cornerstone

No mucking around there! Great find!

It's not 11, 21 or 23 Keep em' coming!

That DOES sound good! Actually, I had no idea you could make doughnuts without deep frying them - so this gives me an incentive to try this with the Webber! (In Aussie BBQ terms I have managed to barbecue a Baked Alaska = lightweight novice ) Speaking of doughnuts, this looks like an Australian ad - not sure though... GOAL! And in record time too, what was that - two minutes?! Okay - this is uncontroversial.... Taiwan Ted sells the best reps in the business. He sold half his reps plus one to his first customer of the day. To the second customer, he sold half of the remainder plus one more. To the third customer he sold half the remiander plus one more; and to the fourth customer he sold half the remiander plus one more. Taiwan Ted had proudly sold all his stock. How many reps did Ted have for sale at the start of this fantastic day?

Two correct answers but this one clocked in first! Yes, 'must be elected' is the other requirement... And Nanuq, I can only assume that you've been hungry with all this donut talk (I know I am)! Casting my mind back, at school we had a Physics teacher who had a delicate way of explaining the inner-intricacies of the universe. Whenever we asked him to explain a difficult concept he would bark, "because it just does!" (Occassionally before launching a book across the room). I don't know why the hole in the iron ring gets bigger. But that appears to be the observed consensus of heating iron rings. Here we go before I shoot off for the day.... Buck has a bow and sixty arrows. If Buck shoots the first arrow at exactly noon (according to his 4th gen Planet Ocean) and continues to shoot one arrow every minute thereafter, at what time will he run out of arrows?

Call me naive, but I never in my wildest hallucinations imagined a television show hosted by Mein Hoff and Piers Morgan... Great clip!

Good lateral thinking - but I guess they have already become President. Anyways - it's not what is on the card

Is that one guess or two? "It's good, but it's not right...!"

It was that easy! I guess without just googling for it.... Based on the laws of the US Constitution, there are five requirements a person must meet in order to become President of the United States: the candidate: + must be at least 35 years old + must be a citizen of the United States + must have resided in the United States for at least 14 years + must have been born in the United States There is one more requirement. What is it?

And another win!! No date though... Two sheep are grazing in the same pasture; one is facing exactly North, one is facing South. How is it possible for the sheep to see each other without turning around?

Aye, yes! Sheesh, should have guessed the Captain would know that! @JTB: 18 wives - surprised you have the energy to type! If you saw your mirror image holding the letter 'd' in your left hand, what would you, in actuality, be doing?

WINNER! Yes, the bird is deaf. What runs fore to aft on one side of a ship, and aft to fore on the other side? (Besides a drunken sailor)

That's not what it says on the card.....but it's how A Current Affair and Today Tonight will put it (Still looking forward to their insightful analysis when interest rates go up ) Here we go: When Claire was purchasing her new parrot, the salesman assured her that it would repeat any word it heard. About a week later Claire returned the parrot complaining that it hadn't uttered a single word. Given that the salesman had spoken the truth about the parrot's abilities, why wouldn't the bird talk?

Yes, I guess you can! The card says that the woman died in childbirth, and the child was the stranger. With the jar lid, it was more supposed to be an example of how the metal expands proportionally. I found this explanation of the whole hole thing here: http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/Temperature.html Thermal expansion : expanding holes Consider a donut, a flat, two-dimensional donut, just to make things a little easier. The donut has a hole, with radius r, and an outer radius R. It has a width w which is simply w = R - r. What happens when the donut is heated? It expands, but what happens to the hole? Does it get larger or smaller? If you apply the thermal expansion equation to all three lengths in this problem, do you get consistent results? The three lengths would change as follows: The final width should also be equal to the difference between the outer and inner radii. This gives: This is exactly what we got by applying the linear thermal expansion equation to the width of the donut above. So, with something like a donut, an increase in temperature causes the width to increase, the outer radius to increase, and the inner radius to increase, with all dimensions obeying linear thermal expansion. The hole expands just as if it's made as the same material as the hole. Here was another way of putting it that I found on an ABC discussion forum: The hole would get larger. The way to think about it is as follows. If the plate had no hole in it, the whole plate would expand(as expected). All components of the plate would also incease in size. If you cut a hole into the plate, the disc associated with the hole, would also expand when heated. As this disc must still be able to fit in the hole after heating, the hole must also increase in size. I don't know much about the details, just copying and pasting

Great work! Victory to Ken on that one! Not sure if Nanuq and Pugwash are with me yet with this one though....the hole will get bigger as the iron doughnut expands as it keeps the same proportions. And as its sides are longer than its thickness, these grow more. (So in a sense, as much as the thickness increases, in terms of the size of the hole, it is always proportionally outdone by the length.) You can see this with opening a stubborn lid on a jar. If you heat the lid under hot water the lid expands (including the inner circumference) allowing it to be removed more easily. (And, of course, if the hole did get smaller - running the lid under a hot tap would make it tighter) Anyway, while we're settling that - here's different type of question to keep the grey matter ticking over... John Johnson and his new bride Jane, were racing down a country road towards the city. Suddenly John's car began to splutter and cough, and finally stalled. Realising he was out of petrol John decided to go for help. Before leaving he instructed Jane to lock all four doors and keep the windows rolled up tight. John returned to his car to find his bride dead and a stranger in the car. The windows and doors were still locked and closed and the car undamaged. How did Jane die, and who was the stranger?

Wow! Interesting subject! But aren't you still thinking of the doughnut / ring as a solid mathematical object? In an iron ring, it is a collection of molecules. So to visualise, say, instead of the solid line in your diagram, there might be strings of dots. What happens if you heat a straight rod? Does it expand equally in width and length, or does is expand more in length? Bend that rod into a ring and heat it. What happens then?

There's a slightly better answer out there - I'm tempted to leave this one out there, at least for a bit! (OT: I missed out on the cheap Jetstar tickets! Damn crappy website. Bugger!) It is a well known fact that metal expands under heat. If you held a solid piece of iron that is in the shape of a doughnut over extreme heat, will the hole in the centre of the iron doughnut grow larger, smaller, or will it remain the same? (And perhaps a brief why!)

The answer isn't smaller! Or are we heading into "it looks like it melted" territory....?!

Welcome Pete! Make sure to post some pics when the sub arrives!

That's actually NOT the answer on the card! Obviously Nanuq sounds pretty informed (!) - if I might hazard a guess as to the discrepancy, it's that he's talking about the doughnut shape in mathematics (where it can expand in different ways), whereas this is the observed behaviour of molecules (expansion under extreme heat). Could that be right? Anyway - question is still open....

You Know You're Getting Old When... You're asleep, but others worry that you're dead. You have a party and the neighbors don't even realize it. Your back goes out more than you do. You are proud of your lawn mower. Your best friend is dating someone half their age... And isn't breaking any laws. People call at 9 pm. And ask, "Did I wake you?" You answer a question with "Because I said so!" Your ears are hairier than your head. You and your teeth don't sleep together. You try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren't wearing any. At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you're not eating cereal. When you wake up looking like your driver's license picture. It takes two tries to get up from the couch. When your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio. You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going. Getting "lucky" means you found your car in the parking lot. The twinkle in your eye is merely a reflection from the sun on your bifocals. Everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt - doesn't work. You give up all your bad habits and still don't feel good. You have more patience, but it is actually that you just don't care anymore. You wonder how you could be over the hill when you don't even remember being on top of it. When your doctor doesn't give you x-rays anymore but just holds you up to the light. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first. "Getting a little action" means you don't need to take a laxative.

Did you have to remind me?! The Franck Muller Conquistador is supposedly an accurate rep too. Cheers!

Limerick now available from Nanuq's Mug Emporium I know Puggie will be jumping on this one, so get in quick! Here we go: It is a well known fact that metal expands under heat. If you held a solid piece of iron that is in the shape of a doughnut over extreme heat, will the hole in the centre of the iron doughnut grow larger, smaller, or will it remain the same? (And perhaps a brief why!)

We have a winner! Aye, he knew his wife was having an affair - and the wrong guy jumped in the cab!

..and....?

As I said in a separate post - I have been looking for a nice watch to buy my wife. I couldn't decide, so I sat her in front of a genuine AD watch site and asked her - if budget was no question what watch would you buy. Out of the 900 ladies watches they had she picked out two FM's, including the FM Conquistador with the black face. Obviously I was pleased, since I knew there was a good rep of it available. She didn't like the SS bracelet, so I looked around for one that came ready with a black leather strap. I could only find one dealer that sold the watch without the SS bracelet and that was Paul / Chris at Aspire. Obviously the price at $149 for ETA 2671 including EMS shipping was good. The missus is obviously chuffed. The watch has a nice presence - distinguished and draws the eye in a nice way, without being sunglasses-only "bask in my wealth" bling. Of course, she probably doesn't care that it's an ETA or an automatic, although the second hand is quite hypnotic. But I felt better that I had got the 'best' kind of movement for it, and hopefully the watch will last a bit longer because of it. At $149 I really can't complain too much about anything - it's a nice looking watch with a quality movement, rep or no rep. Oh, and I got another letter today. A totally unexpected tax windfall! Paid for the watch many times over! (Jammy!) [EDIT: Edited boring bits!]