~feeds_feedburner_com | Bookmarks (190)
-
Unquote - Futility Closet
“Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The...
-
Botulism - Futility Closet
For a man who left no official writings, French philosopher Jean-Baptiste Botul cut an impressive swath...
-
-
Inside Out - Futility Closet
The Pythagorean theorem has a reciprocal variant: In combination with the inverse-square law, this means that...
-
Food for Thought - Futility Closet
Cannibalism shocks us terribly. Yet I remember talking to an old cannibal who from missionary and...
-
Black and White - Futility Closet
Norwegian broadcaster NRK presented this problem during its coverage of the 2021 FIDE World Chess Championship...
-
Double Duty - Futility Closet
What’s the greatest number of Fridays that can fall in February? We might say five, imagining...
-
Cryptarithm - Futility Closet
A pleasing puzzle by Eric LeVasseur: PI × R2 = AREA If each letter in this...
-
Misc - Futility Closet
It’s illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armor, according to a...
-
Behindhand - Futility Closet
Now, are not those still full of their old carnal nature who ask us: ‘What was...
-
Unusual Biological Names - Futility Closet
Herpetologist Mark Scherz named three tiny species of Malagasy frog Mini ature, Mini scule, and Mini...
-
History Lesson - Futility Closet
In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Washington crosses Delaware.
-
The Earth-Moon Problem - Futility Closet
Suppose that each country on Earth has a colony on the moon and that we want...
-
The Size of It - Futility Closet
In his Reflections, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg mentions a friend who had divided human endeavor into four...
-
The Broxburn Icicle - Futility Closet
During the severe frost of February 1895, a stream of water overflowing Scotland’s Almond Aqueduct began...
-
In a Word - Futility Closet
quisquous adj. difficult to deal with or settle quillet n. a verbal nicety, a subtle distinction...
-
Return Engagement - Futility Closet
On Easter Saturday 1921, pharmacologist Otto Loewi dreamed of an experiment that would prove that the...
-
Art Appreciation - Futility Closet
I had not then acquired the technique that I flatter myself now enables me to deal...
-
Alice's Number - Futility Closet
Alice and Bob are two infinitely intelligent logicians. Each has a number drawn on their forehead....
-
Moment - Futility Closet
It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the...
-
Close Reading - Futility Closet
Teaching at Cornell in the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov offered a European fiction course whose exam questions...
-
French Alphamagic Squares - Futility Closet
From reader Ian Duff: An alphamagic square is a magic square that remains magic when the...
-
Rebus - Futility Closet
A Brooklyn bookseller distributed this card during the 1880 U.S. presidential race between James Garfield and...
-
Unquote - Futility Closet
“What is research but a blind date with knowledge?” — Will Henry