Last week, Abbas Raza of 3 Quarks Daily posed a list of logic problems to the site's readers. I'd seen some of these problems before and I didn't have the time to work through the unfamiliar ones, but my favorite was the very first question:
You are given two ropes and a lighter. This is the only equipment you can use. You are told that each of the two ropes has the following property: if you light one end of the rope, it will take exactly one hour to burn all the way to the other end. But it doesn't have to burn at a uniform rate. In other words, half the rope may burn in the first five minutes, and then the other half would take 55 minutes. The rate at which the two ropes burn is not necessarily the same, so the second rope will also take an hour to burn from one end to the other, but may do it at some varying rate, which is not necessarily the same as the one for the first rope. Now you are asked to measure a period of 45 minutes. How will you do it?
For those in the US, this is a little something to keep the conversation at the holiday dinner table interesting. I'll post the answer here this weekend...good luck.
Update: Alright, here's the answer. Light both ends of rope A and one end of rope B. After 30 minutes, rope A will be completely burned up and there will be 30 minutes of rope B left. Light the other end of rope B; it will burn up in 15 minutes. Total time elapsed since starting the ropes on fire: 45 minutes.
Adam Greenfield takes astronaut lessons:
"Flying out of Incheon today, on our way back to Tokyo, our flight hit an unexpected void just as I climbed out of my seat to let Nurri into the aisle, and dropped what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of feet of altitude in seconds. For a brief but endless interval, we - alone among the passengers - found ourselves free of the grip of gravity, Nurri actually floating all the way up to the cabin ceiling before the (auto?)pilot found a layer of clear air and we settled back to the deck."
Admit it, you've always wanted to watch William Shatner play paintball (mpg sample). On pay-per-view and DVD. I can't figure out if this is completely non-ironic or the most ironic thing ever. He knows that we know that he knows that we know that he knows we're on to him, doesn't he?
Oneshare.com sells single shares of stock as novelties and gifts, taking a fat commission ($39/share) in the process. Some popular shares are Krispy Kreme, Apple, and McDonald's. If you'd rather buy stock that's worth nothing, there's always dot com stock certificates (eToys, WebVan, go.com, collect them all!).
whorepresents.com is:
a) a site for finding out agents and managers for Hollywood actors and directors
b) the place to go to stock up on gifts for your favorite hooker
c) an unfortunate URL choice
d) a and c
Weblogs are usually pretty easy for readers to get into. Lance Fortnow's Computational Complexity Web Log is probably the most difficult-to-read weblog I've ever come across. But that's OK because if you're into computational complexity, it's just the thing.
Speaking of which, I need to clean some things. My car mostly. The Web to the rescue once again: howtocleananything.com. I'm not sure if it'll be helpful or not, but I love that it exists. (Related: This to That gives advice on how to glue this thing to that thing.)
Googlecooking is the way new thing:
"...shortly before supper time I look around for some combination of foods I've got on hand and which seem like they might go together. Then I 'google' them and browse through the results until I find a recipe that appeals to me."
via Meg.
It's a little dark at times (the brightness, not the mood), but this video of two guys racing without cars is a nifty bit of stop motion video.
I would find it very amusing if several thousand people ordered these stickers and began sticking them up on gas pumps around the country.
If I ever have the chance to form a society, I hope I can choose for it a name as delightful as The Society For The Recovery Of Persons Apparently Dead. Great title aside, the article is an interesting history of the resuscitation of those with ambiguous mortality, from mouth-to-mouth to cryonics.
Edward Tufte, well known amongst information & Web designers for his trilogy of ID bibles, puts a bit of magic into the possibility of Earth's first contact with aliens:
"Since the principles of physics hold everywhere, magic is conceivably a cosmological entertainment, with the wonder induced by theatrical illusions appreciated by all, regardless of planetary system. Accordingly the plaque aboard the Pioneer spacecraft for extraterrestrial scrutiny billions of years from now might have escaped from its conspicuously anthropocentric gestures by showing instead the universally familiar Amazing Levitation Trick."
Who says information designers don't have a sense of humor?
Are you in the market for a sushi wrapping robot? It's got a wasabi depositor and everything. P.S. The sushi wrapping robot is not to be confused with Cycler the Rapping Robot, who gives presentations to schools "on waste related issues in a memorable and interactive way". (via p/tm)
This year's 5k contest is open for entries. Nanoprogrammers, start your text editors.
Blast from the past: Walter Miller's Home page. Walter was a favorite at Suck a few years back. There was some speculation that Carl or one of the other Sucksters made up the Walter character, but I'm not sure if the matter was ever settled or not.
The quantum theory of laundry: "the disappearance of entire loads can be explained by the existence of the finite probability that all of the socks in the main compartment have taken on the wave function of the lint trap and subsequently turned to lint. This further implies that instead of accusing someone of stealing your socks, running the machine while empty for long periods of time will increase the chances of retrieval of most of the socks".
Learn2 is a good resource for learning how to do things. Two items of particular interest: how to write a business plan and how to lease a car.
Some Evany updates. If you've never been to her site, go go go! I laugh more at this site than I do at The Onion.
Reminder: openlog is a collaborative weblog/journal thingie (i.e. a pita). If you'd like, you may contribute a link or redesign the whole thing. Go nuts.
Reminder #2: People are getting tired of hearing me say this, but go and see The Iron Giant. And just so I have something new to say on the topic, there are some Iron Giant action figures up for auction on eBay.
Back Orifice 2000 allows people to gain remote access to other people's computers. While not an ideal use for the program, this certainly is the most humorous.
The iBrator. Why didn't I think of that?
Today is "gang warfare day" on kottke.org. Go post something on this gangbangers' message board. It's easy and fun. And don't forget to visit the Mafia Crips homepage as well.
Some malcontent broke into my car last night, smashed my rear window, and made off with my piece-of-shit radio.
A fan site: The Futurama Outlet. Episode guides and all sorts of other stuff. A worthy companion to The Simpsons Archive.
MUST _READ. If you don't read anything else on the Web today, read this. This lady from Wisconsin is against Russians, Jews, goons, lasers, large oil companies, and just about everything else. She loves her WebTV, though. Lucky for her that the sputniks haven't taken that away from her...they can do that, you know. Pesky Russians. (via CamWorld)
I feel bad for taking all of Cam's links today, but this one was just too good to pass up as well. Steps in Overcoming Masturbation, a public service announcement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
"In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken."
Don't they have anything better to do? Isn't the second coming right around the corner or something? No pun intended.
Fatboy Slim tonight.
And if you're wondering what I'd look like as a woman, wonder no more. Thanks to an enthusiastic 0sil8 fan with too much time on his hands for this one. (Here's the original).
The Bill Gates Fan Club page contains Chairman Gates' Social Security number. 539-60-5125.
I love this greatly. Someone signed up Metababy for an "intimate and swinger personals" site called Adult Friend Finder. And people are responding to this 28 yo Asian who drinks a lot and is looking for "good hot safe sex". Fun fun!
The French are kinda funny...both "ha-ha" funny and "strange" funny. Rather than accept the British Prime Meridian, the French are going on their own with the French Prime Meridian. Now, I'm all for challenging standards, but it helps to have a better reason than, "Hey, look at us! We're cool too!"
Had lunch with Ariana today. She pointed me to the excellent Straight Dope, a site for people who want to find out stuff like how they get Teflon to stick to the pan. It's also the origin of this great bit:
"In some ways we know more about what happened in the universe's first tenth of a second than we do about what goes on in the interval between 'Your place or mine?' and deciding who sleeps on the wet spot."
Having trouble picking that new domain name? Glassdog's new Who Toy? can help you. Pick a catagory (GeekFest, MyURL, PornDog, or Randomizer) and then let Who Toy? do the work for you. Better hurry, kids...I've got my eye on zooknob.com.
A nice companion toy to the Who Toy? might be the What Toy?, a little mission statement generator for that sparkling new domain name. Throw words like "collaborative", "portal", "weblog", "personal", "culture", "links", and "rant" into a randomized pulldown thingie and there you have it. The beauty part is that if you've got zooknob.com all ready to go, but the What Toy? tells you that it's going to be "a collaborative vertical portal for the Linux community", you can always throw that one back and spin it again...until you have something more to your liking, such as "a webzine focused on pop culture, featuring links, rants, and a weblog." Now there's a mission statement that puts the "you" in "unique".
Take the Web Design Purity Test. Purity tests are odd...they gauge your interest or involvment level in exactly the opposite of what they are testing. I am 12.2% Web designing pure, meaning that I'm in it up to my eyebrows, which isn't surprising considering it's what I do for a living.
The Fray has a new story up called exposed. It's about nudity. Hardcore nudity! (Is there any other kind?) Anyway, I haven't posted my comments yet and I don't know if I'm going to. Do people really want to know where and when I've flashed my naughty bits and do I really want to tell them (considering I'm a big wuss)?
Although, Violently Happy by Bjork, to which I am now listening, is the kind of song that might make one dance unfettered about the room...if one were so inclined.
If you're in Minneapolis, Beat Radio is hosting Beatopia at First Ave this Wednesday. Dance, dance, dance, dance...
I am 45% insane. I think anything right around 50% is pretty healthy. How insane are you?
This guy has a list of all the Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail...including details. I think every guy who watches cartoons has a list like this, but no one else has ever had the balls to write it down.
The Gallery of Regrettable Food is the funniest site I've been to in a long time. Some highlights: 100s of ways to cook with lard, Spam clones, and gaining social stature through common nuts. The ads are funny and the copy completes the experience nicely.
Watercoloured is a community of designers who just happen to be women. Some very nice stuff here if you root around a little.
I have no idea why I read Out of Order almost every day, but I do. It's so good. I even have the t-shirt.
Jim Romenesko provides several excellent links per day in his Obscure Store and Reading Room, plus a jumping off point to quite a few online periodicals.
In other news, this store got a ticket for not having 75% of its name in English. What's next? Are they going to fine Taco Bell? (source: Obscure Store)
Greg Knauss launched a brand-spanking new metababy. You can post HTML to it by sending email to metababy@metababy.com. The interesting thing is that no one has done anything malicious to it yet.
I didn't think it was possible: someone has come up with a new take on the "what's cool, what's not cool on the Internet" thing.
People I would or wouldn't fuck on the Internet.
I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or relieved that I'm in the "I wouldn't fuck" column. At the very least, this guy owes me an explanation as to why I'm not spongeworthy.
At least he spelled my name right...more than I can say for a lot of the other words on the page. Mispellings galore & bad grammer....I think he goes in my "wouldn't fuck" column. No soup for you. Next!
