Advertising in the 2000’s
Ernest Shackleton’s recruiting advertisement for his 1912 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”
If Shackleton were advertising in the 2000’s:
“Members wanted for adventure trek. Low cost, cool sights, lots fun nights, thrills galore, insurance available. Get your picture in Outdoor magazine.”
Taxing Cinderella
The tax adviser had just read the story of Cinderella to his four-year-old daughter for the first time.
The little girl was fascinated by the story, especially the part where the pumpkin turns into a golden coach.
Suddenly she piped up, “Daddy, when the pumpkin turned into a golden coach, would that be classed as income or a long-term capital gain?”
Legacy vs. Reality
On thinking ahead, from the novel “Artifact” by Greg Benford, a “hard” sci-fi writer who is also a physicist:
“There was a great mathematician named Hilbert, who telegraphed Berlin saying he had proved the outstanding unsolved problem in mathematics, a thing called Riemann’s conjecture. It has to do with the roots of a well known function.
He sends this telegram to Berlin, where he’s going to give a speech. Everybody gets excited. So Hilbert shows up and talks, and says nothing about the problem.
Somebody comes up to him after the speech and says, what about Riemann’s conjecture, what’s the solution?
Hilbert says he hasn’t got one. He was taking his first airplane trip to Berlin, and was pretty nervous, so he sent the telegram in case he got killed.”
