A good few years ago I read a submission sent into OMNI Magazine’s letter page. It stood out that month as a really entertaining piece of lateral thinking. Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the person who sent the letter (or the subsequent reply) but it must have entertained quite a few people and spread because in the intervening years I’ve heard it retold many times. The original post (which may itself have been a quote) and the reply went something like this…
1. Cats always land on their feet.
2. Buttered toast always lands butter side down when dropped.
Therefore: If you take a cat and glue a slice of buttered toast to its back, butter side out, then drop it to the floor the cat should stop just above the floor and begin to spin. As a result we have created the perpetual motion engine.
The reply that came in the following month went something like this…
The relationship between the likelihood of a white carpet getting stained and the staining potential of any substance is proportional, that is, the more likely something is to stain the more likely it is to fall on the white carpet.
Using this law, if we smear the back of a cat with Indian masala sauce and place the cat underneath a train running on strips of white nylon carpet, we can have a hover train that requires very little energy to run.
I thought it might be fun to have a go at this myself so here is my energy saving idea.
If we splice print toner with DNA, we can prepare a report that, if left on a desk overnight, will copy itself.
I think the brilliant minds of AF can better this, so here you go. It’s not a competition but I guess we can see which are the better ideas from the number of kudos votes each one gets…
MM
1. Cats always land on their feet.
2. Buttered toast always lands butter side down when dropped.
Therefore: If you take a cat and glue a slice of buttered toast to its back, butter side out, then drop it to the floor the cat should stop just above the floor and begin to spin. As a result we have created the perpetual motion engine.
The reply that came in the following month went something like this…
The relationship between the likelihood of a white carpet getting stained and the staining potential of any substance is proportional, that is, the more likely something is to stain the more likely it is to fall on the white carpet.
Using this law, if we smear the back of a cat with Indian masala sauce and place the cat underneath a train running on strips of white nylon carpet, we can have a hover train that requires very little energy to run.
I thought it might be fun to have a go at this myself so here is my energy saving idea.
If we splice print toner with DNA, we can prepare a report that, if left on a desk overnight, will copy itself.
I think the brilliant minds of AF can better this, so here you go. It’s not a competition but I guess we can see which are the better ideas from the number of kudos votes each one gets…
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
