them out separately.

Then David Stewart built a concrete pad 20 inches thick, placed a 50-ton section of log atop it, and spent 300 hours carving it with a chainsaw and 200 hours finishing it. At 12 feet in diameter and 17 feet tall, the result is the world’s largest (and certainly oldest) single-piece circular stairway … built inside the log.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/itravelnz/7458778052
Image: Flickr

(From Spike Carlsen, A Splintered History of Wood, 2008.)

| Oddities