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updated 17th June 2001

The Latest Things to Make You go Hmmmmmm

Adrian Davis asks, "Who invented Sliced Bread" - good question, and one that we now have an answer for, thanks to PT:

You ask "who invented sliced bread" on your web page.  Well, in the interests of sanity (and a dull afternoon at work) I've come up with the answer.  The answer is Otto Frederick Rohwedder in 1928 at Battle Creek, Michigan.  See:

http://www.stats.org/newsletters/9907/toast.htm http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/03/03/home/home.1.html
http://www.cbc4kids.ca/general/the-lab/history-of-invention/slicedbread.html

Of course, he was the one who invented the slicing machine - I suppose that bread has been sliced manually for hundreds of years, even before the invention of the sandwich.  Perhaps the saying "the best thing since sliced bread" was originally meant to be ironic?  After all, there's not much that you can do with bread unless it's sliced off the loaf...

James Carey writes: 
"Your sliced bread article on the ponder board made me think maybe it is actually slicing bread that's brilliant, not the machine, because as you correctly say.  I suppose that bread has been sliced manually for hundreds of years, even before the invention of the sandwich.  Perhaps the saying 'the best thing since sliced bread' was originally meant to be ironic?  After all, there's not much that you can do with bread unless it's sliced off the loaf...

Unsliced bread would be of little use and would have had to be so small to fit in your mouth it would have all been crust, so obviously sliced bread is a brilliant invention and having been around for so long there would have been very little around before its invention worth speaking about. Possibly people went around saying things like 'This is the best invention until sliced bread.' (or possibly not)."

This got me thinking:
Perhaps people went on about roads, sanitation or whatever new invention had just changed their lives forever.  Taking this hypothesis further, it implies that people were (are?) quite shallow, as to think that a bread slicing machine is more important than, say, penicillin doesn't make much sense when you stop and think about it!

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Wedding Receptions
If you wear an antennae to a wedding, is the reception better?  A good question.....

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Black Spots
A radio black spot is an area that is no good for radio reception whereas an accident black spot is a bloody brilliant place to have a crash!  Makes you think.........

Buttered Bread
If you always buttered your bread on the other side would you never drop it?  Anyone care to experiment with this one?

Buttered Bread & Cats
If a cat always lands on it's feet and bread always lands buttered side down, what happens if you buttered some bread and strapped it to the back of a cat?  A good question, but I think I've got some insight into this one.  First of all, you would most likely be fatally lacerated by the cat whilst trying to tie the bread on.  Secondly, providing you survive the claws, after the experiment (of which I have no insight into the outcome) the cat would escape all attempts at capture and proceed to roll around on your most expensive & delicate fabrics transferring butter everywhere - now I come to think of it does this prove both rules?  The cat lands on it's feet and the butter still goes everywhere.....

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Abbreviated
Why is abbreviated such a long word?   Why indeed?

% Chance of Rain
What do weather forecasters mean when they say there is a 70% chance of rain today? Does this mean that it will be raining for 70% of the day, or does it mean that there is a 70% chance that it will rain at sometime during the day?  If it is the latter, then how long will it rain for - it would be pretty meaningless if one rain drop constituted a 70% chance.  We must be told, especially in Great Britain, where talking about the weather is a national pastime......

Luke Dyson writes, "Chameleon in a mirrored box would turn black......due to the lack of light in a box only
containing a chameleon.....unless of course the chameleon  is its own light source, which is the unlikeliest of unlikely things."  So there you have it!

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Dumping can be a very pleasurable thing to do - in fact, there is nothing as under-estimated as a good dump, and nothing as over-estimated as a good £$?% (children may be reading this).  It seems, however, that only men think that dumping is one of life's pleasures, and I think Charles Darwin can explain why.

Sometime in our ancient history, when most of us lived in natural hillside caves, I postulate that both men and women liked a good, long dump.  Now, this is where the problem first arose for the Cro Magnon women.  As they were responsible for looking after their babies, the women who got engrossed in a good long dump were more pre-disposed to loosing their babies over the edge of a cliff or to having some wild animal eat them.  Hence natural selection favored those women who spent less time enjoying their number 2's, and hence today's women have evolved to see dumping as a functional body function instead of something that can be enjoyed.

Now it all makes sense, unless you have a different theory......

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If you accept that prehistoric man enjoyed a good dump as much as we do, then my theory goes along the line of this:

During a good dump, men often like a good read - newspapers, books, magazines and even the graffiti in public toilets.  Now this, on the face of it, presents a problem for my dumping theory, as in ancient times the printing press (or for that matter writing) had clearly not been invented.  My theory goes that during a particularly long dump, one of our ancestors got a little bored and started doodling with some coloured earth that happened to be in the vicinity.  The next thing you know, he is sketching primitive drawings of what he sees around him that today we know as primitive cave drawings.  And so art evolved!  If my theory is correct then these archeologists really ought to look where they are standing.....

A related follow on theory would be Andy's Evolutionary Theory of Inventions.  Those cave-men who were no good at drawing got lost in thought during their dump's, and this is how wheels and the like came to be invented.

Compelling theories don't you think.........

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Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the road....

Thanks to John Turner for this one

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