Hubcaps of the Undercover Highway Patrol

PUZZLE
QUESTION/PUZZLE

I heard this one a while ago and have been thinkin' 'bout it for quite some time...

Ray from CarTalk:
I remember a day some years ago when I got into a scrape with the law. Okay, I got stopped for speeding. It was an unmarked state police car that pulled me over. As he drove off after handing me my license and speeding ticket, I looked his car over, trying to find something that would make this unmarked car easier to spot in a crowd of cars the next time. Well, the one thing I did notice (there were no other features really) was that this car had something called "half moon hubcaps." They're the kinds that cover only that part of the wheel where the lug nuts are located. They don't cover the entire wheel like traditional hubcaps.Over the next few weeks, I began to look at lots of police cars, both marked and perhaps even unmarked. Most of them had these very same hubcaps, and not the full wheel hubcaps that most civilian cars had.

The question is why do you see these kinds of hubcaps on police cars? By the way, you do see them on some civilian cars. You see them on hot rods, for example-- and it may be that they're on hot rods and police vehicles for the same reason.

(source: Car Talk)
Click on comments below for answer.

Topology in your Pants

PUZZLE
QUESTION/PUZZLE
Is it possible to take a cord of rope 6 feet long and tie it snugly around your right ankle and your left ankle, take off your pants, turn them inside out, and put your pants back on without ever cutting the rope?

- Try thinking through the problem instead of actually using rope and undressing... (smile)!

(source: Dr. Paul Lin passed this to us after hearing it on NPR)
Click on comments below for answer.

Area Codes

The blog hasn't been updated in quite a while... I've been busy with my return to residency and some of my professors have banned me from "wasting" time on the computer...

However, I've been consuming time on the phone instead and recently I again signed up for a VOIP (Voice Over IP) account through VONAGE. I had the option to choose an area code for my new number and since I'm orginially from the NYC area, I just had to have a 212 number... and that got me thinking about area codes...

Tanuja Kulkarni helped me out with this one... besides sending me the link above containing the history of area codes in the US and Canada, she gave me this "fun-fact:"

All of the original area codes had either a 1 or 0 as the second digit and were based on the rotary phones in use at the time. The area codes were assigned to areas and the numbers chosen based on population. New York City had the largest population and the shortest area code. 2-1-2 required one of the shortest number of pulses on a rotary phone. On the other hand Alaska had the smallest population and the longest area coded, 9-0-7. There are more facts about area codes through the link above...

Got Bluetooth?

The name "Bluetooth" is taken from the 10th century Danish King Harald Blatand - or Harold Bluetooth in English. During the formative stage of the Trade Association a code name was needed to name the effort. Over an evening discussing European history and the future of wireless technology several felt it was appropriate to name the technology after King Blatand. He had been instrumental in uniting warring factions in parts of what is now Norway, Sweden and Denmark - just as the technology is designed to allow collaboration between differing industries such as the computing, mobile phone and automotive markets. The code name stuck.

In Jelling, Denmark a monument can be found in a church yard that celebrates both his achievements and those of his father the first king of Denmark "Gorm the Old". Interestingly this particular stone was lost for nearly six-hundred years after Harald had a small war with his own son, Sven Forkbeard, over control of the country. Sven "won" the argument (exiling his father in the process), and since this runic stone also glorified Harald, Sven had it buried. Only years later a farmer, curious about a large mound in his farm, rediscovered the stone.

The logo itself was originally designed by a Scandinavian firm at the time the trade association was announced to the public. Keeping to the traditions of the name, the logo combines the runic alphabetic characters "H" which looks similar to an asterisk and a "B". Look carefully you can seen both represented in the logo.

- Bluetooth.org

Scotch Tape

I found this fun fact on 3M's website:

Richard Drew invented the first masking tape designed to help auto painters to make two-tone paint applications, a Roaring '20s craze, neat and easy. Drew was eager to have the tape sampled by its intended customers. He brought a prototype roll to a St. Paul auto painter. The painter carefully applied the masking tape along the edge of the color already painted and was just about to spray on the second color when the tape fell off. The annoyed painter examined the 2-inch wide tape and saw that it had adhesive only along its outer edges, but not in the middle.
Annoyed, the painter said to Drew, "Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!"

The name – like the improved tape it inspired – stuck.
Scotch is a trademark of 3M.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 021

PUZZLE
There are 5 houses in 5 different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage. Other facts:

1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house`s owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.

Question: Who owns the fish, what color house does he live in, what does he smoke & drink?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Amber Alerts

Well, my year in Cleveland, Ohio is coming to an end... making plans to head back to our nation's capital to continue my residency... The research year has been great... lots of free time compared to the usualy schedule of a residency in general surgery... even was able to create this BLOG during the year...

Anyways... getting back to D.C. made me think about safety and national security... so I found this link for Wireless Amber Alerts... aparently it's a free service even for those people who don't have text messaging plans with their wireless carrier...

Hope you guys find this useful. Have a safe Memorial Day weekend...

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 020

PUZZLE
A man has nine children born at regular intervals.
The sum of the square of their ages is equal to the square of his own age.
What are the ages of his children?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 019

PUZZLE
Name the 3 academy award winning (best picture) movies that were sports movies.

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Font Facts

What is a serif? You know... as used to describe fonts...

Well, a serif is a small decorative line added as embellishment to the basic form of a character. Typefaces are often described as being serif or sans serif (without serifs). The most common serif typeface is Times Roman. A common sans serif typeface is Helvetica.



Someone once told me that serif fonts were ideal for the printing press since they stabilized the actual form of the letter making the letters last longer for repeated use. Maybe that's an urban legend... but the link above has some great history on fonts.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 018

PUZZLE
What number, when spelled out (in English, not Canadian) includes no repeated letters and has each vowel (AEIOU, but not Y)?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 017

PUZZLE
I begin with letters three
But additions can be made to me

First, I'm a valuable object indeed
Valuable enough for miners to need

Add a letter and I'll be where?
Always in the front, never elsewhere

Add yet another and I'll still be
Before, not after, how is that me?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 016

PUZZLE
If you add the square of Graham's age to the age of Jim, the sum is 62, but if you add the square of Jim's age to the age of Graham, the result is 176.

How old are Graham and Jim really??

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 015

PUZZLE
A man's age at death was one twenty-ninth (1/29) of the year of his birth. How old was he in the year 1900? [Hint: He died before 1930]

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

All Fools' Day

April Fool's Day, or All Fools' Day, is a holiday celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is celebrated by the execution of hoaxes and practical jokes of varying sophistication with the goal of publicly embarrassing the gullible. Pranks are suppose to end by noon and those done afterwards are suppose to bring bad luck to the perpetrator.

History
Some sources say that the special meaning of April 1 originates in the French change to the Gregorian calendar ordered by King Charles IX of France in 1582. Before that, New Year was celebrated from March 25 to April 1. With the change of the calendar system, New Year was "moved" to January 1. People who forgot or didn't accept the new date system were given invitations to nonexistent parties, funny gifts, etc. This was known in France as poisson d'avril (April fish).

Hoaxes
Some media organisations have either unwittingly or deliberately propagated many hoaxes. Even normally serious news media consider April Fools' Day hoaxes fair game, and spotting them has become an annual pastime. The worldwide spread of the Internet has also assisted the pranksters in their work.

Some particularly well-known April Fool's Day hoaxes include:

Kremvax: one of the early Internet April Fool's day hoaxes.

San Serriffe: The Guardian printed a supplement featuring this fictional island (a reference to "sans-serif", a family of typefaces).

Smell-o-vision: The BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odour over the airwaves to all viewers. Despite the fact that no such capability existed, many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success.

Spaghetti trees: The BBC television program Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. A lot of people wanted trees of their own.

Metric time: Repeated several times in various countries over the year, this hoax claims that the time system will be changed to some system where one subdivision is some power of 10 smaller than the next. The idea to metricise time was suggested in France after the French Revolution: see French Revolutionary Calendar.

Tower of Pisa: The Dutch television news once reported that the famous Tower of Pisa had fallen over. Many shocked and even mourning people contacted the television studio.

Television licence: In another year the Dutch television news reported that the government had introduced a new way to detect hidden televisions (at that time, households had to pay for a television licence) by simply driving through the streets with a new detector. The only way to avoid your television from being detected, was to pack the television in aluminum foil. Within a few hours all aluminum foil was sold out throughout the country.

Sidd Finch: George Plimpton worte an article in Sports Illustrated about a New York Mets prospect who could throw a fastball at 176 mph. This kid was known as "Barefoot" Sidd Finch. He reportedly learned to throw a ball that fast in a Buddhist monastery, and also threw a javelin a quarter of a mile at the British Olympic tryouts. Plimpton said the boy refused to go to the Olympics for fear of hurting someone. Barefoot Sidd was later the subject of a moderately successful book.

Radio Station "Power 106": A Los Angeles radio station "announced" a change from pop to disco music at 7:00 AM, April 1, (1993?). After 12 hours they admitted it was a joke, and switched back to their standard playlist. Within minutes complaints rolled in of "where's the disco?", and the station actually changed formats the next day (and kept disco for a year or two).

Australian Radio Station Triple J: On April 1, 1999, breakfast show co-host Adam Spencer told us he had a journalist on the line from overseas where there had just been a secret 9 hour IOC meeting and that Sydney had lost the 2000 Olympic Games. New South Wales Premier Bob Carr was also in on the joke. The story was picked up by mainstream media (including Channel 9's Today show) before Adam revealed the truth.

Ironically, some April Fool jokes that hinge on technological advances have become reality. For example, in the late 1980s a British television Saturday morning kids' programme ran an April Fool hoax about a device named Chippy (the name is a give-away, a "chippy" is a common term for a fish and chips takeway). It was a new type of walkman, which they claimed could hold hundreds of songs on a microchip, thus rendering CDs and radio obsolete. Fast forward to the 2000s, and MP3 players...

Some April Fool's Day 2002 hoaxes:

The Register: reported AOL buying up weblogs

The Open Directory re-branded itself as the 'Microsoft Directory Project'

Kuro5hin acquired MetaFilter, renaming it to met4filter.org

Slashdot announced that it will start posting advertiser-sponsored news stories, and disable anonymous posting.

Google described its PigeonRank system.

The Guardian profiled Harmony Cousins

CPAN renamed itself the 'Comprehensive Java Archive Network'

The annual spoof Linus Torvalds post on the Linux kernel mailing list announced his resignation from the Linux effort

IETF published April 1st RFCs RFC3251 (Distribution of electricity over IP) and RFC3252 (Encapsulating IP in XML).

MIT changed its home page to a spoof of the Google home page.

a spoof Yahoo News story was circulated stating that PK Interactive had received funding from idealab!

The TidBITS newsletter offered a spoof issue

The Tom's Hardware website reported that AMD and nVIDIA were to merge.

The BBC reported more April Fools' pranks including the announced 'flotation' of Harrods.

CNN reported that two Montreal disk jockeys managed to phone Bill Gates on the pretext that one of them was Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien wanting to set up a meeting with Gates. What CNN didn't mention is that these two have a reputation for their audacious prank calls. Previous recipients of their attention have included Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II.

Blizzard Entertainment, the computer game company that produced Warcraft III, announced they would be adding a fifth playable race to the game: the Pandaren, a race of bamboo-eating, sword-wielding warriors.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 014

PUZZLE
A longtime patient of Dr. Bennet's recently passed. In her will, she left her most valuable posession, her diamond ring, to her grandchild who could solve this clue... the ring lies within a cylinder surrounded by a thousand squares... where is it?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 013

PUZZLE
Adam, God made out of dust
But thought it best to make me first,
So I was made before man
To answer God's most Holy plan.
A living being I became
And Adam gave to me my name.
I from his presence then withdrew
And more of Adam never knew.
I did my Maker's law obey
Nor ever went from it astray.
Thousands of miles I go in fear
But seldom on earth appear.
For purpose wise God did see,
He put a living soul in me.
A soul from me God did claim
And took from me the soul again.
So when from me the soul had fled
I was the same as when first made.
And without hands, or feet, or soul,
I travel on from pole to pole.
I labor hard by day, by night
To fallen man I give great light.
Thousands of people, young and old
Will by my death great light behold.
No right or wrong can I conceive
The scripture I cannot believe.
Although my name therein is found
They are to me an empty sound.
No feat of death doth trouble me
Real happiness I'll never see.
To Heaven I shall never go
Or to Hell below.
Now when these lines you slowly read,
Go search your Bible with all speed
For that my name is written there
I do honestly to you declare

I am ... ?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Messages from Humans

A good part of my day is spent in the research room here at work. A place where most of the time there isn't much "research" going on. It's a small conference room that houses about 15 or so people from different departements and different countries working on clinical or research fellowships. Anyways for the most part these guys are quite personable but what I noticed was the degree of difficulty in communicating simple daily things such as, "Do you wanna go to lunch?" or asking someone about their weekend. There are so many cultural and language barriers to get by but somehow we manage to communicate.

With such problems in communication by creatures of the same species, what must the difficulty be of talking to a different one... and not one on earth but one thousands of light years away? This is not a new problem. In the mid 1970's a message was sent from Arecibo to a group of stars near our galaxy. Here is the raw form of the message:

0000001010101000000000000101000001010000000100100010001000100
1011001010101010101010100100100000000000000000000000000000000
0000011000000000000000000011010000000000000000000110100000000
0000000000101010000000000000000001111100000000000000000000000
0000000001100001110001100001100010000000000000110010000110100
0110001100001101011111011111011111011111000000000000000000000
0000010000000000000000010000000000000000000000000000100000000
0000000001111110000000000000111110000000000000000000000011000
0110000111000110001000000010000000001000011010000110001110011
0101111101111101111101111100000000000000000000000000100000011
0000000001000000000001100000000000000010000011000000000011111
1000001100000011111000000000011000000000000010000000010000000
0100000100000011000000010000000110000110000001000000000011000
1000011000000000000000110011000000000000011000100001100000000
0110000110000001000000010000001000000001000001000000011000000
0010001000000001100000000100010000000001000000010000010000000
1000000010000000100000000000011000000000110000000011000000000
1000111010110000000000010000000100000000000000100000111110000
0000000010000101110100101101100000010011100100111111101110000
1110000011011100000000010100000111011001000000101000001111110
0100000010100000110000001000001101100000000000000000000000000
0000000001110000010000000000000011101010001010101010100111000
0000001010101000000000000000010100000000000000111110000000000
0000001111111110000000000001110000000111000000000110000000000
0110000000110100000000010110000011001100000001100110000100010
1000001010001000010001001000100100010000000010001010001000000
0000001000010000100000000000010000000001000000000000001001010
00000000001111001111101001111000

The message sent in 1974 from the Arecibo radio telescope toward the globular cluster M13 consisted of 1679 “bits” ofinformation. A “0” is represented by an “off” radio pulse,while a “1” is represented by an “on” radio pulse.

Assuming the reader of this blog is part of the human species and is considered intelligent... would you be able to decipher this code into something meaningful? Remember this was created not by aliens but by members of your own species! If you have a difficult time, just think how difficult it would be for someone non-human to do...

Click the link if you get frustrated for an explanation...

What's bigger??

K. Vaziri and Jason Roland proposed this one...

Morsel or Crumb?

I think a "morsel" is bigger since it's a small piece of food while a "crumb" is a very small piece broken from a baked item, such as a cookie, cake, or bread.

What do you think?

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 012

PUZZLE
Forward I am heavy, but backwards I am not.

What am I?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Something a Little Different...

"Unfortunate Coincidence"
- by Dorothy Parker

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

(source: Dr. Jules Cahan)

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 011

PUZZLE
Decapitate me and all becomes equal.
Then truncate me and I become second.
Cut me front and back and I become two less than I started.

What am I?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Occam's Razor

This one's submitted by Dr. Cahan:

one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything

Heart of Love

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's kind of funny to think why the HEART is the symbol for love. With so many organs to choose from, why was the HEART chosen? Could it have not as easily been the spleen, lungs, kidneys, or liver? What about the brain? Isn't there where all emotions and thoughts are processed and synthesized?

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 010

PUZZLE
What is this phrase?

O_er_t_o_

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

The Sky's The Limit

What we call the sky is merely the limit of our vision into the atmosphere. The sky, like the horizon, is always as far away as one can see.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 009

PUZZLE
They divulge secrets deep inside...
They are certainly a billionaire's pride...
Crucial moments of time that may prospect better...
They are sometimes part of that which holds your letters.

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 008

PUZZLE
Five siblings are they, their color is true
One belongs to one, four are shared by two
Connected together, some by locks
They meet their fate upon the rocks
Arrange their initials, and you would
Find things common to a neighborhood.

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 007

PUZZLE
An anagram riddle to tease you,
Three five-letter words, each gets one clue,
A guillotine's use,
An act to get deuce,
And what you are reading now in view.
What are the words?

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 006

PUZZLE
Some say I changed the course of all history,
My medicine is powerful and pretty much free,
It is fabled that I inspired a very heavy truth
And to me, Bill Gates is a little uncouth

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Mental Ilness on Sesame Street

So what's your favorite Sesame Street character?

Mine is Count von Count (a.k.a. The Count).

The Count has a compulsive love of counting (arithmomania); he will count anything and everything, regardless of size, amount, or how much annoyance he is causing the other Muppets.

*Check out the link on a case report of arithmomania on PubMed.

Born October 9, 1,830,653 BC? (1,832,652 years old according to Sesame Street Unpaved), "The Count" is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, performed by Jerry Nelson.

The Count's main purpose is educating children on simple mathematics concepts, most notably counting.

Interestingly, some traditional vampire myths depict vampires as having a similar obsession with counting small objects, providing a means of distracting them by tossing a handful of seeds or salt on the ground. The Count's own arithromania may simply be a coincidence, however, inspired by the pun on his title of nobility. According to his theme song, The Song of the Count: "When I'm alone, I count myself. One count!" Following a counting session, the Count always laughs maniacally, "AH! AH! AH!" and thunder roars overhead. When he sings, the background music resembles gypsy music, no matter what the song.

The Count bears a noticeable resemblance to Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, including a similar accent and oversized, pointed eye-teeth, but it would appear that he is different from other vampires. For example, most vampires wither in direct sunlight; the Count does not and in fact enjoys being outside.

The Count lives in a castle which he shares with many bats. Sometimes he counts them. Some of the pet bats are named, including Batty Bat, Grisha, Misha, Sasha, and Tattiana. He has a cat, Fatatatita, as well.

The Count is very occasionally seen to have a girlfriend, Countess Dahling Von Dahling. His brother and mother have made appearance on the show.


History of the character on Sesame Street
The Count debuted on Sesame Street in Season 4 (1972-73), performed by Jerry Nelson.

He made an appearance in The Muppets Take Manhattan, then in Sesame Street movies Follow That Bird and Elmo in Grouchland.

In Season 33, the Count got a daily segment on Sesame Street, simply called The Number of the Day

Airline Travel

So why is it that when planes almost crash in mid-air that it's called a "Near miss?" Doesn't "Near miss" imply they actually collided? They should call it a "Near hit."

Also, when it's time to board the plane...
"What do most people do? Don't they get ON the plane? I don't know about you but I'd like to get IN the plane."

- This one I got from George Carlin's comedy routine.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 005

PUZZLE
A word I know,
six letters it contains
subtract just one,
and twelve is what remains.

(source: Joshua Felsher)
Click on comments below for answer.

Chief's Mind-Boggler - 004

PUZZLE
What others do laterally I do upright.
My namesakes have run races but I don't compete, alright?
My cousins are dragons but not a lizard be,
I do one thing that all men can't so what can I be?

(source: Joshua Felsher)Click on comments below for answer.