Category Archives: confusion

And It’s That Day, Once Again ~ Early Afternoon Thoughts ~

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First off some thoughts in picture …..

blog April Fools Day1

blog April Fools Day2

There, now that I’ve gotten that out-of-the-way ….

Along the years, I’ve gotten to enjoy some really bizarre “conspiracy theories”.   Some are in the category of >banging head on keyboard> while others actually make you stop and go “Hmm.”  This is one of those.

In spite of what my Grand-kids might think, cell phones are a rather new invention … or are they?

the way back machine

[NOTE: the two videos that follow have NOT been doctored, they are as they were … ]

OK, let’s set the way back machine  to the year – well close to the year – 1928 and Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus … watch and you might think that Dr. Who had been there ….

Really? A cell phone in 1928(ish) …. To quote the infomercials: “But wait there’s more…..”

Skip the record ahead just a few years to the somewhere toward 1938(ish) ….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iasKNUhDc_w

Totally flummoxed? As always, there are some explanations….. I’m just not going to include them now.  I’ll post about it tomorrow after you’ve dealt with them ….

Happy April Fools Day everyone ….

Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ They’re Not Ignoble ~ Just Ig Nobel

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Next to the Darwin Awards (for those who mercifully remove themselves from the gene pool), I love the Ig Noble Awards.  Hosted by Improbable Research each year they award an Ig Nobel Award best described here :These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think'” — Nature

I’m not totally sure about the thinking part, but the laugh part certainly is there.  This year’s awards include a variety of subjects … each seeming somewhat ridiculous.  I suppose there ARE those who need to know what happens when coffee sloshes when you walk, but right now I can’t think of anyone!!! Let me know if you do….

Envelope please ~ the 2012 winners of the coveted Ig Nobel (who  received their awards in an actual ceremony yesterday) are:

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Anita Eerland and Rolf Zwaan [THE NETHERLANDS] and Tulio Guadalupe [PERU, RUSSIA, and THE NETHERLANDS] for their study “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller”

PEACE PRIZE: The SKN Company [RUSSIA], for converting old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.

ACOUSTICS PRIZE: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada [JAPAN] for creating the SpeechJammer — a machine that disrupts a person’s speech, by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford [USA], for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Johan Pettersson [SWEDEN and RWANDA]. for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people’s hair turned green.

PHYSICS PRIZE: Joseph Keller [USA], and Raymond Goldstein [USA and UK], Patrick Warren, and Robin Ball [UK], for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.

FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE: Rouslan Krechetnikov [USA, RUSSIA, CANADA] and Hans Mayer [USA] for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.

ANATOMY PRIZE: Frans de Waal [The Netherlands and USA] and Jennifer Pokorny [USA] for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

MEDICINE PRIZE: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti [FRANCE] for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode. [OK, I just HAD to add to this one … REFERENCE: “Colonic Gas Explosion During Therapeutic Colonoscopy with Electrocautery,” Spiros D Ladas, George Karamanolis, Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 13, no. 40, October 2007, pp. 5295–8.]

And there you have it … this year’s winners ….

And My Life Goes On And On ~

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As you’ve discovered here, I’m pretty easy going and have a pretty good sense of humor.  Today, however, I wasn’t so sure I was going to be able to keep it … Read on McDuff!!!

OK, first up was a Dr’s appointment (good report) followed by a trip with a friend to Bath and Body Works – for the sale (things up to 75% off) and I had a coupon for an additional $10 off. Sounds simple enough, right? Um … this is me we’re talking about!!!! So, braving the sales crowd at the store, I find the “flavor” of wall air-freshener I like ~ Eucalyptus Mint, if you must know…. 4 for $20. Not a great buy, but OK none-the-less. Leaving that station RIGHT NEXT TO IT is another station filled with the same fragrances packed 2 to a box instead of being single in a bin. Should cost more, right? Wrong. These SAME fragrances are now marked $6 for a two pack. — So, instead of $20 for 4 they’re now $12 for four.


At the check-out, the “kid” (and I do mean kid) ringing me up almost panicked when it rang up at $6. Before I can say anything there is an immediate call (on headset) to manager (who was probably only 6 months older than he was). I mentioned the price difference, which causes her to grab the box and repeat, as if to a first grader: “This is a two pack”…giving me the impression she was going to charge me $6 PER bottle. I’m telling her the sign said “2 pack for $6 and she’s clutching the box (as if it were pearls she was clutching in horror) repeating “This is a two pack.”

Realizing this is going no where fast, and I’m beginning to get really, really irritated – I said to just ring it up. With one more attempt to make sure I understood this was a 2-pack and possibly realizing I was about to render her visual aid to be extremely painful, she left with one totally confused clerk and one totally confused customer in her wake.

And yes, they rang up at $6 for a 2 pack leaving the singles at $5 for one, in faded memory.

Moral of the story, if Bath And Body Works employees can’t figure it out, it’s best left alone … right? LOL ….

Flying Spaghetti Monster ~An Elegant Timewaster

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I found this elegant game one afternoon, and spent quite a bit of time playing it.

As you can see from the picture – the method of playing is quite simple — But getting to the end? Ah, that’s another story …

Oh – If you are at work, you might want to turn the sound down on your computer …

To start getting caught-up enjoying a break –

—>CLICK HERE<–

According To Einstein ~ An Elegant Time Waster

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Normally, the timewasters postings like these involve the computer. You can solve this one on paper, but I think a computer spreadsheet might make it a little bit easier. I am not responsible for nibbled pencils, too many cups of coffee or the fact that you might growl at people as they try to talk to you while solving this puzzle.

According to legend/myth – Albert Einstein wrote this as a small boy, and 98% of the world can not solve it.

Two things wrong with that sentence – 1) if I remember rightly he was too busy getting in trouble as school to be this creative and 2) I would imagine that 98% of the world would simply be uninterested in the puzzle. This puzzle has also been attributed to Lewis Carroll, and various other authors.

The version below is quoted from the first known publication in Life International magazine on December 17, 1962.

1. There are five houses.
2. The Englishman lives in the red house.
3. The Spaniard owns the dog.
4. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
6. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7. The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8. Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14. The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
15. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now, who drinks water? Who owns the zebra?

And before I get strung up on a yardarm – let me offer a couple of “clarifications”:
Each of the five houses is painted a different color.
Their inhabitants are of different national extractions,
own different pets,
drink different beverages
and smoke different brands of American cigarettes.
One other: In statement 6, right means your right.
One more: The houses ARE in a row.

As always, I have been known to be bribed talked into sharing the solution via email.