To Boldly Cut Pizza

This is just too funny to pass up....  A Star Trek Enterprise shaped pizza slicer!!!

http://therazorreport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boldly-cut-pizza-where-no-man-has-cut.html

The Agincourt Gambit

Here is a delightful cartoon from xkcd for chess players that also appreciate history.

During the height of the Middle Ages the star of the battle field was the mounted Knight. With a long lance he could strike infantrymen before they got within sword range and then quickly move on. But the tide was turned at Agincourt where common English longbowmen (pawns) devastated the French noble cavalry (knights). They shot the horses with arrows!

From Wikipedia,

The French cavalry ...  charged the longbowmen, but it was a disaster, with the French knights unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the forest of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. [Horses] armoured only on the head, [became] dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation long range shots used as the charge started. [The] wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.

For Shakespeare fans, this battle was portrayed in Henry V where King Henry gives a famous St. Crispin's Day speech to rally the troops

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;

A real no-where man?

From a letter to the London Times, June 17, 1978:

Some years ago I was bringing a Destroyer home from the Far East and was required to report my position twice a day.

One evening, I saw that we would be passing close to where the Greenwich Meridian cuts the Equator so arranged to arrive there dead on midnight. Once there I altered course to due North and stopped engines so my position signal read:

At 00:00 my position Latitude 00°00′N, Longitude 00°00′E. Course 000°. Speed 0.

I had considered saying I was Nowhere but thought (probably correctly) that Their Lordships would not be amused.

How long is a couple of days?

A recent cartoon at http://xkcd.com/ reminded me of a trip to Canada to visit my sister.

The boarder guard asked how long I would be staying.

A couple of days I said.

When are you retuning?

Friday.

Wait a minute, he challenged, that's four days from now and you just said a couple of days.

Yes, I said, a couple of days for me includes 2 or 3 or 4. I'm not strict about it always meaning 2.

Bottom Line

Imagine being stopped at the boarder for incorrectly using the word "couple".

Stay out of Debt Song

Here's a clip from one of Gilligan's Island best episodes where Shakespeare's Hamlet is set to music. (Couldn't all Shakespeare be improved this way?)  The tune is the Toreador song from the opera Carmen. The theme: stay out of debt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXId5jOTxdg&feature=related

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hobbits

How can a geek not appreciate a headline like, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hobbits? The author, Alex Knapp, was also the creative mind behind Leadership Lessons from Captain Kirk and Captain Picard.

"One of the reasons why Hobbits were so successful in the world beyond, to the point that, in the words of Elrond, they could “arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great” is because they have certain habits that predisposed them to success."

It should be noted that most Hobbits lived quiet, isolated, lives. The Hobbit Habits here (try saying that 5 times fast) belong to a small group of "highly effective" hobbits that changed the world. 

1. Be CleverBeing small, Hobbits rely on their wit to succeed and even the mighty are impressed by them.
2. Overcome Your FearsBe brave.
3. Be PreparedWhether a birthday part or a trip across the world, these Hobbits planned and managed resources effectively.
4. Support your Team"Loyalty is a central theme of The Lord of the Rings. ... It takes a team to accomplish great things, and teams require loyalty to survive."
5. Know when to Question the BossLoyalty is good but not blind loyalty. Sometimes those in charge are dangerously wrong.
6. Take a Chance on People"The entire saga of The Lord of the Rings hinges on two acts of mercy – by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins – in sparing the life of Gollum."
7. Stop and Smell the RosesIn the race to the top and success, don't forget to enjoy life along the way.  

Spider Man or Santa? What's the Difference?

"With great power, comes great responsibility"
-Uncle Ben to Peter Parker (Spider Man)

This is very clever....

Bottom Line

What a wicked sense of humor. Spanish Inquistion - wears a red suit and knows if you've been naught or nice. LOL!

P.S.

As a mathematician I should point out that the chart above is called a Venn diagram, conceived around 1880 by John Venn. Each circle represents a topic, like "Wears a red suit". Where the circles overlap labels are added to indicate items that belong in both circles (or all three circles with Santa).

Hurricane Stages

XKCD is a clever "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The drawings are simple stick people but the ideas or puns can be quite intelligent. In the cartoon above the artist substitutes a Piaget Stage with a Hurricane Category 5.

Hurricanes are measured on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale of Categories 1 to 5:
ONE: Winds 74-95 mph: Damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees. Some coastal road flooding and minor pier damage.
TWO: Winds 96-110 mph: Some roofing material, door, and window damage to buildings. Considerable damage to vegetation, mobile homes, and piers. Small craft in unprotected anchorages break moorings.
THREE: Winds 111-130 mph: Some structural damage to small residences. Mobile homes are destroyed. Terrain may be flooded well inland.
FOUR: Winds 131-155 mph: Some complete roof structure failure on small residences. Major erosion of beach areas. Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore by flooding.
FIVE: Winds greater than 155 mph: Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. Major damage to lower floors of all structures located near the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required.

The Piaget Scale measures child development in four stages:

1. Sensorimotor: (birth to about age 2) child learns about himself and his environment through motor and reflex actions. 
   
2. Preoperational: (begins about the time the child starts to talk to about age 7) child begins to use symbols to represent objects and learns to pretend.
   
3. Concrete: (about first grade to early adolescence) child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgements.
   
4. Formal Operations: (adolescence) Child is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning.. 

Wikipedia which mentions a stage 5, "The fifth stage occurs from 12 months old to 18 months old. During this stage infants explore new possibilities of objects; they try different things to get different results", but this is a sub-stage of the Sensorimotor stage. I wonder how Piaget adherents distinguish between the 4 primary stages and the 6 sub-stages of infants.

Bottom Line
To learn more about hurricanes see the excellent booklet by NOAA at http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/pdf/hurricanebook.pdf

P.S. Happy Anniversary to my wife. Twenty years married today.

Steaming Semen, no Bull!

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull----.”
-W. C. Fields

In today's security concious world, everything is seen as suspicious. Recently a United plane was returned to the airport because a passenger was reading a book about airplanes. Perhaps they thought he was planning his attack during the flight itself? Or brushing up on the details? A policeman quickly released the passenger when he saw the book was about "Snoopy Red Baron stuff...", i.e. triplanes from 1921.

On August 23 in Nashville, Tennesse, an on-ramp to Interstate 65 was closed and fire and emergency HAZMAT crews called to investigate unmarked canisters alongside the road which were smelly and steaming. Naturally foul play was suspected. Could this be a bomb or a chemical attack? Bus tickets were found nearby and it was determined that the canisters had fallen out of the cargo department of a Greyhound bus. The driver was located and he identified the canisters as containing frozen bull sperm packed in liquid nitrogen from Columbus, Ohio and en route to a breeding facility in Laredo, Texas. Depending on the quality of the bull parent(s?) the lost sperm could be worth as much as $80,000.

Since the canisters used liquid nitrogen, they are not allowed on planes and must travel by ground. A Greyhound spokesperson said it's not uncommon that the bus was carrying bull sperm. If that make you nervous (eew, cudies on my luggage), Greyhound says that cargo is stored in a compartment separate from passenger belongings.

Bottom Line

It's good to stay alert but let's not overdo going to extremes.

May the Force be with You

“I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.”
- Star Wars 4

PasteMagazine.com has a wonderful article,

Celebrate Star Wars Day with These Sweet Propaganda Posters

Star Wars Day was May 4 (may the 4th be with you). Here are two posters. There are many more including posters from the Empire's point of view. Enjoy!

 

Lost Time

"If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you"
- Time In a Bottle by Jim Croce

Today a image from I Love Charts is worth a thousand words...

Bottom Line

"But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them"
- Time In a Bottle by Jim Croce

One of my favorite sketches from the Muppets Show is this rendition of Time in a Bottle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvnCKJCgCD8

What is Truth?

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
- John 18:38

Here is a clever quote that ties in with yesterday's topic of paradoxes vs knowing all things..

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened"

- Douglas Adam, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Over 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Euclid proposed five laws (Axioms) that could be used to prove "all" of geometry.

1. Any two points define a unique straight line
2. A straight line can be extended infinitely far
3. A center and a radius define a unique circle
4. All right angles are equal to one anothe.

These first four laws are simple and "obviously" true. The fifth law is not so simple:

5. The parallel postulate: If a straight line crosses two other straight lines and makes the same interior angles on the two lines, then the two lines are parallel, meaning they will never cross if infinitely extended.

These five Axioms worked very well as the basis for all of anceint Geometry. But the fifth law bothered mideval mathematicians. It is so wordy and complex compared to the others. Could it be simplified? Not really. Is it necessary? Yes, if you want to prove anything interesting. Could it be proved from the first four laws. No.

One method of proof is called "Proof by Contradiction". Geometrists said, suppose law 5 is false and the two lines do meet. Does this result in something impossible or inconsistent? To their surprise, it was consistent and created a stranger and more bizzare universe of mathematics. Today we call this non-Euclidean Geometry. The easiest example is a sphere or globe. The equator crosses all longitude lines at right angles so longitudes are "parallel" but contrary to Axiom 5 they meet at the north and south poles.

Bottom Line

It turns out that the fifth law is only true on perfectly flat surfaces and is independent of the first four laws which are "universally" true. So if asked if the parallel postulate is "true" the answer is, "it depends". This is an instance of a statement which can be true or false - both modes describes a different reality, both cases equally "real".

Quotations & Paradox

For over two years now I've started with (or used) a quote in every blog post. I think it adds some variety and it's fun searching for just the right quote. So this item on the Internet at Clayton Cramer's Blog struck my funny bone:

A Profound Thought

“The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine.”  - Abraham Lincoln

For some reason this reminds me of the Liar's Paradox:

In ancient Greece the fictional speaker Epimenides, a Cretan, said that "All Cretans are liars." So is Epimenides telling the truth?

Wikipedia points out that this example is not really a paradox. It is only a contradiction if you assume Epimenides is honest. If Epimenides is liar, then his statement is false and somewhere there exists an honest Cretan, just not Epimenides himself.

Greek philosopher, Eubulides of Miletus, fourth century BC, discovered a real paradox,

A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?

Is the man telling the truth about lying (and thereby is lying) or lying about lying (and thereby truthful)?

Statements like this are called self-referential and are the bane of mathematical logic. Another classic is, "A barber in town shaves every man who does not shave himself. So who shaves the barber?"

My speciality while working on a mathematics PhD was Set Theory. In the early days (pre-1900's) the definition of "set" was very loose and you could use any description to describe a set. But like the paradoxes above it was easy to describe impossible or at least very strange sets. Consider the set of all sets. This uber-set would have to contain itself as a member. This gives you an infinite recursion, S is an element of S which is an element of S which is ....

To avoid this pathological set we define X, the set of all sets which DO NOT contain themselves. So is X an element of X? Think about it for a bit and you'll see that X is a paradox, it can not exist.

Bottom Line

While this may look like fun and games, paradoxes like this changed math and science in the 20th century. At the dawn of 1900 it was believed that physical and mathematical sciences were on the verge of discovering the ultimate truths of the universe. But soon Einstein's Relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle showed that some physical "facts" are relative to the observer or unknowable.  In mathematics in 1931, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem showed that any system of logic which was strong enough to prove itself valid, would also contain statements like "This statement is false". Thus there could be no system of logic that could prove all statements. There will always be some things which are unknowable.

Accepting Responsibility

 - sign on the desk of U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1945)




I'll let a political cartoon by Michael Ramirez do all the talking today...

Cartoonist http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/MichaelRamirez

Last Train to Hogwarts

This picture has been making the rounds on the internet...

Someone placed a 9 3/4 sticker over the defunct W line in honor of Harry Potter at the 14th St. Union Square station in New York City.

Food for Thought

Weekend Bonus

The Consumerist describes a new sandwich invention, the Angry French Canadian.

The sandwich starts with a base of egg-soaked baguette French toast. Then there's some bacon and several street vendor hot dogs -- buns included. Of course it wouldn't be French Canadian without poutine: French fries slathered in gravy and melted cheese. Oh, and don't forget the maple syrup.

Bottom Line

This might actually taste good but NOT on my diet!

P.S. Don't forget to turn the clock back tonight for the end of Daylight Savings Time.
Spring forward and Fall back.

Email Etiquette

"Diamonds are forever. E-mail comes close." - June Kronholz

Website TheOatmeal.com takes a humorous look at email etiquette.  My only fear is that the message is too subtle - some people may have no clue what is wrong with each example.

The title is "If you do this in email, I hate you." Here's a summary of the errors displayed.

1. Clinging to old technology and not using the power of the Internet. Why fax anything anymore? At my company we each sign (and fax to HR) a one page document agreeing that our email signature will be legally binding. Now no more faxes, our email response is sufficient.

2. Asking for a resend of information instead of searching your own email archives.

3. Chain letters to dozens of friends. Personally I find it very sad when persons forward a chain mail and don't clean it up - instead leaving the history of every previous person it was ever sent to.

4. Super long automatic email signatures or using graphics in your signature. This make the email unnecessary large and takes up space.

5. Besides a fax response (see cartoon #1) the 5th cartoon seems to be more a dig at non-disclosure agreements in general.

6. Email != FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - don't send giant files by email. They are slow to download and fill up the mail box space.

7. Email != Collaborative Editing Software. Note all the Re: Re: ... in the title showing how many times this email has been bounced back and forth. I would be guilty of using email this way since I've never worked with collaborative editing software. The closest I suppose is using source control software and Change Tracking to see who edited what. Source control are programs that let you "check out" a file, modify it, then check it back in. A checked-out file is locked and no one else can change it while you own it.

8. Unsubscribe - just like the cartoonist, I hate it when I have to sign in to unsubscribe because I may have no clue what my account ID and password are. A good unsubscribe knows who you are.

9. Don't overly decorate your email with background wall paper, and added art elements, etc. Again this added to the size of the email file.

Bottom Line

Email etiquette is interesting. Should it be as formal as snail mail or as informal as twitter? Should you use abbreviations like LOL, FYI, etc? Is it OK to spam your friends? What do you think?

Zombies!

Darkness falls across the land.
The midnight hour is close at hand.
Creatures crawl in search of blood.
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood.
-lyrics from Michael Jackson's Thriller

Here's an odd but true story via geekpress.com.

A car full of people dressed as zombies crashed on Interstate 84 near downtown Portland, Oregon, on Friday, causing initial confusion by people who witnessed the crash.

...Sgt. Greg Stewart said people who witnessed the crash initially thought the victims' injuries were much more serious, because of the zombie costumes.

"We're glad that everyone is alive, despite being 'undead'," Sgt. Stewart said, referring to the costumes.

http://www.kgw.com/news/Car-accident-victims-dressed-like-zombies-confuse-crash-witnesses-98157894.html

Dick Whittington's Cat

“Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man.”-Paul Gray

If you've ever watched the musical, Cats, you may remember a line by Gus the Theater Cat who says, "I once understudied Dick Whittington's Cat". For years I had no clue what this meant until my newest commuting lecture, "London : a short history of the greatest city in the Western world." explained the story.

In the 14th century a poor country orphan walked to the great city of London to seek his fortune. Once there, cold and tired, Dick Whittington fell asleep in front of the great house of Mr. Fitzwarren, a rich but kindly merchant, who took Dick into his house and employed him as a scullery boy. Dick was happy except for the rats that infested his bedroom. So he earned a penny shining a gentleman's shoes, and with this penny bought a cat, a proficient mouser who drove off the rats.

One day, Mr. Fitzwarren asked his servants if they wished to add something to his ship's cargo to sell in a far off port. Reluctantly Dick sent his cat as his only possession. As time passed, in Mr. Fitzwarren's absence, his cook treated Dick cruelly. Dick ran away but as he was leaving the city, he heard the Bow Bells ring out saying, "Turn again Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London". Dick retraced his steps and found that Mr. Fitzwarren's ship had returned. The cat had been sold for a great fortune to the King of Barbary, whose palace was overrun with mice. Dick became a rich man, joined Mr. Fitzwarren in his business, and married his daughter Alice. In time he became the Lord Mayor of London three times, just as the bells had predicted.

Bottom Line

Dick Wittington really was Mayor of London three times but he came from a wealthy family and there is no historical proof that a cat changed his life. Never-the-less, when Newgate Prison was rebuilt according to the terms of Whittington's will, a cat was carved over one of the gates. In 1572, a chariot with a carved cat was presented by Whittington's heirs to the merchant's guild. Today, on Highgate Hill in front of the Whittington Hospital, there is a statue in honor of Whittington's legendary cat (pictured above).

Puns

“The other day when I was walking through the woods, I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle making shadows of people on a tree.”-Stephen Wright

My latest commuting lecture series has been Power Over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory by Dennis Dalton of Columbia University. It was interesting with lots of contrasting viewpoints between pessimistic theorists like Machiavelli who think men are evil at heart and optimists like Plato who think men can be taught to live a perfect life. The final CD was about Gandhi (a truly great man) and I was reminded of a clever story pun...

Gandhi was a small, frail man often of ill health and bad breath. But he had an inner strength that allowed him to walk long distances in protest marches on his bare feet. He became known as the "Super Calloused, Fragile Mystic, hexed by halitosis".

My father is a punster; once when picking berries as a family I "gave him the raspberry". He responded with "respect your Elderberries." As a teen I loved collecting story puns such as this one...

A man wanted to kill his wife so he went to the town drunk named Arthur. "Artie", he says, "will you kill my wife for a dollar?"
"Sure", the drunk replies. He then follows the wife to a grocery store and strangles her in a shopping aisle. Another shopper is a witness so she too is strangled. Naturally this was all caught on a store security camera and Arthur is arrested. The headline in the newspaper is
"Artie chokes two for a dollar at Safeway".

Bottom Line

“A joke is a very serious thing”-Winston Churchill