World of Stuff Sampler
Mathematical Puzzles
There's this mathematical puzzle that asks if you cut off opposite corners of a
chessboard, can you cover it with dominoes so that each domino covers two
adjacent squares? Well, if you cut off opposite corners of a chessboard and
then try to cover it with dominoes, then you get confused bespectacled
chessplayers looking at you and asking you if you'd like them to explain the
rules to you again.
Mathematicians
A very celebrated mathematical event was when Frederick Nelson Cole presented a
paper to the American Mathematical society entitled "On the factorisation of
large numbers". In complete silence, he multiplied two by itself 67 times,
then subtracted one. Still in silence, he multiplied 193,707,721 by
761,838,257,287 and showed that this was the same. Then he sat down. The
audience gave him a standing ovation. Which tells you about as much about
mathematicians as you will ever need to know.
The Matrix
What is the Matrix? Oh, who cares.
Mercury Rising
Typically daft Hollywood adventure starring Bruce Willis and a small child with
a special gift, but since this predates The Sixth Sense it was crap. The
completely flawed plot goes something like:
To test the efficacy of the ace new top secret code, some government johnnies
at the NSA (the American version of GCHQ which is where Q from James Bond
lived) encode a message with a phone number in it, and (this is the good bit),
put it in a puzzle magazine. Despite the fact that any sensible encryption
algorithm should require an exponentially large amount of computation in the
key length with no knowledge of the plaintext, a six year old autistic savant
unscrambles the message just by looking at it, and calls the secret number.
Rather than realising that their cryptosystem must be open to some kind of back
door attack, the NSA instead decide that maybe they can get around this flaw in
the system by... sending an assassin to kill the boy and his family, resulting
in
a lot of shooting, chasing, explosions and Bruce Willis in a vest (again).
Incidentally, after success with "The Fifth Element" and "The Sixth Sense",
apparently Willis' next project is a remake of Bergman's classic "The Seventh
Seal", in which Willis fends off Death by challenging him to a game of hide and
seek, armed only with a dirty white t-shirt and a gun. Watch out for the comedy
seal clubbing scene.
Michael X
Some time in the 70s/80s a black power activist named Michael X was hanged in
the West Indies, probably as the result of an unjust conviction. The man who
headed his defence team was often asked to explain the name, which was often
taken to be ripped off from Malcolm, whom he'd had dealings with in the past.
The true story, in fact, was more interesting, and involved an incident in
which Malcolm and Michael were both checking into a hotel in the Birmingham
area. Malcolm X went up to the desk first, booked himself in, gave his name,
and asked for "a room for brother Michael here". The receptionist, naturally
assuming that, as brothers, they would share a surname, dutifully recorded him
as Michael X and, highly delighted, he carried the name to his dying day.
Movie Cliches
If you find yourself faced by someone who hates you who is sat down apparently
unarmed and smoking a cigarette, please take time to check whether you are
standing in a pool of petrol. Thank you
Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy
A fantastically complicated name for a rather odd condition. Named after the
fictional character, Baron Munchausen, who would regale people with his
far-fetched tales of bravado, this syndrome denotes people who seek attention
by inflicting suffering on others and reaping the sympathy. If you happen to
see the Sixth Sense (Bruce Willis, 1998), the highlight is a cameo appearance
of Munchausen's Syndrom by Proxy.