Fooled Again

Court transcript quoted by Rodney Jones in Disorderly Conduct: Verbatim Excerpts From Actual Cases, 1987:

The Court: I got the Quadrophenia, but then he said somebody played in it, and I didn’t get that.

Prosecutor: The Who.

The Court: The what?

Witness: Musicians.

Prosecutor: The Who.

Witness: The Who.

The Court: Who?

Witness: The Who. That’s the name of the band.

The Court: So that’s the name of the group, the Who?

Witness: Yes, the Who.

The Court: Not the What? The Who?

Witness: No, the Who.

The Court: You got it, everybody? The Quadrophenia is a movie with the Who.

Witness: Punk rockers.

The Court: All right.

January 31, 2011January 29, 2011 | Language

Misc

ALONE and UPRAISE can be beheaded twice and retain their essential meanings.
Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was named Evelyn.
1033 = 8¹ + 8⁰ + 8³ + 8³
Can a shadow rotate?
“Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.” — Benjamin Franklin

Math Notes

20864448472975628947226005981267194447042584001 = (2 + 0 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 8 + 4 + 7 + 2 + 9 + 7 + 5 + 6 + 2 + 8 + 9 + 4 + 7 + 2 + 2 + 6 + 0 + 0 + 5 + 9 + 8 + 1 + 2 + 6 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 7 + 0 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 8 + 4 + 0 + 0 + 1)²⁰

January 30, 2011January 29, 2011 | Science & Math

Moving Without Motion?

Achilles-weed is prostrate and grows along the ground at the amazing rate of 10 cm per hour. An exceeding slow tortoise munches one end of the Achilles-weed at the same rate as it grows at the other end. So the tortoise appears to chase the Achilles-weed round the garden. But, strictly speaking, the Achilles-weed does not move at all, it grows and is eaten. Yet its location changes, and it is made up of parts whose location changes (the left and right-hand halves of the Achilles-weed). Hence being made up of parts whose location changes is not sufficient for motion.

— Peter Forrest, “Is Motion Change of Location?”, Analysis, 1984

January 30, 2011January 28, 2011 | Science & Math

Black and White

Sam Loyd chess puzzle, Detroit Free Press, 01-27-1877

By Sam Loyd. White to mate in two moves.

	Select Click for Answer
1. Qa1 and White will mate next move. From the Detroit Free Press, Jan. 27, 1877.

January 29, 2011January 27, 2013 | Puzzles

Dueling Doppelgängers

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Germany enlisted a large ocean liner, the Cap Trafalgar, to attack British merchant ships around Cape Horn. While at a supply base on Trinidade, it was surprised by the HMS Carmania, a British liner that had been similarly pressed into service by the British navy.

The two enormous ships squared off and fought a murderous sea battle. In the end the Cap Trafalgar sank, and the Carmania limped away to a Brazilian port.

An observer might still have wondered which side won — by an ironic coincidence, the Cap Trafalgar had been disguised as the Carmania and the Carmania as the Cap Trafalgar.

January 29, 2011January 28, 2011 | History · Oddities

Smoldering Chic

This should have caught on — Watson P. Aull’s “cigarette ring,” patented in 1938, clamps a cigarette in a ring worn on the left forefinger, so that the smoker has full use of her hands.

Here’s a related stunt from R.M. Abraham’s Diversions & Pastimes (1933):

“A cigarette may be lit quite easily by holding it 4 or 5 inches above the flame of the match.”

I haven’t tried it.

January 28, 2011January 28, 2011 | Entertainment · Technology

Book Perils

“I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book, and ransack every page.” — Emerson

“When we read, we are, we must be, repeating the words to ourselves unconsciously; for how else should we discover, as we have all discovered in our time, that we have been mispronouncing a word which, in fact, we have never spoken? I refer to such words as ‘misled,’ which I, and millions of others when young, supposed to be ‘mizzled.'” — A.A. Milne

“It is one of the oddest things in the world that you can read a page or more and think of something utterly different.” — Christian Morgenstern

January 28, 2011January 26, 2011 | Literature

A Pretty Problem

In Longfellow’s novel Kavanagh, Mr. Churchill reads a word problem to his wife:

“In a lake the bud of a water-lily was observed, one span above the water, and when moved by the gentle breeze, it sunk in the water at two cubits’ distance. Required the depth of the water.”

“That is charming, but must be very difficult,” she says. “I could not answer it.”

Is it? If a span is 9 inches and a cubit is 18 inches, how deep is the water?

	Select Click for Answer
At the water’s surface, the bud marks one vertex of a right triangle. If the depth of the water is x inches, then (x + 9)² = x² + 36². If my algebra is good, then x = 67.5 inches. Mr. Churchill was quoting the 12th-century Sanskrit text Lilavati, in which the problem first appeared, to show his wife that mathematics can be poetic: In a certain lake swarming with geese and cranes, The tip of a bud of lotus was seen one span above the water. Forced by the wind, it gradually moved, and was submerged at a distance of two cubits. O mathematician, tell quickly the depth of the water. “There is something divine in the science of numbers,” Churchill tells her. “Like God, it holds the sea in the hollow of its hand. It measures the earth; it weighs the stars; it illumines the universe; it is law, it is order, it is beauty. And yet we imagine–that is, most of us–that its highest end and culminating point is book-keeping by double entry. It is our way of teaching it that makes it so prosaic.” (Thanks, Shreevatsa.)

Click for Answer

January 28, 2011January 27, 2013 | Literature · Puzzles · Science & Math

Unquote

“Snow is a faked cleanliness.” — Goethe

January 27, 2011January 25, 2011 | Quotations