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.”

Futility Closet » Illumination

Monday 8 April 18:58:01 UTC 2024

Allegedly this scheme was invented by a poet who wanted to write all night without interruption. He set up a row of candles and linked the base of each to the top of the next with a piece of twine. When the first candle burned down to the twine, “the latter naturally caught fire, and a tongue of flame would … [Link]

Weird Universe » Harmonica Record

Monday 8 April 11:17:00 UTC 2024

Obscure world record: longest time playing the harmonica while sitting in a chair balanced on top of three wine bottles. Set by Michel Perrigaud in 1959, who played for seven-and-a-half hours.

Albuquerque Journal – Jan 29, 1959 [Link]

Weird Universe » Resonating Life Which Continues to Stand

Monday 8 April 9:14:00 UTC 2024

The artwork's homepage, which explains:

The resonating ovoids continue to stand wherever they are. The ovoids continue to stand even if they are pushed over by waves, blown by the wind, or pushed by people. When an ovoid is pushed over, it rises back up on its own and shines brightly as it produces a tone. The light and tone … [Link]

Futility Closet » Win Count

Monday 8 April 7:02:38 UTC 2024

Imagine a game of tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) played in three dimensions in an 8×8×8 cube. A player wins by marking some straight line of eight cells through the large cube. How many such winning lines are there? SelectClick for Answer This problem was proposed in the American Mathematical Monthly by A.L. Rubinoff of the University of Toronto in 1948 … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons