Whittle It a Little, It’ll Fit

Odds and sods I look at regularly, just because they amuse me. I hope they do the same for you. Incidentally, I found this page’s title on Greg Ross’s Futility Closet (it’s somewhere on this page) in a mini-article which also includes the delightful sentence in Icelandic: Barbara Ara bar Ara araba bara rabbabara. Ross points out that this, “besides being fun to say, is spelled with only three letters. It means “Barbara, daughter of Ari, brought only rhubarb to Ari the Arab.”

Weird Universe » Falsies on Freeway

Saturday 2 March 12:05:00 UTC 2024

Falsies, or miniature Kendall paracones?

Los Angeles Times – Oct 26, 1954

Rushville Republican – Oct 26, 1954 [Link]

Weird Universe » Special Driver Gloves for Signalling

Saturday 2 March 10:20:00 UTC 2024

Full patent here.

[Link]

Futility Closet » Migration

Saturday 2 March 7:28:17 UTC 2024

Here’s a checkerboard. Suppose we put a checker on each of the nine squares in the lower left corner. And suppose that any checker can move in any direction by jumping over an adjacent checker, provided that the square beyond it is vacant. Is there some combination of moves by which we can transfer the nine checkers to the nine … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons