Bastian

There are many things that seem impossible to me. One of them is to actually believe in the existence of the folks that recorded those annoying automated phone messages. This piece from the Guardian is like reading about the infra world. They live!

Once, I felt rage and swore at one of these calls. It was a political one, trying to make me listen to a candidate's proposals (which were pure lies, as time showed). But I got a sore throat, and he got elected. So why bother...

I never went out backpacking, but this sounds interesting and will keep it posted if I change my mind about it...

My brother (a former reviewer of this site) is better versed than me in ancient English literature. But I bought a copy of Beowulf something like fifteen years ago, although I never read it throughly.

I also like the Heany version far more than all others.

From the page: "Britney Gallivan has solved the Paper Folding Problem. This well known challenge was to fold paper in half more than seven or eight times, using paper of any size or shape.

In April of 2005 Britney's success was mentioned on the prime time CBS television show Numb3rs.

The task was commonalty known to be impossible. Over the years the problem has been discussed by many people, including mathematicians and has been demonstrated to be impossible on TV.

For extra credit in a math class Britney was given the challenge to fold anything in half 12 times. After extensive experimentation, she folded a sheet of gold foil 12 times, breaking the record. This was using alternate directions of folding. But, the challenge was then redefined to fold a piece of paper. She studied the problem and was the first person to realize the basic cause for the limits. She then derived the folding limit equation for any given dimension. Limiting equations were derived for the case of folding in alternate directions and for the case of folding in a single direction using a long strip of paper. The merits of both folding approaches are discussed, but for high numbers of folds, single direction folding requires less paper. "


I was still thinking that the 8-fold-times limit was still unbroken... but it seems that you can't rely on common wisdom for too long.

To Reduce Hangovers (something really useful for me, lately)

"For our money, the sovereign non-alcoholic hangover cure remains a 20-oz Coca-Cola (not Diet Coke) absorbed straight from the bottle. For those unfamiliar with this sweet brown concoction, it's a carbonated tonic with a certain amount of caffeine that occasionally turns up in the Cuba Libre."