The Kate Bush Conjecture - Futility Closet

Many thanks to reader Colin White for this: In her 2005 song “π,” Kate Bush sings the number π to its 78th decimal place, then jumps abruptly to the 101st and finishes at the 137th. The BBC’s More or Less advanced the “Kate Bush conjecture”: that the digits that Bush sings are contained somewhere in the decimal expansion of π — just not at the start. The conjecture is true if π turns out to be a “normal” number, meaning essentially that all possible sequences of digits (of a given length) appear equally often in its expansion. π hasn’t been...

Round and Round - Futility Closet

‘I had quite a bit of fun playing hide-and-seek with a squirrel,’ he said. ‘You know that little round glade with a lone birch in the centre? It was on this tree that a squirrel was hiding from me. As I emerged from a thicket, I saw its snout and two bright little eyes peeping from behind the trunk. I wanted to see the little animal, so I started circling round along the edge of the glade, mindful of keeping the distance in order not to scare it. I did four rounds, but the little cheat kept backing away from...

Podcast Episode 231: The Halifax Explosion - Futility Closet

In 1917, a munitions ship exploded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, devastating the city and shattering the lives of its citizens. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the events of the disaster, the largest man-made explosion before Hiroshima, and the grim and heroic stories of its victims. We’ll also consider the dangers of cactus plugging and puzzle over why a man would agree to be assassinated. Intro: In 1989 an unmanned Soviet MiG-23 flew all the way from Poland to Belgium. In 1793 architect Sir James Hall fashioned a model of Westminster Abbey from rods of...

Purple Haze - Futility Closet

A passage from Irene Iddesleigh, by Amanda McKittrick Ros, arguably the worst novel ever written: ‘False woman! Wicked wife! Detested mother! Bereft widow! ‘How darest thou set foot on the premises your chastity should have protected and secured! What wind of transparent touch must have blown its blasts of boldest bravery around your poisoned person and guided you within miles of the mansion I proudly own? ‘What spirit but that of evil used its influence upon you to dare to bend your footsteps of foreign tread towards the door through which they once stole unknown? Ah, woman of sin and...

In a Word - Futility Closet

manducate v. chew congustable adj. having a similar flavor deturpation n. a making foul gazingstock n. a thing gazed at with wonder Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a 50-foot brick wall covered with used chewing gum. Begun in the 1990s, the wall now bears an estimated 180 pieces of gum per brick. In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction. Washington state governor Jay Inslee called the “gum wall” his “favorite thing about Seattle you can’t find anywhere else,” but in fact Bubblegum Alley, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is...

Lahaina Noon - Futility Closet

Twice a year, objects Hawaii lose their shadows as the sun passes directly overhead. A “zero shadow day” occurs biannually between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, arriving at each location when the sun’s declination equals its latitude.

Thinking - Futility Closet

The problem of indoctrination is this: in a modern democratic society, the desired goal of education is that each student develop a set of beliefs that are rationally grounded and open to change when challenged by better-grounded beliefs. In order to develop such students, however, it would seem that they must acquire a belief in rational methods of knowing which must itself be beyond challenge, i.e., held in a manner inconsistent with its own content. Thus, students must be indoctrinated in order not to be indoctrinated: a pedagogical dilemma or paradox. — Charles James Barr Macmillan, “‘On Certainty’ and Indoctrination,”...

Retro Cinema - Futility Closet

The 1984 action comedy Top Secret! contains an odd sequence set in a Swedish bookstore. Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, and Peter Cushing acted the entire scene backward, and the filmmakers then reversed this performance to produce a dreamlike atmosphere in which impossible things happen. The scene required 17 takes and four dogs, co-director Jim Abrahams told ScreenCrush. “Each dog stopped being hungry.”

Telegram from Buckminster Fuller to Isamu Noguchi Explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity – Elisabetta Benassi

Crime and Punishment - Futility Closet

Memorable excerpts from the detective fiction of Michael Avallone (1924-1999): “The next day dawned bright and clear on my empty stomach.” (Meanwhile Back at the Morgue) “My body felt as abnormal as a tuxedo in a hobo jungle.” (The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse) “My stunned intellect, the one that found death in his own backyard with him standing only feet away, hard to swallow in a hurry, found the answer.” (The Horrible Man) “Her breasts were twin mounds of female muscle that quivered and hung and quivered and hung again. The pale red of her nipples were two twinkling eyes that...