“Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” — Gertrude Stein
Skyward
In 1964, as the Apollo program prepared to land a man on the moon, it received unexpected news from Zambia. “I’ll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965,” announced Edward Mukaka Nkoloso, a grade-school science teacher and director-general of the Zambian National Academy of Space Research.
“We are using our own system, derived from the catapult,” he explained. It would fire a 10-foot aluminum and copper rocket that would carry 10 Zambian astronauts ultimately to Mars.
“I’m getting them acclimatized to space travel by placing them in my space capsule every day. It’s a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope — this produces the feeling of free fall.”
Unfortunately, “I’ve had trouble with my spacemen and spacewomen,” Nkoloso complained. “They won’t concentrate on spaceflight; there’s too much lovemaking when they should be studying the moon. Matha Mwamba, the 17-year-old girl who has been chosen to be the first woman on Mars, has also to feed her 10 cats, who will be her companions on her long space flight.”
The U.N. denied the £700 million Nkoloso needed “to really get going,” but his enthusiasm remained undiminished. In 1968 he congratulated the returning Apollo 8 team but urged: “Let us make a Zambian rocket today. We shall never be content to remain behind other races. This is our heavenly destiny, our natural ambition and cultural hegemony.”
Black and White
“A Tragic Calendar”
JANet was quite ill one day.
FEBrile troubles came her way.
MARtyr-like she lay in bed;
APRoned nurses softly sped.
“MAYbe,” said the leech judicial,
“JUNket would be beneficial.”
JULeps, too, though freely tried,
AUGured ill, for Janet died.
SEPulcher was sadly made;
OCTaves pealed and prayers were said.
NOVices with many a tear
DECorated Janet’s bier.
— Carolyn Wells, Folly for the Wise, 1904
Cheaters’ Chopsticks
In 1987, Gerald L. Printz addressed a familiar problem:
The use of chopsticks requires a great deal of dexterity, making their use impossible by those without training, and often making their use undesirable by those who do not use them regularly, but who do not wish to risk the embarrassment of dropping or otherwise mishandling the food they are eating. … Accordingly, those wishing to avoid embarrassment while eating often must break with Oriental custom by opting for the less-embarrassing and less enjoyable alternative of using Western-style utensils when eating Oriental cuisine.
Printz’s invention solves this by adding detachable Western-style utensil heads (forks, spoons, etc.) to the sticks’ ends, “which does not require the skilled manipulation of chopsticks.” He notes that even skilled users of chopsticks might prefer this when eating rice or noodles, “due to the tweezerlike manner in which chopsticks grasp such foods.”
Invention
To find a rhyme for silver
Or any “rhymeless” rhyme
Requires only will, ver-
Bosity and time.
— Stephen Sondheim
Round Trip
A problem by Hungarian mathematician Laszlo Lovász:
A track has n arbitrarily spaced fuel depots. Each depot contains a quantity of gasoline; the total amount of gas is exactly enough to take us around the track once. Prove that, no matter how the gas is distributed, there will be a depot at which an empty car can fill up, proceed around the track picking up gas at each depot, and complete a full round trip back to its starting depot.
Occupational Privilege
A member of Congress can’t be sued for libel and slander for anything he says on the floor of the House or Senate. This immunity extends to committee hearings and to material he publishes in the Congressional Record.
The framers of the Constitution wanted to protect legislators from the harassment that critics of the British king had suffered in Parliament.
Survival of the Fittest
In 1499, a bear which had been terrorizing a German village and had killed people, was captured and brought to trial. The attorney appointed to defend the bear was allowed to argue for days that the animal had the right to be judged by a jury of its peers (that is, other bears). However, the animal was tried and convicted by human beings. It was sentenced to dangle from the public gallows until relatives of its victims stoned the bear to death.
— Thomas J. Gardner and Victor Manian, Criminal Law: Principles, Cases and Readings, 1975
Table and Tumblers
This problem originated in Russia, according to various sources, but no one’s sure precisely where:
Before you is a square table that can rotate freely. In each corner is a deep well, at the bottom of which is a tumbler that’s either upright or inverted. You can’t see the tumblers, but you can reach into the wells to feel their positions.
Periodically the table rotates and stops at random. After each stop, you can feel two of the tumblers and turn over either, both, or neither. If all four of the tumblers are in the same state — all upright or all inverted — then a bell sounds. Otherwise the table rotates again and you make another “move.”
Can you guarantee to ring the bell in a finite number of moves? If so, how?