The mystery of the bread from heaven

Yesterday, sometime in the morning when we were off at the gym, one slice of bread inexplicably showed up on our front walk. I am pretty sure that I didn't put it there, and I trust my wife who says she was equally perplexed when she saw it while going out to the car. When we first spotted it it was pretty much pristine (this picture shows it having sat out one damp night, thus the moist appearance you might have noticed), making it unlikely to have been dragged there by a bird or a squirrel, say out of our compost heap which is located quite a long distance away. It's also rather far from the street
which argues against the idea that some person passing by might have tossed it there for reasons too obscure to ponder. That person would pretty much have had to walk up our walk and place it down for it to have ended up where it did, which seems even more unlikely.
We didn't pick it up, thinking that it would simply be absorbed into the food web by the various mourning doves, starlings, sparrows, squirrels, and other wildlife we have seen foraging in the yard. This too proved to be an odd part of the puzzle, as this lovely nice fresh piece of nutrition was spurned by all. Was there something suspicious about the look of the slice, scaring off the birds, and about its odor, scaring off the squirrels?

The investigation is ongoing.

Update: Well, someone appreciates it, or the half that's left at any rate.

My rebus won!

David of Ironic Sans had two Joost invitations to give away, so he set up a two part contest for his readers. I posted my movie-themed rebus and won part II! (Mouseover the link if you need a hint on what it means.)

Have a rebus to share? Post a link to it in the comments. Maybe I'll do the same. Just don't put anything up that looks like you're sending encoded messages to a terrorist cell which might attract unwanted attention by the authorities. (Hmmm.)

I shall give Joost video-on-demand beta a whirl and post something here about my impressions. You can find out a little more about Joost over at Ironic Sans or by doing a search. And if I need to give away any invitations, you'll find out about it here on the blog.

Rubikation reprise

The tactilely-enhanced Rubik's cube should, I think, be in greyscale (broken link), don't you? That way, the sighted spectators would really have to stare at it to know whether it was solved correctly or not, whereas the blindfolded solver would just know.

Rubikations

I read this story about a world-class Rubik's Cube solver and was befuddled in two places.

1. "This weekend he will try to regain the title of world blindfold Rubik's Cube champion" Blindfold Rubik's Cube? How can that be? I did a little searching around and found that the idea is that one receives a scrambled cube, studies it, then dons a blindfold and unscrambles it. Silly me, I thought that they would first put on the blindfold, then receive a scrambled cube where the colored faces are replaced with tactile cues (sandpaper, grease, Braille dots, thumbtacks) and then solve it just by touch. It might actually be easier than what the fellow's doing. Ah well, not a completely original idea after all, though I didn't know it at the time.
   
   I think I thought this because of my other idea for a Braille condom. But that's for another time.


2. "'That was also a lot of fun,' said Mao, who is now working for a constancy firm." Pardon me, a what? I Googled around and found hits for web constancy firm, management constancy company, and that kind of thing, but no clue as to what the definition of this (apparently Commonwealth country) entity is.

I've never figured out Rubik's cubes myself. For me, the most fascinating thing is taking them apart to see how they work anyway. I think some architect should adopt this scheme to build a Rubik's apartment building (not an office building, for God's sake), so everybody could have a different view every day. Or a Rubik's fridge, to make it easier to rotate out those things which usually get stuck at the back for far too long.