Where can you draw potable seawater even when no land is in sight?
Offshore of the mouth of the Amazon, which supplies 20 percent of the fresh water entering the world’s oceans.
Checkmate
When Dr. Franklin went to France on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular — for all ranks and conditions of men there entered warmly into the American interest. He was, therefore, feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who being a chess-player of about his force, they were very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into prise, the Doctor took it. ‘Ah,’ says she, ‘we do not take kings so.’ ‘We do in America,’ said the Doctor.
— Sarah Randolph, The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, 1871
Unquote
“To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
“Monkey and Pulley”
A rope is passed over a pulley. It has a weight at one end and a monkey at the other. There is the same length of rope on either side and equilibrium is maintained. The rope weighs four ounces per foot. The age of the monkey and the age of the monkey’s mother together total four years. The weight of the monkey is as many pounds as the monkey’s mother is years old. The monkey’s mother is twice as old as the monkey was when the monkey’s mother was half as old as the monkey will be when the monkey is three times as old as the monkey’s mother was when the monkey’s mother was three times as old as the monkey. The weight of the rope and the weight at the end is half as much again as the difference in weight between the weight of the weight and the weight and the weight of the monkey. Now, what is the length of the rope?
Fortune Square
Pick any number in this array and cross off all the other numbers in its row and column. Repeat this four more times, after which no more numbers will be available.
Add your five numbers. If they total exactly 100, you must rob 10 banks and pass the money to me through a series of prearranged drops. Contact me for details.
Never Mind
“Truth does not exist” is an assertion of truth.
“Almost Too Strange for Credence”
We all went over to Mannheim, and dined at the hotel where, seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her forever as if I were her own child, and never to see my own parents, as such, any more. … When we returned to the station in the evening, we had a long time to wait for the train. On the platform was a poor woman, crying very bitterly, with a little child in her arms. Emmie Penrhyn, who was tender-hearted, went up to her, and said she was afraid she was in some great trouble. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is about my little child. My little child, who is only fourteen months old, is going away from me forever in the train which is coming. It is going away to be adopted by its aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything to do with it any more.’ It was of an adoption under exactly the same circumstances that we had been to Mannheim to keep the seventeenth anniversary!
— Augustus Hare, The Story of My Life, 1896
Math Notes
The Plague Village
In 1665, the Black Death came to Eyam in Derbyshire.
To prevent the spread of the disease, the entire village quarantined itself. In the ensuing year, its population dropped from 350 to 83.
The gravedigger survived.
Pulp Friction
Each February, the residents of Ivrea, Italy, throw oranges at each other. On the three days preceding Shrove Tuesday, thousands of costumed “revolutionaries” battle an “aristocracy” by hurling citrus fruits. Supposedly this commemorates a droit de seigneur drama in the 12th century, but in practice it’s just a bunch of people throwing oranges.
Eight hundred miles to the west, they’re throwing tomatoes.