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- Feed Preview Futility Closet
The Glass Rod Problem
Suppose we drop a glass rod and it breaks into three pieces. What is the probability that the pieces can form a triangle? Mathematician D.C. Johnson found this elegant geometric solution. In orde...
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/19/the-glass-rod-problem/
Unquote
“A footnote is like running downstairs to answer the doorbell during the first night of marriage.” — John Barrymore
The Desk Calendar
This is a variation on an old puzzle by Martin Gardner. This desk calendar currently displays the date Monday, April 25. If the six cubes are capable of displaying any day of the week and any dat...
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/18/the-desk-calendar/
“The Last Bard of Dixie”
South Carolina poet J. Gordon Coogler (1865-1901) was widely mocked for this terrible couplet: Alas! for the South, her books have grown fewer — She never was much given to literature. He compl...
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/18/the-last-bard-of-dixie/
Early Arrival
When his wife died in 1893, Brooklyn retiree Jonathan Reed had a tomb built in Evergreens Cemetery, where for 10 years he kept her company. “The Reed mausoleum was furnished just like a living ...
Perfect Numbers
From Lee Sallows: As the reader can check, the English number names less than “twenty” are composed using 16 different letters of the alphabet. We assign a distinct integral value to each of ...
Half Measures
When we read type we imagine that we read the whole of the type — but that is not so; we only notice the upper half of each letter. You can easily prove this for yourself by covering up the upp...
Canting Arms
The village of Hensbroek in North Holland takes its name from the personal name Hein and the Dutch cognate of brook, i.e., “Henry’s brook.” Magnificently, the municipal coat of arms interpr...
Spelling Aid
These signs are posted on Cathedral Street in Woolloomooloo, New South Wales.
Hermae
Ancient Athenians would sometimes encounter a remarkable sculpture on roads and in public places: The bearded head of the god Hermes set on a squared pillar of stone, with male genitals carved at...