Murphy's Ten Laws for String Theorists:
(1) If you fix a mistake in a mathematical superstring calculation, another one will show up somewhere else.
(2) If your results are based on the work of others, then one such work will turn out to be wrong. (3) The longer your article, the more likely your computer hard disk drive will fail while you are typing the references.
(4) The better your research result, the more likely it will be rejected by the referee of a journal; on the other hand, if your work is wrong but not obviously so, it will be accepted for publication right away.
(5) If a result seems to good to be true, it is unless you are one of the top ten string theorists in the world. (By the way, these theorists refer to their results as "string miracles".)
(6) Your most startling string-theoretic theorem will turn out to be valid in only two spatial dimensions or less.
(7) When giving a string seminar, nobody will follow anything you say after the first minute, but, if miraculously someone does, then that person will point out a flaw in your reasoning half-way through your talk and what will be worse is that your grant review officer will happen to be in the audience.
(8) For years, nobody will ever notice the fudge factors in your calculations, but when you come up for tenure they will surface like fish being tossed fresh breadcrumbs.
(9) If you are a graduate student working on string theory, then the field will be dead by the time you get your Ph.D.; Even worse, if you start over with a new thesis topic, the new field will also be dead by the time you get your Ph.D.
(10) If you discover an interesting string model, then it will predict at least one low-energy, observable particle not seen in Nature.
In summary, anything in string theory that theoretically can go wrong will go wrong, but if nothing does go theoretically wrong, then experimentally it is ruled out.
Q: Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
A: Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The True Genius
The stereotypical image of a “smart kid” is one of a diligent student studying and reading relentlessly, the type of child that has nothing better to do but “enrich himself” by cramming in everything academically related. The assiduous adolescent that befriends only his teachers and gets perfect grades is actually not the epitome of pedantic perfectionism nowadays. The modern view of the “nerd” is actually quite the opposite of this traditional cliché. The pejorative term “nerd” or “geek” was usually applied in a derogative manner towards individuals who display accomplishment in technological, scientific, or academic pursuits but were socially inept. The connotative definition of a smart person is similar to the traditional denotation but, nowadays, your degree of mental ability is reflected from your credentials (grades) and how you carry yourself.
I think it’s not just your grades that determine if you’re smart or not, but also how you get them. I don’t think that a “smart kid” is necessarily a nerd; the true prodigy is one who can maneuver through different obstacles using the knowledge he already possesses in a different manner, someone who manipulates his surroundings to his own advantage. Like the TAG kids for example, they are among the brightest and most scholastically distinguished in the nation, but not all of them portray the traits of a “nerd”. Talented and Gifted kids get exemplary grades but not all of them study habitually or complete all of their school assignments. Instead, most of them slip through cracks of the “honor code,” or find other loopholes in the school system to penetrate. I don’t see them as nerds but more “scholarly hustlers.” Whether it’s procrastinating, cheating, providing answers, finding sources for assistance, or inveiglement, they’re masters of their trade. The kids with the highest grades most of the time do tend to be the ones that actually do their work, but if you take a step down, you find the almost equally bright children who don’t do anything in school. Those are the real geniuses of the school system. Most of them blow off their class work assignments and copy all of their homework from other people and still get near perfect grades. What they do may not be morally just, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to get where you need to go. They learn to play the school system and they do it with expert precision and guile.
My conclusion is that kids who can pass with flying colors by using adroit or cunning tactics without getting caught are the true geniuses. Brilliance doesn’t necessarily mean being the smartest in your class, for you can be the best with a little ingenuity and prowess. This is like the saying, you don’t need to out-run the bear, you just need to out-run the person closest to the bear. You don’t need to be an Einstein or Aristotle to stay on top of the game. A real adept knows how to use his surroundings and manipulate his entourage or retinues to get things done with dexterity and haste.
Now, eschew obfuscation.
I think it’s not just your grades that determine if you’re smart or not, but also how you get them. I don’t think that a “smart kid” is necessarily a nerd; the true prodigy is one who can maneuver through different obstacles using the knowledge he already possesses in a different manner, someone who manipulates his surroundings to his own advantage. Like the TAG kids for example, they are among the brightest and most scholastically distinguished in the nation, but not all of them portray the traits of a “nerd”. Talented and Gifted kids get exemplary grades but not all of them study habitually or complete all of their school assignments. Instead, most of them slip through cracks of the “honor code,” or find other loopholes in the school system to penetrate. I don’t see them as nerds but more “scholarly hustlers.” Whether it’s procrastinating, cheating, providing answers, finding sources for assistance, or inveiglement, they’re masters of their trade. The kids with the highest grades most of the time do tend to be the ones that actually do their work, but if you take a step down, you find the almost equally bright children who don’t do anything in school. Those are the real geniuses of the school system. Most of them blow off their class work assignments and copy all of their homework from other people and still get near perfect grades. What they do may not be morally just, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to get where you need to go. They learn to play the school system and they do it with expert precision and guile.
My conclusion is that kids who can pass with flying colors by using adroit or cunning tactics without getting caught are the true geniuses. Brilliance doesn’t necessarily mean being the smartest in your class, for you can be the best with a little ingenuity and prowess. This is like the saying, you don’t need to out-run the bear, you just need to out-run the person closest to the bear. You don’t need to be an Einstein or Aristotle to stay on top of the game. A real adept knows how to use his surroundings and manipulate his entourage or retinues to get things done with dexterity and haste.
Now, eschew obfuscation.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay
-Robert Frost (1923)
"The movement of the poem is both simple and richly evocative. Viewed as a nature poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" presents the moment in early spring when the vegetative world is first breaking into blossom. In the first four lines, Frost's imagery quite literally describes how new leaves emerge as yellow or golden blossom before they develop into green leaves. "Her early leaf's a flower," the speaker observes. This period of blossom, however, is very brief. "But only so an hour," the speaker then immediately qualifies. If the first three lines depict a world of rich beauty, the poem pivots decisively on line four.
The second half of the poem reveals the consequences of nature's fall from gold. After a brief hour of golden promise, the poem declares, "Then leaf subsides to leaf." As always, Frost's exact phrasing is significant. Notice his unusual repetition of the word leaf within the same short line. Taken literally, the line suggests that the leaf was always intended to be only a green leaf, not a golden flower. If the flower lasted only an hour, the leaf, the poem suggests, survives for longer. Viewed as a description of the natural world, this observation appears eminently reasonable. A branch might blossom for only a week but the resulting leaves last for months. Frost's poem, however, is now about to move beyond seasonal observations of Nature.
Suddenly the poem takes a surprising turn. After seemingly presenting only the natural world in the first five lines, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" now offers a mythic or theological simile to describe the leaf's change from gold to green. "So Eden sank to grief," the poem unexpectedly declares. Until now a reader might assume that the shift from gold to green was only descriptive and not evaluative, but the use of grief indicates that the transition is in some sense unfortunate and perhaps even painful. The poem then shifts focus again from the mythic to the temporal. "So dawn goes dawn to day" brings the stated subject back to the natural world, but this time the words point to the daily cycle of night and day rather than the annual cycle of the seasons.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" explicitly describes identical moments in three temporal cycles: the daily, the yearly, and the mythic. In each case the poem depicts the moment when the promise of perfection declines into something lesser. Gold unabashedly becomes a symbol–a very traditional one–for the highest value and most radiant beauty. Spring, dawn, and Eden are each a sort of Golden Age, an impermanent paradise. What lies ahead is never stated overtly, but it is inarguably present by implication. Day is inevitably followed by night. Summer is succeeded by fall and winter. The green leaf eventually turns brown and decays. The loss of Eden gave Adam and Eve mortality. Human youth, by implication, is followed by maturity, old age, and ultimately death. The golden moment, therefore, is all the more precious because it is transitory. By focusing on a single moment, Frost evokes an entire day, year, lifetime, and human history.
If "Nothing Gold Can Stay" can be satisfactorily interpreted on a natural, mythic, and theological levels, it can also be read –in general terms at least–from a biographical perspective. Written by a middle-aged man who had already lost two children, both parents, and his closest friend (the British author Edward Thomas who is commemorated in the poem placed immediately before "Nothing Gold Can Stay" in New Hampshire), this short work evokes a point in life when the golden illusions of youth have vanished. The poem is not explicitly autobiographical. Frost's poem virtually never are. It reaches for broader resonance than the merely personal. Yet anyone familiar with Frost's often difficult life can see that its hard-won wisdom was rooted in bitter experience. How characteristic of Frost that the personal origins of the poem–whatever they were–have been so magnificently transcended into a universal vision of the human condition. What the reader encounters is not a private complaint about life's injustice but a tender if heartbreaking expression of the transience of beauty and the grief of mortality."
-Dana Gioia
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay
-Robert Frost (1923)
"The movement of the poem is both simple and richly evocative. Viewed as a nature poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" presents the moment in early spring when the vegetative world is first breaking into blossom. In the first four lines, Frost's imagery quite literally describes how new leaves emerge as yellow or golden blossom before they develop into green leaves. "Her early leaf's a flower," the speaker observes. This period of blossom, however, is very brief. "But only so an hour," the speaker then immediately qualifies. If the first three lines depict a world of rich beauty, the poem pivots decisively on line four.
The second half of the poem reveals the consequences of nature's fall from gold. After a brief hour of golden promise, the poem declares, "Then leaf subsides to leaf." As always, Frost's exact phrasing is significant. Notice his unusual repetition of the word leaf within the same short line. Taken literally, the line suggests that the leaf was always intended to be only a green leaf, not a golden flower. If the flower lasted only an hour, the leaf, the poem suggests, survives for longer. Viewed as a description of the natural world, this observation appears eminently reasonable. A branch might blossom for only a week but the resulting leaves last for months. Frost's poem, however, is now about to move beyond seasonal observations of Nature.
Suddenly the poem takes a surprising turn. After seemingly presenting only the natural world in the first five lines, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" now offers a mythic or theological simile to describe the leaf's change from gold to green. "So Eden sank to grief," the poem unexpectedly declares. Until now a reader might assume that the shift from gold to green was only descriptive and not evaluative, but the use of grief indicates that the transition is in some sense unfortunate and perhaps even painful. The poem then shifts focus again from the mythic to the temporal. "So dawn goes dawn to day" brings the stated subject back to the natural world, but this time the words point to the daily cycle of night and day rather than the annual cycle of the seasons.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" explicitly describes identical moments in three temporal cycles: the daily, the yearly, and the mythic. In each case the poem depicts the moment when the promise of perfection declines into something lesser. Gold unabashedly becomes a symbol–a very traditional one–for the highest value and most radiant beauty. Spring, dawn, and Eden are each a sort of Golden Age, an impermanent paradise. What lies ahead is never stated overtly, but it is inarguably present by implication. Day is inevitably followed by night. Summer is succeeded by fall and winter. The green leaf eventually turns brown and decays. The loss of Eden gave Adam and Eve mortality. Human youth, by implication, is followed by maturity, old age, and ultimately death. The golden moment, therefore, is all the more precious because it is transitory. By focusing on a single moment, Frost evokes an entire day, year, lifetime, and human history.
If "Nothing Gold Can Stay" can be satisfactorily interpreted on a natural, mythic, and theological levels, it can also be read –in general terms at least–from a biographical perspective. Written by a middle-aged man who had already lost two children, both parents, and his closest friend (the British author Edward Thomas who is commemorated in the poem placed immediately before "Nothing Gold Can Stay" in New Hampshire), this short work evokes a point in life when the golden illusions of youth have vanished. The poem is not explicitly autobiographical. Frost's poem virtually never are. It reaches for broader resonance than the merely personal. Yet anyone familiar with Frost's often difficult life can see that its hard-won wisdom was rooted in bitter experience. How characteristic of Frost that the personal origins of the poem–whatever they were–have been so magnificently transcended into a universal vision of the human condition. What the reader encounters is not a private complaint about life's injustice but a tender if heartbreaking expression of the transience of beauty and the grief of mortality."
-Dana Gioia
Friday, February 22, 2008
Laser Elevator: Physics Musings
There's the link, but you guys probably aren't going to go there, so I'm gonna copy and paste the stuff onto here. It's pretty interesting stuff. I dont know how to put pictures on here, so you have to go to the link and look at them.
The Laser Elevator
Solar sails suck.
In a 2002 paper, Laser Elevator: Momentum Transfer Using an Optical Resonator (available at your local school/library, possibly electronically — J. of Spacecraft and Rockets 2002), Thomas R. Meyer et. al. talk about a neat way to get a lot more speed out of light reflection than with a regular solar sail. The basic physics are pretty simple, and it’s a fun subject to think about.
When a photon hits a solar sail, it gives the sail momentum. If the photon has momentum P and bounces off a stationary sail, it looks like this:
Think of where the energy is in this system. Before it hits, the photon has energy E. After it bounces, the photon still has roughly energy E. But the sail’s moving, so where did it get its kinetic energy? (Remember, energy — unlike momentum — has no direction.)
The answer lies in the word “roughly”. The photon loses a tiny fraction of its energy to Doppler shifting when it’s reflected, but only a tiny fraction. It is this tiny fraction that goes into pushing the sail. This is a phenomenally small amount of energy — far less than a percent of what the photon has. That is, not much of the photon’s energy is being used for motion here.
This is why solar sails are so slow. It’s not that light doesn’t have that much energy, it’s that it has so little momentum. If you set a squirrel on a solar sail and shone a laser on the underside, do you know how much power would be required to lift the squirrel? About 1.21 gigawatts.
This is awful. If we were lifting the squirrel with a motor, railgun, or electric catapult, with 1.21 gigawatts we could send it screaming upward at ridiculous speeds.
This is where Meyer and friends come in. They’ve point out a novel way to extract momentum from the photon: bounce it back and forth between the sail and a large mirror (on a planet or moon, perhaps).
With each bounce, the photon loses a little more energy and adds another 2P to the sail’s momentum. The photon can keep this up for thousands of bounces — in their paper, Meyer et. al. found that with reasonable assumptions about available materials and a lot of precision, you could extract 1,000 times the momentum from a photon before diffraction and Dopper shifts killed you. This means you only need 1/1,000th the energy to levitate the squirrel — a mere megawatt.
This isn’t too practical for interstellar travel. It requires something to push off from, and probably couldn’t get you up to the necessary speeds. It may, they suggest, be useful for getting stuff to Pluto and back, since (somewhat like a space elevator) it lets you generate the power any old way you want (a ground nuclear station, solar, etc). But more importantly, it’s kind of neat — it helped me realize some things about photon momentum that I hadn’t quite gotten before. It’s like Feynman says, physics is like sex — it may give practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
Now we’ll let things get sillier. I spent a while trying to brainstorm how to use this with a solar sail (that is, using the sun). I imagined mirrors catching the sun’s light and letting it resonate with a sail.
But you really need lasers for this — regular light spreads out too fast. Maybe a set of lasing cavities orbiting the sun …
Supplemented by a Dyson sphere …
And since by this point we’ll probably have found aliens …
Why settle for interstellar communication when you can have interstellar war? And we could modulate the beam to carry a message — in this case, “FUCK YOU GUYS!”
The Laser Elevator
Solar sails suck.
In a 2002 paper, Laser Elevator: Momentum Transfer Using an Optical Resonator (available at your local school/library, possibly electronically — J. of Spacecraft and Rockets 2002), Thomas R. Meyer et. al. talk about a neat way to get a lot more speed out of light reflection than with a regular solar sail. The basic physics are pretty simple, and it’s a fun subject to think about.
When a photon hits a solar sail, it gives the sail momentum. If the photon has momentum P and bounces off a stationary sail, it looks like this:
Think of where the energy is in this system. Before it hits, the photon has energy E. After it bounces, the photon still has roughly energy E. But the sail’s moving, so where did it get its kinetic energy? (Remember, energy — unlike momentum — has no direction.)
The answer lies in the word “roughly”. The photon loses a tiny fraction of its energy to Doppler shifting when it’s reflected, but only a tiny fraction. It is this tiny fraction that goes into pushing the sail. This is a phenomenally small amount of energy — far less than a percent of what the photon has. That is, not much of the photon’s energy is being used for motion here.
This is why solar sails are so slow. It’s not that light doesn’t have that much energy, it’s that it has so little momentum. If you set a squirrel on a solar sail and shone a laser on the underside, do you know how much power would be required to lift the squirrel? About 1.21 gigawatts.
This is awful. If we were lifting the squirrel with a motor, railgun, or electric catapult, with 1.21 gigawatts we could send it screaming upward at ridiculous speeds.
This is where Meyer and friends come in. They’ve point out a novel way to extract momentum from the photon: bounce it back and forth between the sail and a large mirror (on a planet or moon, perhaps).
With each bounce, the photon loses a little more energy and adds another 2P to the sail’s momentum. The photon can keep this up for thousands of bounces — in their paper, Meyer et. al. found that with reasonable assumptions about available materials and a lot of precision, you could extract 1,000 times the momentum from a photon before diffraction and Dopper shifts killed you. This means you only need 1/1,000th the energy to levitate the squirrel — a mere megawatt.
This isn’t too practical for interstellar travel. It requires something to push off from, and probably couldn’t get you up to the necessary speeds. It may, they suggest, be useful for getting stuff to Pluto and back, since (somewhat like a space elevator) it lets you generate the power any old way you want (a ground nuclear station, solar, etc). But more importantly, it’s kind of neat — it helped me realize some things about photon momentum that I hadn’t quite gotten before. It’s like Feynman says, physics is like sex — it may give practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
Now we’ll let things get sillier. I spent a while trying to brainstorm how to use this with a solar sail (that is, using the sun). I imagined mirrors catching the sun’s light and letting it resonate with a sail.
But you really need lasers for this — regular light spreads out too fast. Maybe a set of lasing cavities orbiting the sun …
Supplemented by a Dyson sphere …
And since by this point we’ll probably have found aliens …
Why settle for interstellar communication when you can have interstellar war? And we could modulate the beam to carry a message — in this case, “FUCK YOU GUYS!”
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Real Poetry Pt. 2
The first one was better, read it first!
Skinny Domicile
by Emily Dickinson
I have a skinny Domicile—
Its Door is very narrow.
'Twill keep—I hope—the Reaper out—
His Scythe—and Bones—and Marrow.
Since Death is not a portly Chap,
The Entrance must be thin—
So—when my Final Moment comes—
He cannot wriggle in.
That's why I don't go out that much—
I can't fit through that Portal.
How dumb—to waste my Social Life
On Plans to be—immortal—
Toilets
by T.S. Eliot
Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.
To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.
We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.
I Will Alarm Islamic Owls
by William Carlos Williams
I will be alarming
the Islamic owls
that are in
the barn
and which
you warned me
are very jittery
and susceptible to loud noises
Forgive me
they see so well in the dark
so feathery
and so dedicated to Allah
Likable Wilma
by William Blake
Wilma, Wilma, in thy blouse,
Red-haired prehistoric spouse,
What immortal animator
Was thy slender waist's creator?
When the Rubble clan moved in,
Was Betty jealous of thy skin,
Thy noble nose, thy dimpled knee?
Did he who penciled Fred draw thee?
Wilma, Wilma, burning bright, ye
Cartoon goddess Aphrodite,
Was it Hanna or Barbera
Made thee hot as some caldera?
Skinny Domicile
by Emily Dickinson
I have a skinny Domicile—
Its Door is very narrow.
'Twill keep—I hope—the Reaper out—
His Scythe—and Bones—and Marrow.
Since Death is not a portly Chap,
The Entrance must be thin—
So—when my Final Moment comes—
He cannot wriggle in.
That's why I don't go out that much—
I can't fit through that Portal.
How dumb—to waste my Social Life
On Plans to be—immortal—
Toilets
by T.S. Eliot
Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.
To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.
We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.
I Will Alarm Islamic Owls
by William Carlos Williams
I will be alarming
the Islamic owls
that are in
the barn
and which
you warned me
are very jittery
and susceptible to loud noises
Forgive me
they see so well in the dark
so feathery
and so dedicated to Allah
Likable Wilma
by William Blake
Wilma, Wilma, in thy blouse,
Red-haired prehistoric spouse,
What immortal animator
Was thy slender waist's creator?
When the Rubble clan moved in,
Was Betty jealous of thy skin,
Thy noble nose, thy dimpled knee?
Did he who penciled Fred draw thee?
Wilma, Wilma, burning bright, ye
Cartoon goddess Aphrodite,
Was it Hanna or Barbera
Made thee hot as some caldera?
Real Poetry
Is a Sperm Like a Whale?
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a sperm whale, sperm?
Thou art more tiny and more resolute:
Rough tides may sway a sea-bound endotherm,
But naught diverts thy uterine commute.
Sometime too fierce the eye of squid may glint
And make a stout cetacean hunter quail;
Methinks 'twould take much more than bilious squint
To shake thee off the cunning ovum's trail.
Yet still thou art not so unlike, thou two,
Both coursing through a dark uncharted brine
While fore and aft there swims thy fellow crew;
And note this echo, little gamete mine:
As whales spray salty water from their spout,
So with a salty spray dost thou come out.
Hen Gonads
by Ogden Nash
I thought running a chicken breeding farm would
be a simple matter,
Just pipe some romantic music into the chicken
coop and chill some champagne and sit back
and wait for the proverbial little feet's pitter-patter,
But it's turned out to be trickier than that to
affect a chicken's libido,
Because I just don't know what chickens find attractive,
I mean, when I go out on the town I dress to the
nines, but does a chicken prefer a rooster in an
opera hat and tuxedo?
Well, I can say definitively that she does not,
And if anyone has been considering the purchase of
a rooster-sized tuxedo and opera hat you should
come down here and take a look at this reasonably
priced used set I've got.
Neither did my backup plan of spiking the chicken feed
with Spanish fly produce results,
Nor the screening of nature documentaries intended for adults,
Nor threats of arroz con pollo,
Nor...well, I don't want to give all the embarrassing details,
but let's just say there's nothing quite like asking a
salesman if he has a vibrator specifically designed to
stimulate hen gonads to make one feel like a total yo-yo.
Yes, I'm distinctly subpar at stirring romantic longings
in the loins of a chicken, and when it comes to setting up
blind dates in the poultry world, I make a pretty poor yenta,
So as for breeding chickens, perhaps I wasn't menta.
nice smug me
by e.e. cummings
this here verse's
disjunct
i used to
stick to regular metered
poetry
now i write onetwothreefourfive poemsjustlikethat
Jesus
but this is simple work
and what i want to know is
how much am i going to get paid for this
mister editor
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a sperm whale, sperm?
Thou art more tiny and more resolute:
Rough tides may sway a sea-bound endotherm,
But naught diverts thy uterine commute.
Sometime too fierce the eye of squid may glint
And make a stout cetacean hunter quail;
Methinks 'twould take much more than bilious squint
To shake thee off the cunning ovum's trail.
Yet still thou art not so unlike, thou two,
Both coursing through a dark uncharted brine
While fore and aft there swims thy fellow crew;
And note this echo, little gamete mine:
As whales spray salty water from their spout,
So with a salty spray dost thou come out.
Hen Gonads
by Ogden Nash
I thought running a chicken breeding farm would
be a simple matter,
Just pipe some romantic music into the chicken
coop and chill some champagne and sit back
and wait for the proverbial little feet's pitter-patter,
But it's turned out to be trickier than that to
affect a chicken's libido,
Because I just don't know what chickens find attractive,
I mean, when I go out on the town I dress to the
nines, but does a chicken prefer a rooster in an
opera hat and tuxedo?
Well, I can say definitively that she does not,
And if anyone has been considering the purchase of
a rooster-sized tuxedo and opera hat you should
come down here and take a look at this reasonably
priced used set I've got.
Neither did my backup plan of spiking the chicken feed
with Spanish fly produce results,
Nor the screening of nature documentaries intended for adults,
Nor threats of arroz con pollo,
Nor...well, I don't want to give all the embarrassing details,
but let's just say there's nothing quite like asking a
salesman if he has a vibrator specifically designed to
stimulate hen gonads to make one feel like a total yo-yo.
Yes, I'm distinctly subpar at stirring romantic longings
in the loins of a chicken, and when it comes to setting up
blind dates in the poultry world, I make a pretty poor yenta,
So as for breeding chickens, perhaps I wasn't menta.
nice smug me
by e.e. cummings
this here verse's
disjunct
i used to
stick to regular metered
poetry
now i write onetwothreefourfive poemsjustlikethat
Jesus
but this is simple work
and what i want to know is
how much am i going to get paid for this
mister editor
Friday, February 1, 2008
Quotes
I felt compelled to post something, so here are quotes from my facebook page.
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection. (Saint Augustine)
“Classification of mathematical problems as linear and nonlinear is like classification of the Universe as bananas and non-bananas.”
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
“A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.”
- Charles R. Darwin
“Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.”
- Martin Luther
"Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September..."
“Biologists think they are biochemists,
Biochemists think they are Physical Chemists,
Physical Chemists think they are Physicists,
Physicists think they are Gods,
And God thinks he is a Mathematician.”
“Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.”
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. (Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club)
“A tragedy of mathematics is a beautiful conjecture ruined by an ugly fact.”
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection. (Saint Augustine)
“Classification of mathematical problems as linear and nonlinear is like classification of the Universe as bananas and non-bananas.”
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
“A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.”
- Charles R. Darwin
“Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.”
- Martin Luther
"Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September..."
“Biologists think they are biochemists,
Biochemists think they are Physical Chemists,
Physical Chemists think they are Physicists,
Physicists think they are Gods,
And God thinks he is a Mathematician.”
“Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.”
A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. (Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club)
“A tragedy of mathematics is a beautiful conjecture ruined by an ugly fact.”
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