When IBM released the ThinkPad 701 subnotebook in 1995, users got a surprise. The unit was only 24.6 centimeters wide, but opening the lid presented a keyboard more than 4 centimeters wider. The secret was a dissection: The keyboard was stored in two pieces, each roughly a right triangle, and as the lid was opened these slid to either side, with one moving downward until they merged into a full-sized keyboard. (Mathematician Greg Frederickson wrote, “You find yourself opening and closing the lid repeatedly just to watch this movement!”)

The effect was so pleasing that the “butterfly keyboard” entered the permanent collection of Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, but IBM discontinued the feature when it retired the 701. Designer John Karidis said, “The butterfly keyboard was no longer necessary, because people moved to larger displays. Where the butterfly approach makes sense is where you want the largest keyboard possible in combination with an 8-inch or 10-inch display.”

Someone asked Wellington, at a dinner party, what was the most inane remark he had ever heard. His reply — possibly not politically correct — was that before a battle in the Peninsular War he had heard a Portuguese General address his troops saying, ‘Remember, men, you are Portuguese.’

— From Alec Guinness’ commonplace book

Via MetaFilter.

We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
And They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!

— Kipling

A certain island contains a network of roads. Each road segment (between one intersection and the next) has its own name. If d is the average number of road segments that meet at an intersection, show that it’s possible to take a drive on the island that traverses at least d road segments and hits them in alphabetical order.

• Maria Edgeworth’s “Essay on Irish Bulls” and a treatise on the Great Seal of the United States have both been listed under Zoology.
• A description of Napier’s bones, John Napier’s manual calculating device, has been listed under Anatomy.
• “Under the Microscope,” poet Algernon Charles Swinburne’s 1872 invective against critic Robert Buchanan, has been listed under Optical Instruments.
• A volume of poetry titled The Viol and the Lute has been listed under Musical Instruments.
• John Ruskin’s Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, an 1851 pamphlet on divinity, has been listed under Agriculture.
• Scottish minister William McEwen’s writings on biblical types have been listed under Printing.

Best: German naturalist Johann Heinrich Linck’s De stellis marinis liber singularis, a treatise on sea stars, has been listed under Astronomy.

Here is a pretty problem which I figured out during a ride from Bixley to Quixley astride a razor-back mule. I asked Don Pedro, a native guide who walked ahead of me pulling the mule forward by its reins, if my steed had another gait. He said it had but that it was much slower, so I pursued my journey at uniform speed. To encourage Don Pedro, who was my chief propelling power, I said we would pass through Pixley, so as to get some liquid refreshments; and from that moment he could think of nothing but Pixley.

After we had been traveling for forty minutes I asked how far we had gone. Don Pedro replied: ‘Just half as far as it is to Pixley.’

After creeping along for seven miles more I asked: ‘How far is it to Quixley?’ He replied as before: ‘Just half as far as it is to Pixley.’

We arrived at Quixley in another hour, which induces me to ask you to determine the distance from Bixley to Quixley.

Interestingly, though, ants have been shown to increase in efficiency when working in teams. New World army ants can carry larger loads as a team than if the burden were distributed among them individually, and Weaver ants organize pulling chains that can effectively double the strength of each member. So “the Ringelmann effect” isn’t inescapable.

Nostro patre, qui es in caelos,
que tuo nomine fi sanctificato;
que tuo regno adveni;
que tuo voluntate es facto
sicut in caelo et in terra.
Da hodie ad nos nostro pane quotidiano,
et remitte ad nos nostro debitos,
sicut et nos remitte ad nostro debitores.
Et non induce nos in tentatione,
sed libera nos ab malo.
Amen.

In the end it was not widely adopted, but most of Peano’s books and papers are written in his proposed language.

— Ivan Krylov