One of our readers, Robert, left an amusing comment on Will’s cool puzzle post this morning, reminding us that we needed to keep the answers of our quizzes out of our jpegs. In addition to making me smile, the comment gave me an idea for a new feature called “Found Objects,” which I’ll try out here.

The idea is pretty simple: I’ll be posting some sort of visual representation of an object, equation, theory or idea that inspired or made its way into a book, film, song, poem, or painting. Your job is to name it and tell us where it’s found.
Today’s visual, found below, is referenced in a couple different novels. Can you name it, and at least one of the works I’m referring to?

* but was afraid to ask

For some reason (maybe because I bought the cheapest item in the store, once, two years ago), I seem to be on the mailing list for the Barneys New York catalog. When it arrived today, my husband looked at the envelope, emblazoned with the unpunctuated Barneys slogan “Taste Luxury Humor,” and made the best argument for commas I’ve ever heard: “Is that an imperative?”

Because if you think about it, “taste luxury humor” as an imperative would have to mean “orally partake of upscale witty banter” — or, let’s cut to the chase here: “Lick Woody Allen.”

Hey you, with the finger up your nose. I see you. That’s gross. Not nearly as gross, however, as those shnoz-prospectors who eat the proverbial motherlode — and not nearly as interesting. It’s not that these lost souls are hungry, per se, so much as they’re suffering from mucophagy, the mild cousin in a family of behavioral appetite disorders known collectively as pica: a craving to eat the inedible (and we don’t mean Twinkies).

We can only assume that Apple had a pica-sufferer on staff when they decided to render the advice highlighted above (that’s a real screengrab from the iPod Shuffle website, by the way — isn’t Apple funny?); relative to other forms of pica, eating iPods ain’t all that weird:

• Geophagic picans eat clay and/or dirt, which some doctors argue has nutritional merit. This student as Chicago’s noted Art Institue admitted to eating fresh-from-the-kiln teacups she had made.
• Coniophagics prefer the dust from venetian blinds.
• People who eat wood suffer from xylophagia (this designation excludes young kids, who like goats and magpies, have been known to eat just about anything). Wood toothpicks are a popular favorite among xylophagics, as are matchsticks — though people who chew on the heads of matches haven’t been classified yet.
• They’re not just circus freaks anymore: hyalophagics are just like you and me — except they eat glass. (Ouch. I’ll take the iPod Shuffle instead. With a side of boogery matchsticks.)
• Yet-rarer pica disorders include the obsessive consumption of toilet air-freshener blocks, coal, foam rubber, and cigarette ashes. Of course, there’s also coprophagia (”eating poo” is as scientific as we need to get here), but if you came to mentalfloss.com looking for more info on that, this ain’t that kind of website, perv.

For some reason, it took me 26 years to develop allergies. I’d never had them before, and then all of a sudden one day, every allergy-related symptom I’d ever heard of (scratchy throat, itchy eyes, clogged sinuses, etc) knocked me out while mowing the grass, and now I can’t shake the thing. What’s worse is that all the medications seem to leave me completely drowsy. So, I for one couldn’t be happier to see New Scientist reporting that allergies might soon be a thing of the past! According to the article, a Biotech firm in Zurich has developed a drug that fools the body into thinking it’s been attacked by a common bacteria. This “fake attack” then convinces the body’s immune system to concentrate on fighting “the potentially larger threat, rather than producing allergic reactions to less harmful things.” And while I don’t understand how it works completely, so far, the tests seem pretty miraculous. Preliminary results on 10 people with extreme hay fever showed that the drug eliminated their symptoms completely, and it all seems terrific. Finally, a world where everyone can stop and smell the flowers without any side-effects!

I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the past few months about Microsoft’s new Zune being dubbed the iPod killer, and a David of sorts in training for his debut against the mp3 Goliath. But, honestly, a lot of the stuff had seemed laughable. The design didn’t seem that sleek, I’d read an article that said that a Chinese company had beat the Zune to the punch by producing a knock-off before it could launch. And frankly, the name Zune never did for me: It just seemed like a bad science fiction title.
Anyway, all that’s to say, I found this article today via TheRawFeed, and realized that the Zune might actually be a contender. It’s kind of fascinating to see a) that the Zune charges faster than the iPod, b) that it has peer-to-peer wi-fi connectivity so that c) you can share songs and YouTube style videos with your friends (the system lets you listen to a shared song for 3 days before you have to purchase it). Also, d) Microsoft  has set up a pretty elaborate shop for Zune customers, and made sure that Apple users can’t operate one without owning a PC. Oh, and e) the Zune is also apparently better for watching shows since the screen is slightly larger, and can be turned horizontally to watch programs in wide-screen. In any case, it seems like Zune has a chance at shaking Apple’s grasp on the market, which means the guy on the left might suddenly start looking a whole lot more attractive.

The BBC is reporting that a 3-year old kid got on his mother’s computer and won an e-Bay auction for a Barbie pink Nissan Figaro?! Apparently, the toddler placed a bid for £9,000 (or about $17,000) on the site and won the auction, a fact his parent’s only realized when they received a congratulations e-mail from the company. Half-beaming, half-horrified, his mom is quoted as saying, “Jack’s a whiz on the PC, and just pressed all the right buttons.” Guess so. Luckily, his father was quick to do the same– a quick chat between Jack’s pop and the auto dealer resolved the issue, and the car will be re-auctioned in the near future. Link via Presurfer

In doing some research for today’s Word Wrap, I learned in addition to reversible quilts and jackets, there’s a big market in children’s reversible clothing. A woman in the UK, for instance, makes and sells nothing but. And I’ve got to link to her website, if only to type out its name here: two-witt-too-woo. How cute is that?

So maybe it’s the child in me that loves reversible words. Not to be confused with palindromes like “kayak” or “rotator,” reversibles form entirely different words when spelled backward.

Here are some of my favorites:

leper – repel

desserts – stressed

lived – devil

drawer – reward

straw – warts

diaper – repaid

I like reversible words so much, I think we should have more of them! So I’m going to start us off by inventing two, and open the comments section up for suggestions of your own. (Of course, if you’d like to add your favorite “real” reversible words, they’re welcome, as well.)

meta – atem (Definition: an “atem” is really an “item,” but one having trouble finding itself.)

summons – snommus (Definition: I say a “snommus” should be the sticky mass secreted over and around the eye while sleeping. AKA: the eye-booger.)

First person to correctly answer all 5 puzzles in the Comments below receives a virtual high-five from our virtual high-five giver, Jason.

Thanks to Alan from OutsidetheBoxPuzzles.com for the fun puzzles.

The most remarkable thing about this anecdote, from reader Dan, is that the idiot in question actually got into college:

This wasn’t recently, but when I was taking a physics class in college, we were discussing the speed of light. When our instructor started talking about length dilation (how something’s length increases as it approaches the speed of light), someone raised their hand and asked, “Is that why a plane gets bigger as it flies toward you?”

Here are some more (correct) facts about the speed at which light travels in a vacuum:

* It’s 186,282.397 miles per second, or 299,792,458 meters per second. Should you ever need to recite this second number on command, you can remember it with either of the following mnemonics: “Constant Which We Remember Well Because It’s Light’s Velocity” (the first letters correspond to the numbers on a phone keypad) or “We Guarantee Certainty, Clearly Referring To This Light Mnemonic” (count the letters of each word).

* It’s usually abbreviated “c” (as in E=mc²) which stands for either “constant” or the Latin “celeritas,” meaning “swiftness.”

* From Wikipedia: “[One] consequence of the finite speed of light is that communications with spacecraft are not instantaneous, especially as distances increase. This delay was significant for the communication of Houston ground control and Apollo 8 when it became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon: For every question, Houston had to wait nearly 3 seconds for the answer to arrive, even when the astronauts replied immediately. This effect forms the basis of the Global Positioning System (GPS), and similar navigation systems. One’s position can be determined by means of the delays in light signals received from a number of satellites, each carrying a very accurate atomic clock, and very carefully synchronized.”

Today’s stumper is a bit different than the usual. Most of you are probably familiar the Six Degrees of Ken Jennings feature in our magazine, where Jennings has to connect two disparate things like silly string and string theory – riffing on the Six Degrees of Separation theory. And, of course, there’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, with variations where any two actors are named and then connected through the movies they and their co-stars have worked on.

So we’re going to play that variation of the game now, only with a twist. In order to get the actors names you need to connect, you have to first answer the questions correctly. As always, no researching online, or otherwise – noggins only.

Question #1: An incident in the pilot episode of the new Aaron Sorkin show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, is lifted from a well-known movie. What is the name of that movie?

Question #2: What is the name of the actor in the Studio 60 pilot episode who plays the character who mimics the character in the answer to #1?

Question #3: What is the name of the actor who is mimicked in the answer to #1?

Using only movies (no TV shows), give us the lineage between the two people in the above questions. (Obviously there are several correct answers… so bonus points for the one who can do it in the fewest number!)

Bonus Question: What does the answer to #1 have in common with the game we’re playing?