- Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s.
- Rudyard Kipling invented snow golf.
- ENUMERATION = MOUNTAINEER
- Can you see your eyes move in a mirror?
- 26364 = 263 × 6/4
- “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.” — Montaigne
Higher Things
On a television show, Eddie Fisher complained to George S. Kaufman that women refused to date him because he looked so young. Kaufman considered this and replied:
“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to 24 times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to detect my interest in your problem.”
Coming Through
As railroads were claiming the American West in the 1880s, they ran into a problem — stray cattle and horses kept wandering onto the tracks. What to do?
In 1883 La Fayette Willson Page of Tennessee suggested a spray attachment that would direct a stream of water from the engine’s boiler:
In 1885 Mississippi inventor William Bell proposed a Dr.-Seuss-like set of tongs that would extend a whistle and a spray nozzle closer to the livestock:
And in 1888 Jack William James, also of Tennessee, went full-on crazy and suggested a flatcar mounted with a dummy that would “throw up both hands at each revolution of the wheel and strike [a] gong with a hammer”:
I desperately wish this had caught on. How stubborn are Tennessee cows?
Trivium
Weirton, W.Va., is the only town in the United States that borders two different states on opposite sides.
The town borders Ohio directly on the west and Pennsylvania on the east.
Cleaning House
Upend Congress and pour its members onto Constitution Avenue. Each member has up to three enemies. Prove that it’s possible to pack the 535 members back into the House and Senate in such a way that none of them has more than one enemy in his chamber. (Enmity is always mutual — I am my enemy’s enemy — and the chambers need not retain their former sizes.)
“The Ten Travelers”
Ten weary, footsore travelers,
All in a woeful plight,
Sought shelter at a wayside inn
One dark and stormy night.
“Nine beds — no more,” the landlord said,
“Have I to offer you;
To each of eight a single room,
But the ninth must serve for two.”
A din arose. The troubled host
Could only scratch his head,
For of those tired men, not two
Could occupy one bed.
The puzzled host was soon at ease —
He was a clever man —
And so to please his guests devised
This most ingenious plan.
In room marked A, two men were placed,
The third he lodged in B,
The fourth to C was then assigned —
The fifth retired to D.
In E the sixth he tucked away,
In F the seventh man;
The eighth and ninth in G and H,
And then to A he ran,
Wherein the host, as I have said,
Had laid two travelers by;
Then taking one, the tenth and last,
He lodged him safe in I.
Nine single rooms — a room for each —
Were made to serve for ten.
And this it is that puzzles me
And many wiser men.
— S.R. Ford, Ford’s Christian Repository & Home Circle, May 1888
Unquote
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” — John Ruskin
Scandal
A puzzle from Lewis Carroll’s diary:
The Dodo says that the Hatter tells lies.
The Hatter says that the March Hare tells lies.
The March Hare says that both the Dodo and the Hatter tell lies.
Who is telling the truth?
Second Thoughts
Florida bankruptcy judge A. Jay Cristol had moved to dismiss a case in 1986 when he reconsidered, inspired by “a little old ebony bird.” He filed this explanation:
Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered weak and weary
Over many quaint and curious files of chapter seven lore
While I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door,
“‘Tis some debtor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door–
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah distinctly I recall, it was in the early fall
And the file still was small
The Code provided I could use it
If someone tried to substantially abuse it
No party asked that it be heard.
“Sua sponte” whispered a small black bird.
The bird himself, my only maven,
Strongly looked to be a raven.
Upon the words the bird had uttered
I gazed at all the files cluttered
“Sua sponte,” I recall, had no meaning; none at all.
And the cluttered files sprawl, drove a thought into my brain.
Eagerly I wished the morrow–vainly I had sought to borrow
From BAFJA, surcease of sorrow–and an order quick and plain
That this case would not remain as a source of further pain.
The procedure, it seemed plain.
As the case grew older, I perceived I must be bolder.
And must sua sponte act, to determine every fact,
If primarily consumer debts, are faced,
Perhaps this case is wrongly placed.
This is a thought that I must face, perhaps I should dismiss this case.
I moved sua sponte to dismiss it for I knew I would not miss it.
The Code said I could, I knew it.
But not exactly how to do it, or perhaps some day I’d rue it.
I leaped up and struck my gavel.
For the mystery to unravel
Could I? Should I? Sua sponte, grant my motion to dismiss?
While it seemed the thing to do, suddenly I thought of this.
Looking, looking towards the future and to what there was to see
If my motion, it was granted and an appeal came to be,
Who would be the appellee? Surely, it would not be me.
Who would file, but pray tell me, a learned brief for the appellee
The District Judge would not do so
At least this much I do know.
Tell me raven, how to go.
As I with the ruling wrestled
In the statute I saw nestled
A presumption with a flavor clearly in the debtor’s favor.
No evidence had I taken
Sua sponte appeared foresaken.
Now my motion caused me terror
A dismissal would be error.
Upon consideration of § 707(b), in anguish, loud I cried
The court’s sua sponte motion to dismiss under § 707(b) is denied.
Late
Alexander Woollcott asked that his ashes be scattered at his alma mater, Hamilton College in Utica, N.Y.
Somehow they were misdirected to Colgate University, and they arrived at Hamilton with 67 cents postage due.
He once wrote, “Many of us spend half of our time wishing for things we could have if we didn’t spend half our time wishing.”