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Site URL: www.futilitycloset.com/Make
Feed URL: feeds.feedburner.com/FutilityCloset
Posts: 13
Followers: 1
Bad News
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/07/bad-news-3/
Published: September 7, 2024 06:14
In 2015 Nature published an alarming article suggesting that dragons are real and had only gone to sleep during the Little Ice Age. A medieval document discovered “under a pile of rusty candlesticks” in the Bodleian Library showed that the creatures were…
Vernacular
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/06/vernacular-2/
Published: September 6, 2024 18:57
In 1991, artist Michael Dennis installed his sculpture Reclining Figure in Vancouver’s Guelph Park. In 2012, prankster Viktor Briestensky erected the sign below at the park’s southwest corner. Park staff initially removed the sign, but when a petition…
Unquote
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/06/unquote-684/
Published: September 6, 2024 06:37
“If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay — in solid cash — the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.” — Aldous Huxley
Why Not?
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/05/why-not/
Published: September 5, 2024 18:59
From a letter from English scholar Walter Raleigh to Mrs. F. Gotch, July 2, 1898: Doe you lyke my newe phansy in the matere of Spelynge? I have growen wery of Spelynge wordes allwaies in one waye and now affecte diversite. The cheif vertew of my reform is…
Topsy Turvy
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/05/topsy-turvy-6/
Published: September 5, 2024 06:03
Two sets of reversible faces by Rex Whistler, from 1930 — above, Mayor & Judge; below, Scotsman & Englishman.
Sir Hilary’s Prayer
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/04/sir-hilarys-prayer/
Published: September 4, 2024 18:59
English poet Winthrop Mackworth Praed was renowned for his charades — this one, published in the 1830s, has never been solved: Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt,– Sooth, ’twas an awful day! And though in that old age of sport The rufflers of the camp and…
Hard of Hearing
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/04/hard-of-hearing/
Published: September 4, 2024 06:03
In 1979 Auberon Waugh was working as a columnist at Private Eye when his editor offered him a trip to Senegal to help celebrate the anniversary of the magazine’s sister publication. “All I would have to give in exchange was a short discourse in the French…
The Right Track
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/03/the-right-track/
Published: September 3, 2024 18:29
Suppose you’re hiking in the woods and become lost. What’s the best path to follow to find the boundary? You know the forest’s shape and dimensions, but you don’t know where you are within it, nor which direction you’re facing. This has remained an open…
The Territory
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/03/the-territory/
Published: September 3, 2024 06:07
Much blood has … been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that could happen — but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is…
Black and White
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/01/black-and-white-289/
Published: September 1, 2024 06:27
“This seems to be my most ingenious two-mover,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov in 1970. He had composed it a year earlier in Montreux. White to mate in two moves.
High and Dry
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/08/31/high-and-dry-8/
Published: August 31, 2024 06:11
Since much of the Netherlands is below sea level, Dutch farmers needed a way to leap waterways to reach their various plots of land. Over time this evolved into a competitive sport, known as fierljeppen (“far leaping”) in which contestants sprint to the…
Board Walk
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/08/30/board-walk/
Published: August 30, 2024 18:18
Al writes the numbers 1, 2, …, 2n on a blackboard, where n is an odd positive integer. He then picks any two numbers a and b, erases them, and writes instead |a – b|. He keeps doing this until one number remains. Prove that this number is odd.
Misc
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/08/30/misc-93/
Published: August 30, 2024 06:13
To burn up is to burn down. Litotes is an anagram of T.S. Eliot. 1012658227848 × 8 = 8101265822784 Three U.S. presidents died on July 4. “Grasp the subject, the words will follow.” — Cato the Elder