End-of-year diversions

A lazy holiday Sunday, so to begin with let me offer you these odds and ends to occupy or amuse you. Be warned: they've all been going the rounds for a while, and you may therefore be familiar with some of them; you may be familiar with all of them. You may not care for them anyway. But, hey, I made the effort! There's one for each month of the year.

(1) This comes from the Guardian some time in March 1998, though I couldn't find a link for it:

A Manchester City fan who threw away his season ticket in disgust at the team's performances had it returned by post three days later, with the anonymous message: "If I have to suffer this rubbish, so do you."

(2) Children's books you'll never see:

You Are Different and That's Bad

Start a Real-Estate Empire with the Change from Your Mom's Purse

The Care Bears Maul Some Campers and Are Shot Dead

How to Become the Dominant Military Power in Your Elementary School

Daddy Drinks Because You Cry

(3) Groucho Marx:

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's
too dark to read.

(4) Four people on one side of a river have to get to the other side. There's a bridge, but it will only bear the weight of two people. It's pitch dark, so they can't cross without a torch. But there's only one torch, and somebody has to bring it back each time. B.M. Nixon takes 10 minutes to cross, Larry Oulde 5 minutes, A. A. ('Christopher') Robin 2 minutes, and Dubs Notrechem 1 minute. When two of them go across together, they go at the pace of the slower person. Everybody has to get across in 17 minutes. There's no trick involved here (no throwing the torch back, shining it along the bridge from the other end etc.). It can be done, legit.

(5) Money, by Richard Armour:

That money talks
I won't deny.
I heard it once.
It said, 'Goodbye.'

(6) You may feel you've been over-eating in the last few days. If so, here are some diet rules that will help.

(7) Men v women - some stereotypical contrasts (but not as suggested by me, no, no):

Bathrooms. A man has six items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn. The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

Offspring. Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams. A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

(8) A technological breakthrough?

(9) A letter from the Smithsonian Institute, Paleoanthropology Division - or perhaps not.

(10) There are two pieces of string. They're made of different materials and are of different lengths. Both pieces of string take exactly one hour to burn from one end to the other. The speed of burning isn't uniform throughout, so the pieces of string can burn quickly at first, then more slowly, or in any random way. If you're given only these two pieces of string and a box of matches, how do you measure 45 minutes? The solution only requires you to burn the strings. No other actions like cutting, measuring, etc. are involved.

(11) I wasn't previously aware that there were engineer jokes, but there are.

(12) Last, and possibly best, perpetual motion.