Zachary challenges his brother Alexander to a 100-meter race. Alexander crosses the finish line when Zachary has covered only 97 meters.
The two agree to a second race, and this time Alexander starts 3 meters behind the starting line.
If both brothers run at the same speed as in the first race, who will win?
A milksop, jilted by his lass, or wandering in his wits,
Might murmur, “Stiff, O dairy-man, in a myriad of fits!”
A limner, by photography dead beat in competition,
Thus grumbled, “No, it is opposed; art sees trade’s opposition!”
A nonsense-loving nephew might his soldier-uncle dun
With “Now stop, major-general, are negro jam-pots won?”
A supercilious grocer, if inclined that way, might snub
A child with “But ragusa store, babe, rots a sugar-tub.”
Thy sceptre, Alexander, is a fortress, cried Hephæstion.
Great A. said, “No, it’s a bar of gold, a bad log for a bastion!”
A timid creature, fearing rodents–-mice and such small fry–-
“Stop, Syrian, I start at rats in airy spots,” might cry.
A simple soul, whose wants are few, might say, with hearty zest,
“Desserts I desire not, so long no lost one rise distressed.”
A stern Canadian parent might in earnest, not in fun,
Exclaim, “No sot nor Ottawa law at Toronto, son!”
A crazy dentist might declare, as something strange or new,
That “Paget saw an Irish tooth, Sir, in a waste gap!” True!
A surly student, hating sweets, might answer with élan,
“Name tarts? No, medieval slave, I demonstrate man!”
He who in Nature’s bitters findeth sweet food every day,
“Eureka! till I pull up ill I take rue,” well might say.
— Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1873
Graph this formula over 0 ≤ x ≤ 106 and k ≤ y ≤ k + 17, with k = 96093937991895888497167
29621278527547150043396601293066515055192717028023952664246896428421743
50718121267153782770623355993237280874144307891325963941337723487857735
74982392662971551717371699516523289053822161240323885586618401323558513
60488286933379024914542292886670810961844960917051834540678277315517054
05381627380967602565625016981482083418783163849115590225610003652351370
34387446184837873723819822484986346503315941005497470059313833922649724
94617515457283667023697454610146559979337985374831437868418065934222278
98388722980000748404719, and you get this:
Reasonable enough, right?
“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.” — Montesquieu
THE CHICKEN CROSSES THE ROAD
is an anagram of
SHE CHECKS CORN AT OTHER SIDE
Young Pierre has never left France, but he hears that London is an attractive city. He adopts the belief “Londres est jolie” (“London is pretty”).
Now Pierre’s family moves to another country, whose language he learns directly, without translation into French. He learns that his new city is called London, and eventually forms the belief that “London is not pretty.” He doesn’t know that Londres and “London” refer to the same city.
What are we to make of this? We can’t deny the sincerity of Pierre’s original belief, which he still holds; nor of his new belief; and it seems absurd to claim that he holds both or neither. “Each possibility seems to lead us to say something either plainly false or downright contradictory,” writes Princeton philosopher Saul Kripke. “Yet the possibilities appear to be logically exhaustive.”
“This, then, is the paradox. I have no firm belief as to how to solve it.”
dissave
v. to spend more than one earns
I send you what I regard as one of the most remarkable signatures ever devised by a writer. It is one which I have seen on hundreds of Government papers at Washington, D.C., where the man who uses it was for some years Expert Computer of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and Astronomer of the Carnegie Institution. His name is Herman S. Davis, and he writes it as here shown. This signature is easily made with two swift strokes of the pen, and is not a mere monogram of initials, for it contains the full name, H.S. Davis, and also the year, month, and day of his birth — namely, 8.6.68. It has the further remarkable quality of being so symmetrical as to read exactly the same viewed upside down. — Mr. Russell Lang, Pittsburg, Pa., U.S.A.
— Strand, December 1908
In 2002 Lester Clancy patented an exercise apparatus that “simulates the effects of jumping rope, but does not utilize an actual rope.”
“To use the invention, a user holds a handle in each hand, and begins to simulate jumping rope while moving the handles in a circle with their hands and arms. The weighted ball or gear simulates the centrifugal action of a jump rope, thus delivering all the health benefits of jumping rope without any of the disadvantages of stumbling on the rope, having the rope hit the ceiling or the like.”
Another workout: Mail one handle to a partner in Japan and you can have an 8,000-mile tug of war.
3435= 33 + 44 + 33 + 55
