CRUMMY OLD WINE DEPT: Bob shares his thoughts with Scientific American

click nachos to enlarge

Date: Fri,  4 Feb 94 16:13:50 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: The Death of Proof

From: vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU!bostic 

(Keith Bostic)
From: letters to the editors
From: January 1994 issue of 

Scientific American

Hey, man, thanks a lot for "The Death of 

Proof."  What my buddies down the hall 

liked best was what you said about how us
students don't relate to proofs. We don't.

They're real hard, and I don't think we 

should have to do them, not when you can

get the same stuff from those neat color

videos. The Grateful Dead likes them too!

If you guys keep writing neat stories like

this about how math is getting easier and 

so much cooler, maybe us guys will take some

more math courses and maybe even become real

mathematicians, 'cause it looks like a real 

neat job now and not boring like I always

thought because of all those numbers and

equations and stuff.

Beavis and Butt-head say hi.

Bob Merkin
Northampton, Mass.

Tierra de los Sueños / PizzaQ! / wtf? / UNESCO World Heritage Pretzel Sex Cartoons / No. 1 & 4 Combo / la vie des mariners Mediterannee / hens' teeth / il Postino / fragrance-free & gluten-free

Click doohickey to enlarge.

Something quite wonderful has just happened to moi -- and typically what just happened to moi involves medical waiting rooms and phlebotomists, so Wonderful is both Wonderful AND Rare. 

Scarce as hen's teeth, some would say. (A glass case in a small museum in Corpus Christi, Texas was labelled HEN'S TEETH, but I can't remember what, if anything, was inside.)

The Wonderful Something centers on a bit of Private Correspondence -- actual exchange of Snailmail, with envelopes affixed with vrai postage stamps. Quel 1983! A data exchange you can TOUCH and WEIGH and de temps en temps WHIFF! 


btw the USPS stamp to send a No. 10 envelope with 1 sheet inside to Yerp is singularly ugly and hard to peel and affix. I have subsequently overpaid to send my Yerp recipient Pretty Butterflies.

"Il Postino" is the Italian mailman who serves the exiled Chilean poet Neruda, and the first thing il Postino notices is the unusually large number of pleasantly, even stimulatingly scented letters from all over the planet. That gets the mailman's attention, because as it turns out he has been seeking ways to ratchet up his Woman-Related Life, and obviously this Señor Neruda has some effective gimmicks with Women. (If you want to know about his gimmicks, read some Neruda poems. Leave A Comment. No fragrance please.)

(Moiself, i do not receive a lot of floral scented snailmail. Don't send me any, not even as a gag. I have a Wife. And 5 cats.)

But anyway, I consider myself obligated, unless instructed contrariwise, to keep the stuff in the flying physical snailmails private & confidential.

ADMIRAL: And I'm never never never ever sick at sea
CHORUS: Never?
ADMIRAL: Well ... HARDLY ever ...

-- Gilbert & Sullivan
 
Okay, well, Vleeptron & its Partners throughout Galaxy Dwingeloo-2 have held a Skype teleconference to consider what, if anything, Vleeptron MAY extract or subduct from this private correspondence.

The limited, protected, guarded Answer is fig. 1 above.

Vleeptron has designated this curious whatchamacallit a PizzaQ.

(Yeah, yeah, we know we still owe Much Explanatory Text on a previous PizzaQ, we been busy. Patience is a Virtue. PatfromCH won 92 percent of the Pizza.)

So, like, what is Fig. 1?

Can you make cucumber sweet pickles with it?

Can it walk the dog? Milk the chickens? (I am still in the Up Learning Curve regarding the farm sciences.)

I mean, just tell me ANYTHING you know about This Odd Thing.

That's all the Vleeptron Skype teleconference feels free to divulge regarding this snailmail exchange at this time. You got to fill in the rest, or more, or something.

This one's worth -- hey, I like this one, and now it's a Personal Thing -- 2 Large Pizzas. Certified 100 Percent Gluten-Free.

My first Latin textbook showed a detail of a beautiful mosaic eternally preserved under Pompeii. Some previous scholar had penned WHO ORDERED THE EXTRA CHEESE in the margin.

Pompeii's most notorious, filthy, lewd Dirty Pictures are the entrance mosaics in a big dockside whorehouse. The sailors coming ashore very often could not read or grok early classical Latin, so a Menu of Naked Pretzel Things -- well, you would point to the Pretzel you wanted, and it also told you how many drachmas that would cost a Mediterranean mariner.

I'd call the cops and the sandblasters to get rid of this vile smut, but the vile smut has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and armed guards and dogs and CCTV protects the sailor pretzel cartoons from outraged Calvinists.

I don't know what year they changed the rule but my UK woman friend says that when her family visited in the late 1950s, Dad and Brother Will were permitted to step inside, but Mum and my little friend were strictly not allowed inside. But now all genders may pay the 2 euro and step in and gawk and wallow, and imagine themselves in No. 4. Or a combo 1 and 4, me want that. 

This is the only UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE PORN FILTH I know anywhere on Earth, but if you know where there's more, please Leave A Comment. Apparently every country road you stroll down in India you pass huge stone statues of huge rock-hard erect penises. each roughly the size of General Sherman. I don't know if UNESCO or the appropriate ministry has certified them.

So anyway, Vleeptron has asked the PizzaQ, or as much of it as we feel comfy asking.

You answer.

You're smart. You can get this.

Conversely, if you cannot get this, you are Not Smart (cf. Boole, DeMorgan, et al).

this place looks nice & the VACANCY sign is on

Click image to enlarge

CBC News / Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Saturday 17 August 2013

40 pythons found 
in Ontario motel
 
SPCA says snakes appeared to be
'in distress' in crowded plastic bins
 
Forty pythons that were discovered in a Brantford, Ontario [Canada] motel have been seized by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Police found the snakes in five plastic storage bins at the Bell City Motel on Colborne Street in Brantford, which is located about 100 kilometres southwest of Toronto.

"Early [Thursday] evening, the Brantford police called us to come out and assist with a large number of snakes they had found," said Brandon James, spokesman for the Brant County SPCA. "When we arrived, we found very overcrowded conditions with approximately 40 snakes."

James said he had "never seen a load of snakes this large in Brant County and I've been doing this for 10 years."

The biggest python was estimated to be 1.3 metres long. There were snakes of various sizes including some that were less than a foot long. 

There was also about half a dozen unhatched eggs in the bins.

The pythons were discovered Thursday night by police as part of a separate investigation.

The snakes were in distress because of the cramped conditions and lack of water, James said.

"I don't know how long they were in those tote containers for, but it's very stressful for the snakes."

James said it appeared the snakes had recently been fed.

Baby in the room
 
The snakes belonged to a local couple who stayed at the room for only one night, a manager at the motel told The Canadian Press. The couple were out Thursday evening when police arrived, said the manager, who asked that his name not be used.

Paul Sizer, a guest in a neighbouring room at the motel, told CBC News that the couple had five young children with them, including a baby.

"The first night I was afraid of [the snakes] getting out and coming after me," he said.

The pythons were in the care of the Brant County SPCA Friday and transported to a reptile facility somewhere in Ontario in the early evening. James would would not say where they were going.

It is illegal to own a python in Brantford.

The discovery comes after two boys were killed by an African rock python in New Brunswick earlier this month.
 
Also Thursday night, animal control officers in Hamilton recovered a four-foot-long ball python in bushes in the city's east end. It was the second ball python found abandoned in the city in a week. 

- 30 -

Tierra de los Sueños / Historical Commemorative: ye Rhabdology

click stamp to enlarge

Tierra de los Sueños
Historical Commemorative
ye Rhabdology

issued: 11 August 1617 (O.S.)

Midsummer Xmas t-shirt design / antipode / pode / Bizarro Earth shape / kiss salt cod / oblate spheroid / dog barks, cats wake & flee

click image to enlarge

okay well S****, her birthday is 6 months before (or after) Christmas, so she always celebrates her birthday with a Christmas in July theme. 

I made her this t-shirt for her birthday. She seems to have liked it. Anyway, as of so far, hers is the only such t-shirt in the universe.

I call it Midsummer Xmas so ppl in the Southern Hemisphere can wear it too. ppl in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Xmas in their swimwear and slather up with SPF 70 sunscreen goop.

I guess you are standing or sitting or lying on a pode. So the spot exactly opposite your pode on the surface of Earth is its antipode. Everybody near there is antipodean.

The straight line between antipode and pode runs through the center of the planet -- if the planet is a sphere. (Actually, because it spins pretty fast on its polar axis, it's not a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid.)

The shape of Bizarro Earth is not a sphere or oblate spheroid, Bizarro Earth is a cube.


What's the most North you've ever been?

What's the most South you've ever been? 

We were guests at our first Skype Wedding. We watched the bride and groom marry on our laptop. Our laptop was in Massachusetts USA. The bride and groom were in Patagonia Chile. We sent them a toaster oven. Or a cheeseboard, I forget which. 

The bride's dog barked in Patagonia, and our cats in Massachusetts woke up and fled.

Have you ever been urged or forced or required to kiss a salt cod? (I have.)

Oh, it's possible you don't know how to make the above collage into a t-shirt.

1. Print the image in color on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper.

2. Take the sheet to a print shop that makes t-shirts. Tell the print shop sentient you want the image printed as big as possible on the front of the t-shirt.

3. Pick up your new t-shirt the next day.