I read today open-minded people have a different perception of reality. Oh no we don't.
Personal Blogs
I come from a family of comedians. For example, my Mum and Dad, Mr and Mrs Kerr, decided to name me Joe.
Michael Penn put this up on his YouTube channel earlier today, and it is indeed an elegant little problem. Here it is
Michael Penn solves this using congruent triangles, the angle sum of a triangle (180 °) and angles on a straight line (180 °). ι is always 60 °, whatever the length of AD and CE. It's not that obvious and I was quite surprised.
However thinking about it later, I saw we can solve the problem using symmetry and the solution is super-nice. Here's how - just add a third line.
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There we were, two dozen or so, and we are reading Janet and John out loud. âL-o-o-k J-a-n-e-t s-a-y-s J-o-h-nâ. It doesnât totally work but if you listen to yourself, you can work out most words. The story helps a lot of course.Â
Our teacher offered a gold star to the first person in the class who could read silently. Iâm not a gold star person personally, and I was bored by it all. So to pass the time I stopped speaking and just pretended to be reading.
Wow big mistake! Up comes Teacher who says âOh look class, Richard can read silentlyâ. On the spot or what? From that time I couldnât read out loud without being exposed as a fraud, and I more or less instantly found out Iâd been able to read silently all along.
Iâve no idea what reminded me of this.
Just been watching an Egg and Spoon race. Very surprised the Spoon didnât win.
The authorities are after a couple of bad guys. Apparently they are Juan, Ted.
grovellingapology.com
Itâs a sorry site.
This fearsome creature is a robot wolf.
The city of Takikawa in Hokkaido has been having problems with bears venturing into the city after food.
So the city has invested in robot wolves with motion detectors. The robot wolves have bared teeth, flashing red eyes, and a repetoire of 60+ noises that bears find frightening. A bit like a mechanical scarecrow, but for bears.
You can see a robot bear in action here
Thinking about the Round Table PuzzleÂ
https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=232912I wondered how many seats there are supposed to have been at the Round Table and whether communication (or even staying out of the rain) would have been feasible.
From the Wikipedia article Knights of the Round Table I got some useful information. Many have written about the Round Table, but among them the seating statistics can be summarised as follows
minimum 12
mode (commonest value); in the range 100-300, letâs say 200
maximum 1500+
What we want to know is the diameter of the table, and since this is only a back-of-an-envelope estimate weâll say pi = 3. And ignoring social distancing it would be fair to assume each knight occupied 1 m of circumference.
My calculations
Minimum 12/3 = 4 m; big table, youâd need to shout; table easily fits indoors.
Mode 200/3 = 60+ m; loud hailers required; can be accommodated in a banqueting hall.
Maximum 1500/3 = 500 m (half a km!) ; telecoms required; only possible outside.
This post is a summarised preprint of a piece I plan to submit to Significance.
My latest book is about turtles. It's only available in hardback.
The garnish on the noodle is a seaweed, aonori, also called green laver.
Q. ďťżWhat word is not the same as itself?
A. My answer: "Any word, apart from 'itself', but my favourite is 'sausage'."
Have you ever thoughtâwhen you say, "I can't say fairer than that"âyou just have?
I didnât get this one at first. Then it clicked.
âCan I use the dial please?â
âNo! Itâs mine all mine, bwahaha!â
Q. What goes "99, 100, Phew!"
A. A centipede counting its legs.
This intersting little animal is a pademelon, a kind of marsupial, related to kanaroos and wallabies.
I had never heard of pademelons, but the name came up in a quiz tonight. There are seven species but the Wikpepdia article is a bit sparse on detail.
Here's a video from of young pademelons playing.
This is a sawn-down version of a puzzle "Arranging cats and dogs" that Matt Parker recently posted on YouTube.
In our version we have a pair of cats, and eight cushions. We want to seat each cat on its own cushion, with the restriction that they cannot occupy adjacent cushions, in case they start a cat fight. Here is one possible arrangement.
You see the cats are not next to one another, so the rule is satisfied.
The question is: how many possible arrangements are there? What if there were 9 cushions? Or 10? Can you give a general formula?
Iâve been asked to write a short piece on procrastination. But I can do it later.
Q. How does an ant whoâs not driving a taxi any longer feel?
A. Exuberant.Â
âThat ditch is swarming with some kind of insectâ, said Tom trenchantly.
A cat can look at a queen.
Cats have nine lives.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Every dog has his day.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Many hands make light work.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush.
Birds of a feather flock together.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Itâs always darkest just before the dawn.
Thereâs light at the end of the tunnel.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Donât count your chickens before they are hatched.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Faint heart never won fair lady.
How many shopping days till Christmas?
Cut your coat according to your cloth.
A stitch in time saves nine.
How many shopping days till Christmas.
Beggars canât be choosers.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
This features my friend Mike Lloyd playing a duet, remotely of course, with Sebastian Pompilio, a professional guitarist and guitar teacher based in Argentina.
Mike says they did the duet with a lot of help from audio/video editing software, recording parts separately and then stitching them together.
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