William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, the two great authors of their age, both died on April 23, 1616. Yet, as with yesterday’s post, this coincidence would have been largely ignored by a hypothetical Seventeenth Century international newspaper. Why?
Author Archive | Kevan Choset
Dying on the Same Day:
It’s an oft-cited fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day as each other. Writers Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis also died on the same day as each other, but their deaths, even occurring together, did not warrant major headlines. Why?
Yet Another Presidential Order:
Who is the next President in this list? (Warning: This relies on some very specific information that many of you are not aware of, so don’t spend too long on it. However, that piece of information relates to something discussed on here by one of my co-bloggers three weeks ago.) (Hint: I am referring to […]
Bush Expected to Nominate
Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Order:
Where does John Roberts fit in this ordered list? O’Connor Scalia, Stevens Kennedy Ginsburg Souter Breyer Thomas
More in Common:
What do Morgan Freeman, Alanis Morissette, George Burns, Groucho Marx, and Val Kilmer have in common?
Coming Soon: “Gerunding Name”
I’m trying to compile a list of movie titles that have the form [Gerund] [Name], where [Gerund] is some one-word “-ing” verb, and [Name] is one or more words that refer to a person (or fish). For example: Saving Private Ryan, Saving Silverman, Finding Nemo, Finding Forrester, Deconstructing Harry, Being John Malkovich, Regarding Henry, Chasing […]
A Physics Puzzle:
Today is the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s publication of the paper containing “E=mc^2.” (Actually, Einstein wrote “mass diminishes by L/c^2”, where L is used instead of E to represent energy, and if you multiply both sides by c^2 you get the formula we’re familiar with.) In honor of the 100th anniversary, I wrote a crossword […]
Triangle
Imagine you have an equilateral triangle 2 inches to a side. Prove that no matter how you draw 5 points within the triangle (anywhere in the interior or on the perimeter), there will be two points an inch or less away from each other.
What do these actors
have in common? F. Murray Abraham, Holly Hunter, Adrien Brody, Jamie Foxx. Name another actor that has the same characteristic. I have one answer in mind, though there may be others.
Professions:
There’s a profession whose name has 12 letters. If you insert a hyphen after the second letter, you get an apt description for the profession of a certain prominent public official.
A Writer, an Actress, a Singer, an Artist:
What do Virginia Woolf, Katherine Hepburn, Ray Charles, and Lee Krasner have in common?
More on Numbers of Friends:
Prove that in any group of people (no matter how large), there are always two people with exactly the same number of friends within the group. Note that we define friendship to be symmetric, so that if A is friends with B, then B is also friends with A. UPDATE: Assume the group has at […]
Mutual Friends
Prove that in any group of 6 people, there must be either a group of 3 people who are all mutual friends or a group of 3 people who are all mutual strangers. (Some assumptions: Friendship is symmetric — if I’m friends with you, then you’re friends with me; and any two people are either […]
Another Presidential Order:
In what order have I arranged these names? John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush.