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Here are some
of my random thoughts
plus a few anecdotes that I would like to share with you.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato said that
"necessity is the mother of
all invention". Another philosopher (me) says that "egoism is the
driving force of all perseverance."
Professor Krakpott invented
a wire so thin it was barely visible to the naked eye. He sent a short
sample across the sea to impress his good friend professor Phroot-loop.
Not to be outdone, Phroot-loop drilled a narrow hole down the centre of
the spider-web-thin wire and sent it back to Krakpott.
His ego rattled, Krakpott
cut a fine thread inside the narrow tube and promptly sent it back to
Phroot-loop. In a fit of pique, Phroot-loop made a ridiculously thin
bolt and screwed it into the fine thread cut into the narrow tube
drilled through the almost invisible wire and sent it back to Krakpott.
By now, in a salivating rage, the furious Krakpott made
---
Aaaargh! --- What the heck. They're still at it.
When Pythagoras went to America to visit his good friend Chief Giggling Horse
he took with him three gifts, one each for the Chief's three beautiful
squaws.
He gave the first two dainty
squaws a mat each, made from the hide of a buffalo. To the third
(better-endowed) squaw, who weighed as much as the other two squaws
together, he gave a thicker mat made from the hide of a hippopotamus.
With squeals of delight the
three squaws placed their mats on the ground and sat on them. That's
when Pythagoras stepped back and made his now famous observation that
"The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the
other two hides."
The never-satisfied are always
complaining that the day is too long and boring.
I figure that if we
lop a few hundred feet off the top of Mount Everest it would
increase the Earth's spin (due to the conservation of angular momentum) in
much the same way that an ice-skater's spin increases when she drops her outstretched arms. The
extra earth spin should shorten the length of the day
by about .00000000007 seconds, give or take a femto-second or two.
Now, that should be enough to shut up all those
whingeing malcontents.
"There was a young lady named
Bright,
Who could travel much faster than light.
She went out one day, in a relative way
And came back the previous night."
There are many unsavoury versions of
this ditty but, contrary to what my wife would probably say, I am a gentleman so
I won't be repeating any of them here.
The original nursery rhyme "twinkle, twinkle, little star" first
appeared in the early 1600's and today there are hundreds of versions
in hundreds of languages. The original author is unknown.
Where the storyteller would say:
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
how I wonder what you are,
up above the world so high,
like a diamond in the sky."
The scientist would
probably say:
"Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
fain may I fathom thy nature specific,
loftily poised in the ether capacious,
strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous."
A driver
accused of going through a red light explained to the judge that the red
light appeared green due to the velocity at which he was approaching it.
The judge, being scientifically aware himself, did a quick calculation,
accepted the driver's explanation
then fined him for speeding.
There are
10
kinds of people --- those who understand binary, and those who don't.
In case any reader is unfamiliar with binary maths and doesn't get the joke,
I should point out that binary 10
has the same value as 2 in the
decimal system.
---
SZ
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