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 » Empty Vessel

Tuesday 9 April 18:49:54 UTC 2024

A puzzle by Soviet science writer Yakov Perelman: A bottle full of gasoline has a mass of 1,000 grams. The same bottle filled with acid has a mass of 1,600 grams. The acid is twice as dense as the gasoline. What’s the mass of the bottle? SelectClick for Answer The mass of the bottle plus the mass of the gasoline … [Link]

Weird Universe » Flo Motion

Tuesday 9 April 11:15:00 UTC 2024

Flo Motion was a brief-lived exercise fad in the early 1990s. The idea was to get in shape by swinging a bag of water around.

Seems like a bit of a gimmick, which I suppose is why the fad didn't last long.

Spokane Chronicle – Sep 25, 1991

Melbourne Age – Jun 16, 1991

Escondido Times-Advocate – Mar 8, 1991 [Link]

Weird Universe » Trick Chair

Tuesday 9 April 9:18:00 UTC 2024

Bang! And down goes the victim!

Full patent here.

[Link]

Futility Closet » The Peirce-Putnam Paradox

Tuesday 9 April 6:51:45 UTC 2024

Divide line interval AD at point P and separate the halves by a short distance. What’s happened to point P? Did it become point B or C? It seems wrong to say that it’s neither of these, or that it’s only one of them. But if the single point P has “become” the two points B and C, how can … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons