Mountain Lakes International

Archive for the ‘Thursday Thought’ Category

Three men went into a diner, and each ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress brought the three cups of coffee and a dish with twelve lumps of sugar. Each man took an odd number of lumps of sugar, and when they had finished, there was no sugar left. How many lumps did each man take?

It requires only a few moments to recognize that the sum of three odd numbers must be odd itself. So there must be a trick somewhere, and there is.

The first man took one lump, the second man took one lump, and the third man took ten lumps. “Aha!” you will cry, “ten is not an odd number!” And then, we slyly inquire, “Do you know anyone who takes ten lumps of sugar in his coffee?”

– M.H. Greenblatt, Mathematical Entertainments, 1965

Thanks to Greg Ross

Many thanks to John Song!

What’s Your Lens?
In 2008, researchers at Oxford University found that subjects could reduce pain in an injured arm by viewing it through reversed binoculars. Conversely, a magnified injury was more painful. “If it looks bigger, it looks sorer,” said physiologist G. Lorimer Moseley. “Therefore the brain acts to protect it.”

One possibility is the change in perception alters the sense of touch. Another theory is that what changes is the “sense of ownership.” A magnified arm may have made participants more aware the hand “belonged to them, thus increasing their sensitivity to the sensations originating from it.” Shrinking the perceived size of the arm may have “alienated the participants’ arm, reducing their sense of ownership of the limb and thus desensitizing them to its pain.

See Moheb Costandi’s story in Scientific American

DOUBLE DUTY

A strangely “costless” ambiguity: The H and the A are identical, but most people can read this phrase without effort. Thanks to Greg Ross.

These very old iconic symbols were responsible for what modern system?
—the moon, the sun, the planet Saturn, and the Anglo-Saxon gods: Thor, Tiw, Woden, and his wife Frig.

London theater owners were puzzled when George Bernard Shaw’s eagerly awaited new play opened to sparse attendance in 1920. After three weeks, when half the city’s productions had shut down, a stage manager at the Savoy Theatre finally realized the problem.

What do you guess the problem was?

George Bernard Shaw titled his play Closed for Remodeling.  After 2 London theaters closed due to poor attendance, the stage manager at the Savoy realized the problem and re-opened the play with a new title: Heartbreak House.

See Patrick Baybrooke The Subtlety of George Bernard Shaw. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1973.

Who can tell us how these work?

Why are reactions so polarized? What do you think?

Americans require a restful quiet in the moving picture theater, and for them talking from the lips of the figures on the screen destroys the illusion. Devices for projecting the film actor’s speech can be perfected, but the idea is not practical. The stage is the place for the spoken word. The reactions of the American public up to now indicate the movies will not supersede it.

– Thomas Edison, quoted in the New York Times, May 21, 1926