by Garth Sundem
In addition to choice of paper, pay special attention to precise construction and to the technique of your frog stroke. Push directly down on your frog's hopping mechanism and you will lose spring due to a slow release (you can't release your hand faster than your frog's recoil); stroke too far forward and you risk losing precious compression. Instead, geeks know that a confident but gentle stroke from the frog's nose, ending off its backside, produces maximal hopping power.
If comparing origami frog jumping heights in an online forum, be sure to account for altitude and humidity at your test site, both of which drastically affect performance (higher humidity leads to damp and thus somewhat flaccid frogs; higher altitude allows less air resistance, though it can provide cardiovascular challenges for the frog's operator).
Here are plans:
THREE MORE PENCIL AND PAPER GAMES
A SAM LOYD LOGIC PUZZLE
The goal of the game shown below is to knock over the last standing pin. With each throw, Van Winkle or his opponent can knock down any one or two (adjacent) pins. The little man of the mountains (who can be seen flipping Van Winkle the bird) has just knocked over pin number two, and now it is Van Winkle's turn to let it rip. Which play ensures that he will win the game?
COFFEE ALTERNATIVES
At work in your cup of hot coffee is a complex pharmacopeia of chemicals, the combination of which has the potential to see you safely through the morning. While the effects are caffeine-dominated, the components of this cocktail gently raise and lower various body functions resulting in everything from boosted cognitive performance to higher blood pressure to a reduced risk of gout. But what if your early morning lover has lost its luster? (And the ever expanding array of choices at your local chain coffee shop has started to look like the desperate pandering of new-is-better marketing.) Maybe it's time to try one of the following:
• Yerba maté. From deep in the heart of South America comes this flavorful drink borne of a species of holly plant. Maté contains caffeine but also related compounds of the same type (xanthines), which offer a similar but slightly different psychoactive pick-me-up. No, maté is not cocaine, and no, it has never been clinically proven to be addictive.
• Black tea. Use only if you like the taste. It has half the caffeine of coffee. Drink with extended pinky finger.
• Chai. If you are neither a turtleneck-wearing poet nor a complete wuss, your only option for chai is masala chai, which contains a bracing mixture of cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, and cloves.
• Anything containing guarana. The guarana bean contains three times as much caffeine as the coffee bean. Brazilians, who consume mass quantities of guarana soft drinks, claim the drug offers caffeine's energy boost without the accompanying jitters.
• Hippie witch brew. The magazine Mother Earth News recommends a blend of crushed acorns, burdock root, California coffee-berry, carob, chicory, dandelion, and sow thistle. Try asking for this at Starbucks. See what happens.
THE COOL THING ABOUT DIVIDING BY SEVEN
One divided by seven equals 0.14285714; two divided by seven equals 0.285714; three divided by seven equals 0.4285714; four divided by seven equals 0.5714285714; five divided by seven equals 0.714285714; six divided by seven equals 0.8571485714. How frickin’ cool is that? While certainly described elsewhere, this pattern was independently discovered by a friend of this author's “when doing some math one day in college, which is what sociology majors do between happy hours.”
PERSON NEVER SEEN IN THE SAME ROOM AS BATMAN
Linus Torvalds.
SELECTIONS FROM THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISM'S RULES FOR ARMED COMBAT
III-B1: Striking the opponent with excessive force is prohibited.
III-B7: A fighter shall not deliberately strike a helpless opponent.
IV-B1: If a combatant intentionally places an illegal target area in the path of a blow, the combatant forfeits that attached limb as if it had been struck in a legal target area.
V-B1b: The minimum effective thrusting blow to the face shall be a direct touch and the maximum shall be substantially lighter than to other parts of the body.
V-C1: An effective blow to the head, neck, or torso shall be judged fatal or completely disabling, rendering the fighter incapable of further combat.
VII-A3: Flails are expressly prohibited.
VIII-A: Siege engines or structures may be used in combat during melees and wars in accordance with the rules set forth in the Siege Engines Handbook.
VIII-C1: A blow from a siege-class ammunition to any legal target area shall be judged fatal or completely disabling.
XI-D: If an injured person is conscious, they may be asked if they would like assistance. No conscious person will be forced to accept treatment without his or her consent. No non-combatant shall enter the combat area until summoned by a marshal.
Courtesy of Society for Creative Anachronism's Marshal's Handbook, 2007, www.sca.org.
THE WORLD'S WORST SOMEWHAT- MODERNNATURAL DISASTERS
If you're a tourist hoping to experience disaster of biblical proportions, you won't do better than a trip to mainland China, which boasts seven of the modern world's top ten natural disasters. While you missed out on the fertile years of the 1920s and 1970s, there is no telling when disaster may strike again! Note: In 2002, twenty-five people in China's Henan Province were killed by hail.
In the summer of 1931, China's Yellow River flooded, and up to eight million people drowned or died of ensuing disease and famine.
The same river flooded in 1887, killing upward of a million people.
On November 13, 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck Bangladesh, killing between 500,000 and one million people.
In 1839, a cyclone in India killed upward of 300,000 people.
In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami officially killed 283,100 people.
In 1976, China's Tangshan earthquake killed a government-reported 242,000 people, but estimates of the death toll range as high as 655,000 people.
When China's Banqiao Dam failed in 1975, approximately 231,000 people were killed.
In 1920, an earthquake in China's Gansu province claimed at least 200,000 lives.
Another Chinese earthquake, this one in Xining, killed 200,000 people in 1927.
In 1935, the Yangtze River flooded, but human deaths were limited to a mere 145,000.
THE WORLD'S WORST SOMEWHAT- MODERN NATURAL DISASTER MOVIES
If you're a moviegoer hoping to experience horrendous acting and/or cinematography of biblical proportions, what better than a trip down memory lane with the following ill-received and wonderfully cultish disaster classics? The conventions of the genre ensure that you can pick the disaster that most deeply resonates with your unconscious directly from the title.
Earthquake: The people of Los Angeles are assaulted by an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude. The audience feels their pain.
Night of the Comet: A comet wipes out all but two L.A. valley girls, who are forced to fight zombies to survive. Seriously.
Avalanche: Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow, trapped at a ski resort. Stops short of The Shining and The Donner Party.
Though Volcano (1997) stars the venerable Tommy Lee Jones and the unattainable Anne Heche, its tagline says it all: “The coast is toast.”
The Day After Tomorrow: A disaster grab bag, featuring hurricanes, tornados, tidal waves, floods, and an ice age that threatens to overtake vehicles traveling in the right lane.
Meteor: An eight-kilometer-wide chunk of the asteroid Orpheus is heading toward Earth. The only hope is to nuke it. Acting in this clinker are the redoubtable Sean Connery and Henry Fonda. We can only imagine that both stars’ reaction to the premiere must have included firing their agents.
Armageddon: According to IMDb, “When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth, the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.” Big oil, eat your heart out.
Deep Impact: According to IMDb, “Unless a comet can be des
troyed before colliding with Earth, only those allowed into shelters will survive.” Too bad Robert Duvall and Téa Leoni couldn't track down Bruce Willis and his deep core drilling team.
The Core: According to IMDb, “The only way to save Earth from catastrophe is to drill down to the core and set it spinning again.” Too bad Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank couldn't track down Bruce Willis and his deep core drilling team.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LASER WEAPONS
With only a quick stop at your local box store, you can be ready to pop a conventional cap in someone's ass; however, charring said ass to a crisp using a laser or other ray weapon is not so easy. This is because—despite many decades of government promises—laser weapons do not currently exist (despite the ubiquity of in dustrial cutting lasers and promises by high-school tech-ed teachers that one false move with a pointer will render your lab partner a cyclops).
One of the earliest claims of ray-gun success was by Nicola Tesla (who else?), who in 1937 published a treatise titled “The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through the Natural Media.” The schematics of his “teleforce weapon” are suspiciously missing (having perhaps suffered a fate similar to that of the Ark of the Covenant, which is stored in a vast government warehouse to the benefit of unwitting humankind).
Later, Ronald Reagan spent many billions of dollars trying to scare Soviet scientists into believing the United States was, in fact, technologically able to create laser weapons capable of zapping ICBMs out of the sky. This sparked projects with badass-sounding acronyms like MARAUDER and MEDUSA and MIRACL, but almost no measurable results (other than a precedent for massive defense spending on pipe dreams).
The crux, in the cases of almost all types of ray weapons, is in generating the needed energy using a method that is more portable than the standard nuclear power plant. Also difficult is the plasma breakdown of air when hit with massive energy, known as “blooming”—as the air breaks down, so too does the laser it conducts. Any par-ticulate matter in the air greatly enhances blooming—bullets push dust and smoke aside; laser weapons have to burn through them.
What this means is that you should content yourself for now with your trusty Star Trek phaser, which, while the nadions it fires can be seen to travel much slower than the speed of light, can be set for stun in addition to kill.
RARE NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS AND WHERE THEY CAN BEST BE SEEN
MARITIME SIGNAL LANGUAGE
Like Egyptian hieroglyphics, signal language can be phonetic or representational: Flags stand for letters but also have their own meanings. For example, the three bars of J mean “on fire, keep clear” (as if the flames weren't clue enough), and the four squares of U signal “You are standing into danger.” In actual usage, these flags are also color coded, so as to avoid implying, for example, that all Dutch ships are on fire and all Jamaican ships are in need of help and/or are stopped.
THE QUOTABLE XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS
XENA TO GABRIELLE ABOUT JOXER: He would crawl fifty miles on broken glass just to sweat in your shadow.
LEAH: Life as a priestess to the virgin goddess Hestia isn't all that hard. The most important rule is to know who you are. GABRIELLE: Believe me, if I have to go the rest of my life without companionship, knowing myself won't be a problem.
XENA: Oh, we don't have to run for it. I'm going to slap these bitches silly.
XENA: I will crush his head like a peanut between the thighs of doom!
GABRIELLE: For once, Xena, I'd like to be the Roman noble and you be the slave.
GABRIELLE: You did it! When your village was destroyed, you were infected with bloodlust. But you overcame it!
A RECORDER FINGERING CHART
By the Middle Ages, the recorder had reached its modern form (proved by the discovery of a fourteenth-century, eight-hole recorder in a latrine in the German city of Göttingen). Now, due to its inexpensive construction, ease of playing, and the difficulty of making truly horrendous accidental noises while playing (as opposed to the clarinet, trombone, or violin), the recorder is the go-to instrument of choice for elementary school music programs across the country. There remains nothing quite like the sound of twenty-nine fifth-graders simultaneously attempting “You Are My Sunshine” on the soprano recorder.
INTERESTING BITS OF EGGSHELL PHYSICS
While the facts below are best termed trivia, there is, in fact, a way to win money or beer using eggshells: Hold a sharp knife upright and set half an eggshell on its point. Bet that your dupe cannot pound the handle of the knife into a table with enough force to cause the tip of the knife to puncture the shell. He or she won't be able to, but if you hold the knife handle loosely, allowing it to rebound slightly as it hits the table, it will punch through the half shell.
• A hard-boiled egg will spin easily (and may author smoky 1950s detective novels).
• A fresh egg will sink in water and an older egg will float; this due to an ever increasing air space.
• The stringy coils inside the egg are not (as is commonly held) made of rooster semen; rather, they are bands of tough protein called chalazae, which act as shock absorbers to the yolk.
• During the spring equinox, an egg is no easier to stand on end; neither is it easier to balance an egg at the equator. (Proponents of these theories point to a direct, upward pull exerted by the moon in the first case and the sun in the second.) However, by shaking an egg to break its chalazae, you can release the yolk, lowering the egg's center of gravity, thus making it easier to balance.
• A fresh egg looks cloudy because carbon dioxide present at birth hasn't yet had time to escape.
• An eggshell may have as many as seventeen thousand tiny pores, through which it can absorb flavors.
• The eggshell is composed mainly of calcium carbonate and thus mixing crushed seashells with chicken feed improves shell strength.
• Like the Taj Mahal, the egg's domelike shape evenly distributes force applied to its top.
ALTERNATE PATHS TO SUCCESS
SUPERHEROES, THEIR NEMESES, POWERS, SECRET BASES, AND WEAKNESSES
THE MATHEMATICAL DEFINITION OF AN EULER BRICK
The famous brick borne of the mathematician Leonhard Euler is a cuboid with unequal integer edges and integer face diagonals (if the space diagonal was also an integer it would be called a perfect cuboid, though currently no perfect cuboids have been found). While this sounds simple, the smallest Euler brick has sides of 240, 117, and 44.
The edges of the Euler brick satisfy the following equations (where d, e, and f are the face diagonals created by a box with sides a, b, and c):
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S A LOOPHOLE!
Here it is—April 14—and time again to start worrying about taxes. Wouldn't it be easier for the IRS to simply offer a basic geek credit in recognition of the fact that you will almost certainly find $32,000 of sneaky, obscure write-offs? Lawmakers, take note: Perhaps geek certification should be recognized as another exemption on the standard W-4 form. Until then, don't forget the following tricks:
• If the primary reason for a visit to your vacation property can reasonably be considered work (e.g., you are doing a bit of maintenance on the lake cottage before renting it for the summer season), this time is not taxed as “personal use.” (Likewise, if you rent out your vacation home for fewer than fourteen days in a calendar year, you can pocket the cash.)
• Use child labor to your advantage! If you put your son or daughter on your payroll, he or she can open an IRA, is subject to a lower tax rate than if you had kept the money, and is exempt from Social Security taxes. Likewise, paying a spouse from your sole proprietorship allows him or her to open a separate retirement account.
