You know the watch argument was [William] Paley’s greatest effort. A man finds a watch and it is so wonderful that he concludes that it must have had a maker. He finds the maker and he is so much more wonderful than the watch that he says he must have had a maker. Then he finds God, the maker of the man, and he is so much more wonderful than the man that he could not have had a maker. This is what the lawyers call a departure in pleading.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, “Why I Am an Agnostic,” 1896
Seinfeld began and ended with the same line.
The Massachusetts School Law of 1642 declared ignorance to be a satanic ill:
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with love and false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; [we resolve] that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors.
It ordered every town of more than 50 families to hire a teacher and every town of more than 100 families to establish a grammar school, an early step toward public education in the United States.
Artist Gert Neuhaus painted this mural on a Berlin wall in 1989.
He called it The Phoenix.
(Thanks, Steve.)
A puzzle by Y. Ionin, from the September/October 1990 issue of Quantum:
Three frogs occupy three vertices of a square. When one frog jumps over another, it lands beyond it at the same distance that had originally separated them. Can any frog reach the fourth vertex?
In a French journal Oscar Wilde once saw the drawing of a bonnet.
Under it were the words “With this style the mouth is worn slightly open.”
A puzzle by Steven T., a systems engineer at the National Security Agency, from the NSA’s September 2016 Puzzle Periodical:
Three athletes (and only three athletes) participate in a series of track and field events. Points are awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each event (the same points for each event, i.e. 1st always gets “x” points, 2nd always gets “y” points, 3rd always gets “z” points), with x > y > z > 0, and all point values being integers.
The athletes are named Adam, Bob, and Charlie.
Question: Who finished second in the 100-meter dash (and why)?
In a 1963 issue of Bokmakierie, a magazine for birdwatchers, Frank A. Goodliffe described a curiously familiar species he called Clericus polydenominata, the “dog-collared sombre blackbird”:
Identification: Similar to common laity but plumage and behaviour should serve to differentiate. Plumage black with narrow white collar — unbroken at throat. Feet black, of leathery appearance. Beak pink — often with blueish tint during winter months. When in groups are often seen with wings folded behind rump. … Habits: Usually found congregating with flocks of common laity, the females of which are frequently seen with plumage of vivid colours. Nesting: This usually occurs close to old buildings with spires. They are usually very friendly and may be seen around nesting sites of common laity at tea-time. … Call: The voice is distinctive, commencing ‘Brrrrr–rethren’ and continuing low and pleasant — often prolonged. Usually sings in congregations.
In a private booklet published four years later, M.A. Traylor suggested that the species belonged in the family of bishop birds.
