Riddles
- If it takes a hen and a half a day and a half to lay an egg and a half,
how many days does it take six hens to lay six eggs?
- How is a raven like a writing-desk? (Lewis Carroll [Charles L. Dodgson])
There are many answers. Click here for some.
- Why does Ted Nelson think he invented hypertext? And why does anyone buy that? The whole point of hypertext is an efficient means of indicating and following a link, and I have a fifty-year-old book, The Reader's Encyclopedia (Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1948; William Rose Benet, editor), that has it down. It predates anything Nelson might have done. Of course you don't click on the item, you look it up by hand, but so what? The "links" here are names and terms printed in small caps, which indicates that they have entries of their own. Just what is Nelson supposed to have invented? Just a word, it appears, and while credit is due for that, it looks to me like Tim Berners-Lee is the real Edison here -- he made it work. (For the uninititated, Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web in 1991.)
- Why do we build flammable structures and then use fire in them every day? (Benjamin Franklin)
You can blame all this on me, and get all the excruciating detail at my home page.