Current Affairs

At 1:17 one afternoon a canoeist left his riverside camp and paddled upstream at 4 mph against a current of 1.5 mph. At 2:05 he passed a corked bottle floating downstream and noticed that it contained a message. He paddled some distance further but finally couldn’t help himself — he turned around and paddled after the bottle. He caught it just as it reached his camp. The message read:

HOW FAR DID YOU GET FROM CAMP BEFORE YOU GAVE IN TO YOUR CURIOSITY?

“There is no reason why the camper should have paid any attention to this odd message, but you know how these things are,” writes Geoffrey Mott-Smith in Mathematical Puzzles for Beginners and Enthusiasts (1946). The camper had noticed a landmark at the point upstream where he’d turned around, so he was able to measure the distance the next day. But he could have reasoned the thing out from the facts. Can you?

	Select Click for Answer
The camper reached a point 3 2/3 miles from his camp. First he paddled upstream at a net rate of 2.5 mph for 48 minutes and thus met the bottle at a point 2 miles above camp. From that point the bottle took 80 minutes to float down to camp. The canoeist spent half that time paddling upstream and half downstream (the two times must be equal). In 40 minutes paddling upstream he traveled another 1 2/3 miles, for a total of 3 2/3 miles. A simple way to see why the 80 minutes must be halved is to imagine that we can turn off the river’s current. In that case the canoeist is simply paddling at a steady rate away from the bottle and back to it.

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August 24, 2010January 25, 2013 | Puzzles

Future Perfect

“It makes no more sense to talk of changing the future than it does to talk of changing the past. Suppose that I decide to change the future, by having coffee for breakfast tomorrow instead of my usual tea. Have I changed the future? No. For coffee for breakfast was the future. It has been objected to me that the above argument is perhaps misleading. For, it has been said, there is quite clearly a sense in which I can change the future and not the past, and this is because my acts of will determine the future and not the past — I cannot undo what has been done. Now I do not wish to deny that we can causally affect the future and not the past, and indeed this causal directionality of time is part of the problem of the ‘direction of time.’ Nevertheleless I would reiterate that the fact that our present actions determine that future would be most misleadingly expressed or described by saying that we can change the future. A man can change his trousers, his club, or his job. Perhaps he may even change the course of world history or the state of scientific thought. But one thing that he cannot change is the future, since whatever he brings about is the future, and nothing else is, or ever was.”

— J.J.C. Smart, Problems of Space and Time, 1964

August 24, 2010August 25, 2010 | Science & Math

Wedding Belles

Mary Hamilton invented a new crime in 1746 — transvestite bigamy. Dressing as a man and calling herself Charles and George, she convinced no fewer than 14 women to marry her. At a trial in Somersetshire, the 14th wife testified against her “female husband”:

She swore that she was lawfully married to the prisoner, and that they bedded and lived together as man and wife for more than a quarter of a year; during all which time, so well did the impostor assume the character of man, she still actually believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex.

The justices found Mary “an uncommon, notorious cheat” and sentenced her to six months in prison and three whippings. “And Mary, the monopoliser of her own sex, was imprisoned and whipped accordingly, in the severity of the winter of the year 1746.”

August 23, 2010August 23, 2010 | Oddities · Society

Deflatable Exponents

deflatable exponents

August 23, 2010August 25, 2010 | Science & Math

“A Parsnip Resembling a Human Hand”

The parsnip of which a figure is annexed, represents a human hand, particularly the back of it so correctly, that it could not be surpassed by the best painter. This root was bought at the market of a woman who sold vegetables, and as it was shewn to several persons, it came at last into the hands of an engraver. Though roots of this kind, especially of the parsnip species, are not rare, yet there could scarcely be found one that so nearly resembles a human member. Dr. Menzel, however has seen a parsnip which accurately exhibits the figure of a man, complete in all its parts.

— Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum, 1820

August 23, 2010August 25, 2010 | Oddities

Unquote

“Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” — Thomas Jefferson

August 22, 2010December 18, 2010 | Quotations

Perpetual Commotion

In 1875, the Associated Press reported a novel business enterprise being planned near Lacon, Ill. A prospectus summed it up:

Glorious Opportunity To Get Rich!!! — We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat farm next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing!

It was only a hoax dreamed up by local newsman Willis Powell, but, legitimized by AP’s coverage, the story bounced around the country for 65 years before the National Press Club finally debunked it in 1940. There’s a moral here somewhere.

August 22, 2010August 20, 2010 | Hoaxes

Clutch Cargo

Prove that the number of people who shake hands an odd number of times at the opera next Thursday will be even.

	Select Click for Answer
Call a person an Odd if he has shaken hands an odd number of times (at any given moment). An Even has shaken hands an even number of times. At the start, the number of Odds is zero, an even number. As the evening progresses, three types of handshake take place: An Odd shakes with an Odd. In this case they both become Evens; the total number of Odds decreases by 2. An Even shakes with an Even. Both become Odds, and the number of Odds increases by 2. An Even shakes with an Odd. The Even becomes an Odd, and the Odd becomes an Even, so the total number of Odds remains unchanged. Because the number of Odds can change only by an even number, the number of people who have shaken hands an odd number of times remains even — not only at the end of the evening, but at every moment throughout! A Norwegian reader adds: “It might possibly be of some minor interest that in Norway, Odd and Even are both widespread men’s names. Fittingly, as of the most recently updated name statistics (2009), there are 22821 Norwegian men with Odd as their first first name, and 5846 with Even as their first first name. (And 29 are called Odd Even.)”

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August 21, 2010January 25, 2013 | Puzzles

In a Word

balatronic
adj. pertaining to buffoons

August 21, 2010August 20, 2010 | Language

That Time Again

Events in the life of Welsh coal miner David Wilson, born 1846:

Aug. 26, 1857: Fractured the forefinger of his right hand.
Aug. 26, 1859: Fell from horseback and broke his left leg below the knee.
Aug. 26, 1860: Broke both bones of his left forearm.
Aug. 26, 1861: Broke his left leg above the ankle.
Aug. 26, 1862: Broke both legs, the right one so badly that it had to be amputated.

Seeing a pattern, he renounced for 28 years doing any work on Aug. 26, but in 1890 he forgot the date, went to work, and broke his left leg for the fourth time.

“The number of accidents the man has had is wonderful, but by far the most remarkable fact in connection with his history is their all happening on a certain day in the year,” wrote Walter Kruse in the Strand. “It is only explainable on the supposition that some natural law is at work, and that this law is in some way connected with the earth’s revolution around the sun, because the accidents always happened precisely when the earth reaches the same position in its orbit around the sun. It is very evident we have not arrived at the summit of our knowledge, and that there are causes and influences at work which are not noticed by the casual observer.”

August 21, 2010August 25, 2010 | Oddities