A teacher in a class of small kids asked them to categorize all the letters of the alphabet by a certain rule. Most students came up with the following correct answer which has three categories:
1. B
2. A, D, O, P, Q, R,
3. C, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
Can you guess what was the rule that the teacher had given?
Since we ran out of Bengalis in our Sunday Funday Runday, I went ahead and ran by myself in the countryside. Instead of a continuous run on the dirt road, I just took it easy and stopped to talk to the horses and pet them. There were some lovely birds in the trees – unfortunately my iPhone camera could not zoom well… Then I came upon a snake – duly pulverized 🙂 Cooled down with a jump in the pool and now coffee time!!! Miss the Starbucks motorcycle gang though!!!
So Nikita and I were having dinner together and asking each other puzzles. One we came up with was “How many countries can you name that starts and ends with the same letter”? Each and every one that we came up with – Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria… were with “A”. We could not find a single non-“A” country. Can you? (meaning country names that start and end with the same letter and it is not A)
After a much delayed flight last night, little sleep and no run this morning, I needed something fun to start the day with. So, I told the lady at the Starbucks that my name is “Dude”. And that is what she put in my cup. And of course the other lady brewing coffee yelled it out before even she realized it… causing some fun among the few of us waiting for our coffee there…. 🙂
Case A: Imagine you have a rope tightly wound around a basketball. How much more rope do you need for the rope to be one foot away from the surface of the basketball at all times? (as if it is tightly wound around an imaginary ball that has radius one foot more than the radius of the basketball). I do not need an exact answer now. Just imagine it.
Case B: Now imagine you have a rope tightly would around the equator of the earth (what, about 25,000 miles or so?). How much more rope do you need for the rope to be one foot away from the equator at all times? (as if the radius of the earth had increased by a foot). I do not need an exact answer now either. Just imagine it.
Now for the puzzle:
In which case do you think you need more rope – Case A or Case B? Any rough idea by how much?
Since Roger always slows me down (Roger, if you are keeping zinger count, let me help you – it is Rajib: 2, Roger: 0 🙂 ) I figured I will put in a faster run before I meet up with our Sunday morning Bengali runners. Went to Fowler park and put in 5K at 8:25 pace which is plenty fast for me.
Not sure what got into my Bengali friends today but they showed up and suddenly started running like some mad Kolkata street dog was chasing us 🙂 We finished our 5K at 8:19 pace!! Needless to say, at the end I WAS panting like a mad Kolkata street dog chasing Bengalis 🙂
Speaking of speed runs, we ran into the real speedster Heidi from my old running group. As she blew past us, I think she thought we were out on a casual morning stroll 🙂
Starbucks time!!!
