As most of you know, my terribly clever and funny sister-in-law has a
blog, and her video post today made me chuckle. Apparently, one of her readers sent her a copy of a book written by a woman Megan criticizes on her blog, and she was wondering what she should do with it. This is what I see directly to the left of my computer:
It has been doing a great job of keeping air moving in my office, and it is certainly serving a greater purpose propping up my window than it ever did as good reading material. Megan, with the summer months ahead you might find that book to be quite useful!
4 comments:
That's a great idea. I don't think I want to read it. The other book is much more interesting. Plus, it has brain-teasers, like:
If you have 149 days to kill 197,000 people, and you are using three mobile vans that can kill 60 people each at a time, how many trips do you need?
Wow... that is MY KINDA BOOK!!!
Of course, I do have to note that you cannot solve that math problem with the information given. Are we assuming that we have two other partners in crime to drive the other vans? Do these trips ALWAYS kill 60 people or is there some variable in that number? I mean right now we have an answer ranging from infinite trips (supposing that on some trips you might not kill ANYONE), to a minimum of 1095 trips.
These questions require CLARITY people!
Given the context in the rest of the book, it appears that 60 people would indeed be killed each time. It also appears that you would have plenty of labour to complete this job, so you could have all three vans going at the same time. No need to stop for the driver to take a break: there's another driver ready to take his place.
The missing information, to my mind, is HOW LONG it takes to complete each trip. That would tell you whether the job is possible.
Ultimately, it appears that this particular method was discontinued: not only was it inefficient, but it required a driver to be right there, listening uncomfortably as 60 people screamed and banged on the walls of the van as they suffocated over time. People have SENSITIVITIES, you know.
A lot of the details are pretty ghastly.
I was thinking that time was going to be a problem at first as well, but seeing as the question was how many trips it actually doesn't matter how long each trip was. The whole 149 days thing becomes superfluous.
Sounds like you have got yourself a GREAT book to read!
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