Content-Type: text/shitpost

• Roy Harper, mentioned in the Led Zeppelin song [Hats Off to (Roy) Harper](WPREF/Hats Off to (Roy) Harper), was not one of the old black blues guys they ripped off. He is a white Englishman, only three years older than Jimmy Page, and is still alive.

• There is such a thing as “quinternions”!

• Unfortunately it is not analogous to the mathematical objects known as quaternions.

• Rather, a “quaternion” is a quire or booklet made of four sheets of paper folded together, and similarly a “quinternion” is five sheets.

A theorem of Goh and Schmutz says that if !!\mu_n!! is the order of the average permutation of !!n!! elements, then $$\log \mu_n \sim c\sqrt{\frac{n}{\log n}}$$ where !!c!! is a constant, approximately !!1.1178641511899!!.

• There's a version of Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra narrated by Melissa Joan Hart as her character Clarissa.

• Also one narrated by Dame Edna Everage.

(The version I had as a kid was narrated by Sean Connery.)

In Genesis 6:15–16, God tells Noah very specifically how to build the ark:

This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around

(New International Version)

Now, suppose you're Noah. The Flood is coming. God has told you to make the ark three hundred cubits long. Is God just offering a helpful estimate here, about how big the ark will need to be? Or is this one of those situations where you have to measure exactly, because God said “three hundred cubits” and not “roughly three hundred cubits”?

The Flood is coming, Noah is in a big hurry, but has had to measure that three hundred cubits exactly. Because if he made it a handsbreadth too long or too short, he might have turned out to be the guy cited in the second edition of the Bible as having caused the destruction of the world by being insufficiently attentive to the command of God.

I want to be buried wearing a t-shirt that says STORE IN A COOL DRY PLACE.

The heptagon is underused as an architectural element.

P.S. I am not a crackpot.

What's the opposite of a mallet?

A bonnet!

• The word “kibitz” is ultimately from Middle High German Kiebitz, which is a type of plover.

The trolley problem is just as perplexing if your goal is to kill as many people as possible.

• “[Dwayne Johnson] was Tim Burton's second choice to play the role in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory if Johnny Depp wasn't available.” WHAAAAAAT?

• Edgar Allan Poe married his first cousin when she was 13 years old. They claimed at the time that she was 21.

• • The name of Dictys, the kindly fisherman in the legend of Perseus, means “Mr. Net”.