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 » All’s One for That

Thursday 11 April 19:10:20 UTC 2024

Image: Wikimedia Commons The remains of Richard III were discovered under a Leicester car park in 2012. In the city center searchers located the site of the demolished Greyfriars Church where Richard’s body had been buried hastily in 1485, and the skeleton of an adult male human was found beneath the church’s choir. It exhibited severe scoliosis of the spine and … [Link]

Weird Universe » Miss Brick Throw of 1959

Thursday 11 April 8:58:00 UTC 2024

We've looked at the humor of DJ Rege Cordic at Radio Station KDKA in a previous post.

The home page of Rege Cordic.

But here's a stunt not covered there.

He decided to stage a gag beauty contest for "Miss Brick Throw of 1959."

It was announced in 1958 in BILLBOARD.

Eventually a winner was chosen, "Miss Twerpie Walker," and … [Link]

Weird Universe » Coin-Toss Experiment

Thursday 11 April 8:37:52 UTC 2024

Is a coin toss truly random? Not according to the "D-H-M model" which proposes that a tossed coin is slightly more likely to land on the same side that it started.

To test this model, a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam arranged for a group of subjects to flip coins a total of 350,757 times. Their conclusion: … [Link]

Futility Closet » General Delivery

Thursday 11 April 7:13:20 UTC 2024

Image: Wikimedia Commons Send a postcard to the “missing post office” on Awashima Island, Japan, and it will be held there to be read by anyone. Messages can be sent for any reason — the office has received cards addressed to deceased relatives, early loves, unborn children, even to a traffic light. Samples: ‘Mother, When you died last summer I didn’t … [Link]

John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons