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Futility Closet
http://www.futilitycloset.com/
An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements
- Added on: Jan 16th, 2005
- Country: United States
- Language: English
- Listed in: Personal News & Media Music
- Tags: literature history language oddities puzzles Quotations
Recent Posts
Sure Thing
Relativism either applies to itself or it doesn’t. If it does, then it’s only relatively true. If it doesn’t, then there’s an absolute truth. ...
“Formal Speech”: Solution
Solution to Formal Speech: Asimov was thinking of polish, but there are many others: august, herb, job, lima, natal, nice, rainier, reading, rodeo, tangier … … and the delightful Mousehole, a village in Cornwall whose name is pronounced m...
Senior Citizen
We know when Henry Jenkins died: Dec. 9, 1670. What we don’t know is when he was born. The Bolton laborer claimed to remember driving a cartload of arrows to North Allerton as a boy at the Battle of Flodden Field. That would mean he had been b...
Unconditional
When the 18-year-old Ethel Barrymore informed her father that she was engaged, he wired: CONGRATULATIONS LOVE FATHER When she informed him she’d broken it off, he wrote: CONGRATULATIONS LOVE FATHER ...
Formal Speech
A puzzle by Isaac Asimov: What word in the English language changes its pronunciation when it is capitalized? (Answer) ...
Wheels Within Wheels
If the moon orbits the earth, always presenting the same face to us, does it rotate on its own axis? It seems a simple question, but its appearance in the London Times in April 1856 set off a war among the English intelligentsia: “A ship sail...
I especially like things in the 'language' category, but it's all pretty cool.
Posted: February 20th, 2008 | More Reviews From engineroomblog | Report This Comment