Fact and Fiction

Wonder Woman and her Lasso of Truth were created by a pioneer in lie detectors.

While a graduate student at Harvard after World War I, William Moulton Marston had developed a systolic blood pressure test to detect deception.

Twenty-five years later, while proposing a female superhero to DC Comics, he suggested a magic lasso that would force those it captured to tell the truth.

He was inspired by his wife, Elizabeth. “Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power,” he said in 1943. “The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”

March 8, 2012March 7, 2012 | Entertainment

Math Notes

14 + 50 + 54 = 15 + 40 + 63 = 18 + 30 + 70 = 21 + 25 + 72
14 × 50 × 54 = 15 × 40 × 63 = 18 × 30 × 70 = 21 × 25 × 72

6 + 56 + 75 = 7 + 40 + 90 = 9 + 28 + 100 = 12 + 20 + 105
6 × 56 × 75 = 7 × 40 × 90 = 9 × 28 × 100 = 12 × 20 × 105

March 7, 2012March 6, 2012 | Science & Math

Visitors

From “Love and Freindship,” a story by the 14-year-old Jane Austen:

One evening in December, as my father, my mother, and myself were arranged in social converse round our fireside, we were on a sudden greatly astonished by hearing a violent knocking on the outward door of our rustic cot.

My father started — ‘What noise is that?’ said he. ‘It sounds like a loud rapping at the door,’ replied my mother. ‘It does indeed,’ cried I. ‘I am of your opinion,’ said my father, ‘it certainly does appear to proceed from some uncommon violence exerted against our unoffending door.’ ‘Yes,’ exclaimed I, ‘I cannot help thinking it must be somebody who knocks for admittance.’

‘That is another point,’ replied he. ‘We must not pretend to determine on what motive the person may knock — though that someone does rap at the door, I am partly convinced.’

Here, a second tremendous rap interrupted my father in his speech and somewhat alarmed my mother and me.

‘Had we better not go and see who it is?’ said she. ‘The servants are out.’ ‘I think we had,’ replied I. ‘Certainly,’ added my father, ‘by all means.’ ‘Shall we go now?’ said my mother, ‘The sooner the better,’ answered he. ‘Oh! let no time be lost,’ cried I.

A third more violent rap than ever again assaulted our ears. ‘I am certain there is somebody knocking at the door,’ said my mother. ‘I think there must,’ replied my father. ‘I fancy the servants are returned,’ said I. ‘I think I hear Mary going to the door.’ ‘I’m glad of it, cried my father, ‘for I long to know who it is.’

I was right in my conjecture; for Mary instantly entering the room informed us that a young gentleman and his servant were at the door, who had lost their way, were very cold and begged leave to warm themselves by our fire. …

March 7, 2012March 7, 2012 | Literature

Thunderstruck

Daniel Ruggles patented an alarming new process in 1880 — he proposed to raise explosives into clouds “in order to precipitate rain-fall by concussion or vibration of the atmosphere.” The resulting downpour would water crops, prevent drought, forestall more violent storms, “and also purify and renovate the atmosphere during periods of pestilence and epidemics.”

In the figure and surrounding the balloon B, I have represented various dotted lines and clusters of lines, and also zigzag lines, as at L, representing lightning, the said figure being an imaginary representation of such a condition as would appear immediately after an explosion of the torpedoes, and with rain falling from the clouds C, as indicated in dotted lines at R’.

He planned to use balloons to lift the torpedoes, and “I contemplate the employment of nitroglycerine, dynamite, chlorates of nitrogen, gun cotton, gunpowder, fulminates, and other explosives.” I can’t tell whether he ever tested the invention. Presumably he did.

March 7, 2012March 6, 2012 | Technology

Urban Sprawl

The longest unhyphenated place name in the United States is Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania.

That’s in real life, anyway. In the 2002 film Mr. Deeds, Winona Ryder’s character claims to come from Winchestertonfieldville, Iowa.

March 6, 2012March 6, 2012 | Language

Investor Relations

Letter from Groucho Marx to the Franklin Corporation, April 24, 1961:

Dear Mr. Goodman:

I received the first annual report of the Franklin Corporation and though I am not an expert at reading balance sheets, my financial advisor (who, I assure you, knows nothing) nodded his head in satisfaction.

You wrote that you hope I am not one of those borscht circuit stockholders who get a few points’ profit and hastily scram for the hills. For your information, I bought Alleghany Preferred eleven years ago and am just now disposing of it.

As a brand new member of your family, strategically you made a ghastly mistake in sending me individual pictures of the Board of Directors. Mr. Roth, Chairman of the Board, merely looks sinister. You, the President, look like a hard worker with not too much on the ball. No one named Prosswimmer can possibly be a success. As for Samuel A. Goldblith, PhD., head of Food Technology at MIT, he looks as though he had eaten too much of the wrong kind of fodder.

At this point I would like to stop and ask you a question about Marion Harper Jr. To begin with, I immediately distrust any man who has the same name as his mother. But the thing that most disturbs me about Junior is that I don’t know what the hell he’s laughing at. Is it because he sucked me into this Corporation? This is not the kind of face that inspires confidence in a nervous and jittery stockholder.

George S. Sperti, I dismiss instantly. Any man who is the President of an outfit called Institutum Divi Thomae will certainly bear watching. Is he trying to impress stockholders with his knowledge of Latin? If so, why doesn’t he read, ‘Winnie ille Pu’? James J. Sullivan, I am convinced, is Paul E. Prosswimmer photographed from a different angle.

Offhand, I would say that I have summed up your group fairly accurately. I hope, for my sake, that I am mistaken.

In closing, I warn you, go easy with my money. I am in an extremely precarious profession whose livelihood depends upon a fickle public.

Sincerely yours,

Groucho Marx
(temporarily at liberty)

March 6, 2012March 6, 2012 | Entertainment

Open and Shut

A warden oversees an empty prison with 100 cells, all closed. Bored one day, he walks through the prison and opens every cell. Then he walks through it again and closes the even-numbered cells. On the third trip he stops at every third cell and closes the door if it’s open or opens it if it’s closed. And so on: On the nth trip he stops at every nth cell, closing an open door or opening a closed one. At the end of the 100th trip, which doors are open?

	Select Click for Answer
Consider some representative cells. The warden stops at cell 7 twice, on the first and seventh trips. The divisors of 7 are 1 and 7. He stops at cell 10 four times, on the first, second, fifth, and tenth trips. The divisors of 10 are 1, 2, 5, and 10. Each door receives a quantity of visits equal to its number’s divisors. All integers except perfect squares have an even number of divisors. So after 100 trips, only the doors whose numbers are perfect squares will remain open: cells 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100.

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March 6, 2012January 31, 2013 | Puzzles

Narcissus Prime

Repeat the string 1808010808 1560 times, and tack on a 1 the end:

tetradic prime

The resulting 15601-digit number is prime, and because it’s a palindrome made up of the digits 1, 8, and 0, it remains prime when read backward, upside down, or in a mirror.

Unrelated mirror curiosity: Outline the reflection of your head on the glass of a mirror, then back away. At any distance, the image continues to fill the outline (which is half the size of your head).

March 5, 2012March 4, 2012 | Science & Math

Stage Whispers

Fanny Kemble’s 1833 American tour was not a uniform success — her journal gives this account of one eventful scene in Baltimore:

ROMEO: Tear not our heart strings thus! They crack! They break! — Juliet! Juliet! (dies)

JULIET: (to corpse) Am I smothering you?

CORPSE: (to Juliet) Not at all. Could you be so kind, do you think, as to put my wig on again for me? It has fallen off.

JULIET: (to corpse) I’m afraid I can’t, but I’ll throw my muslin veil over it. You’ve broken the phial, haven’t you? (corpse nods)

JULIET: Where’s your dagger?

CORPSE: ‘Pon my soul, I don’t know.

“The play went off pretty well, except they broke one man’s collar-bone, and nearly dislocated a woman’s shoulder by flinging the scenery about.”

March 5, 2012March 4, 2012 | Literature

Epic Fantasy

From a letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to his publishers, February 1950:

My work has escaped my control, and I have produced a monster; an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and rather terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me, I want to publish them both — The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. That is what I should like. Or I will let it all be. I cannot contemplate any drastic rewriting or compression. But I shall not have any just grievance (nor shall I be dreadfully surprised) if you decline so obviously unprofitable a proposition.

At 150 million copies, The Lord of the Rings is now the third best-selling novel of all time.

March 4, 2012March 4, 2012 | Literature