Diversions....

I do believe I mentioned  the excellent website Futility Closet in my prev. post.  Well here's some scraps of knowledge/info I've culled from the Closet as of late...

1. While I have, on numerous occasions, heard the expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut-off", I never knew there was once a famous chicken doing just that until I read the legend of Mike. Ohhhh, but were I woman of means, that could scrape up travel funds at a moment's notice I would ABSOLUTELY call out sick for the rest of this week and trek out to Colorado so's I could attend this weekend's Mike the Headless Chicken Festival in Fruita, CO.  It looks to be pretty rad.

2. I also discovered the oddity that is Dion McGregor this week.  I didn't read about anyone (the press or the public) trying to expose him as a fraud, but when I heard what his schtick was, I immediately thought :HOAX.  I don't want to be, but it really seems that I AM a born skeptic.  Anyway, phony-baloney or no, if you check out Dion McGregor's "works" on YouTube, it is apt to plant some crrrrazypants dreams in your melon. Behold--


Seriously, I could not decide which vid to share(and by that I mean which one was the most remarkably wackadoo). "Don't Break the Mailman" & "Dear Uncle" made me laugh. "The Wagon" is a tad NSFW.

3. I have gotten into browsing the FC collection of riddles, and making myself solve them without just clicking through to the answer like some kinda mental sloth. The math ones I still stay away from...I am of the view that only the most DEPRAVED of masochists would divert themselves with algebra exercises. I like the logic puzzles, and I usually need to doodle out the solution with some sort of diagram or grid.  I am possibly a good visual learner...perhaps this is why I did so lousy in Algebra I & II (scraping by with Ds every term)  but somehow managed an A+ in Geometry.  Someone said to me that that means I am right-brain dominant, but I think I've read before that that whole "right-brained" "left-brained" classification of folks gets sloppy & oversimplified.  I just feel I need some tangibility to my math, otherwise, I can't fecking cope!!  Anyway, I like a good logic puzzle. I got a nice ego boost from triumphing over The Zebra Puzzle when I spied the footnote appended to the answer reading--
"If you succeeded, congratulations — purportedly only 2 percent of the world’s population can solve this puzzle."

I did struggle and diagram for a couple of hours, but still ....that stat seems bogus.  Although it may be true that only 2% of the world's population would bother solving the puzzle. Now, that's MUCH more plausible...