Another Math Joke

Here's a funny one from Neatorama, one of my favorite websites in the whole wide web...

There were three medieval kingdoms on the shores of a lake. There was an island in the middle of the lake, over which the kingdoms had been fighting for years. Finally, the three kings decided that they would send their knights out to do battle, and the winner would take the island.

The night before the battle, the knights and their squires pitched camp and readied themselves for the fight. The first kingdom had 12 knights, and each knight had five squires, all of whom were busily polishing armor, brushing horses, and cooking food. The second kingdom had twenty knights, and each knight had 10 squires. Everyone at that camp was also busy preparing for battle. At the camp of the third kingdom, there was only one knight, with his squire. This squire took a large pot and hung it from a looped rope in a tall tree. He busied himself preparing the meal, while the knight polished his own armor.

When the hour of the battle came, the three kingdoms sent their squires out to fight (this was too trivial a matter for the knights to join in).

The battle raged, and when the dust had cleared, the only person left was the lone squire from the third kingdom, having defeated the squires from the other two kingdoms, thus proving that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

LOL! Indeed, as stated by the caption on Neatorama, Pythagoras is rolling in his grave!

Nuthatch

There's a little nuthatch that keeps visiting the pine tree in my front yard for some of the many bird and squirrel goodies mother sets out for them. I managed to shoot a few pictures when it would stay still long enough, so here they are for your enjoyment.

Fig. 1: Closeup at 300mm, f5.6 @ 1/125.

Fig. 2: Closeup at 300mm, f5.6 @ 1/320.

Fig. 3: Closeup at 300mm, f5.6 @ 1/125.

I was able to get rather close to this beautiful little creature, but what you see is actually an illusion. It helps to have a decent high-megapixel camera and a long lens. The pictures, above, were taken with a Sony alpha 200, 10.2 megapixels in JPEG mode, with a Minolta Maxxum autofocus 75-300mm lens at 300mm. I then cropped them from there and did some color and contrast adjustments using Google's Picasa 3 software.

World According to Uncle Dan

Fig. 1: The Art of Dan, in his Black & White period.

The image above was sent to me by my friend, Chris, whom I work with. It was drawn by his son, Dan. It was sent along by his wife...Chris' wife, not Dan's...with the following (unedited) explanation as was dictated to her by the artist himself.

The attached illustration depicts how Daniel views his family lifestyle.

On the left, we notice that he has titled the work with his name using large capital letters, showing ownership for his viewpoint.

Beneath, he has drawn a remarkable likeness of his brother Jason (including ears of greatness and curly hair) holding a heart.

Underneath the image of Jason, Dan described the work as containing a picture of his own heart, which is shining like a star and to the right of that a sun, which represents his happiness.

Finally, along the right we must interact with the drawing by turning it around so that we can realize the full visual impact of the artist's viewpoint - the Famwee Hug.

When interviewed Monday morning, just minutes after the work was completed, Daniel said, "This is a Famwee Hug. It's where my mommy and daddy scoop me up and kiss all over me." As you will see, the famwee hug portrays family cohesion: with three happy face circles at the top (two facing the viewer and one drawn as an implied circle, i.e., back of head), a large body circle encompassing the group, and their feet entwined with love.

It is clear that Daniel is a lucky boy.

I have noticed that he has an unusual and unique insight of how the world works. Such is being a child. A lucky boy indeed!

Of note: he may already have a small grasp on Russian, noting the backwards "N"...

Thinking of Papaw

I was thinking of my dearly departed grandfather on my mother's side, or papaw as I always called him.

I remember a riddle that he would tell me all the time, and I was thinking of it just now for some odd reason.

On my way to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
The seven wives had seven sacks,
the seven sacks held seven cats,
each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives;
how many were going to St. Ives?

I am not great at math but I would often try to figure it out. I would never arrive at the proper solution, in his mind, because I was over thinking the problem. Conventional wisdom would assume that if the traveler going to St. Ives met someone on the way, then it would mean that the person they met would be traveling away from St. Ives. By this pattern of thinking the answer would be one. There would only be one person in the story going to St. Ives.

Nothing is said of that the group could have been traveling slower than the traveler and they all were headed in the same direction. If this is the case, then... (please bear with me as I am no good at math)

1 Traveler
1 Man (with 7 wives)
7 Wives (each with 7 sacks)
49 Sacks (each with 7 cats)
343 Cats (each with 7 kits)
2,401 Kits

There would be 2,802 items traveling to St. Ives. With this volume of feline objects, one could be certain as to why they would be traveling slower. And seven... SEVEN ...wives! Holy crap!

Papaw also used to tell me how to spell "Cincinnati"... C - I - N - "needle and pin" - "gnat and a fly" - cincinnati - I.

I miss mamaw and papaw both dearly.

The Third Dog

I already blogged about the other two dogs. I didn't want to leave out dog number 3.

This is Murphy. She is a Tibetan Terrier, a relatively rare breed that is not, in fact, a terrier. She's something around 12 years old now, and is now more gray than black.

Fig. 1: Murphalene Hydroxide. Use only as directed.

Her full name is "Murphy Brown", named for the television character of the same name played by Candice Bergen. Back in the day when we got her, Murphy Brown was on all the time. It is still a program that I enjoy watching. I love the dry humor! The two Murphys are so alike!

Murph has gotten sweet in her old age. She used to be a stand-offish little pain in the ass when she was younger. After her rival Sassie, the cocker spaniel, passed away, she sweetened up quite a bit. She gets along famously with Mr. Data, and intimidates the hell out of Gryffin.

Fig. 2: Murphy in the Yard

How we got her is an interesting story. There are very few breeders of Tibetan Terriers in the US. My mother's boss, SG, wanted one for his family. Well, his wife and three daughters wanted one, and he's a pushover and fully whipped. It is these four women that are to blame for his follicle difficulties. i.e., he's as bald as an eagle.

A breeder in California was contacted and stated that she had two female puppies available. One black and white, one white and black. Unsure of which color scheme would be more suitable, they opted for the black and white one. The black and white one arrived and they liked it alot.

He asked my mother if we would benefit from the additional canine companionship, and offered to purchase said functional opposite for us. This, to the tune of $500. Some bonus, that.

Fig. 3: Murphy vs. Gryffin.

The soon-to-be Murphy was shipped from California via Delta Airlines Cargo. On a flight that was delayed. Twice. We waited at the cargo counter for three hours past her scheduled arrival time. She finally arrived. A tiny ball of what we thought was lint was at the back of a huge dog crate. I said, "They sent us THAT?"

She is definitely a momma's girl. She follows mother around all over the house. Sometimes mother will sleep in the spare bedroom upstairs if father starts snoring badly, and this "little bed" is Murphy's preferred sleeping option. She will often sit in on the little bed and bark incessantly until either a) mother goes to bed in the "little bed", or b) mother tells her to shut the hell up.

Fig. 4: Murphy, the demon.

She really is a great little dog. It is really cute the way she plays with Mr. Data. I often will egg her on, "Bite Data, bite him! Bite that dog!" They don't bite hard, and it is really funny to watch them play.

Thankfully, the little princess doesn't shed. We'll occasionally find a long, black or white hair around the house, but there is absolutely no shedding. This is because Tibetan Terriers have a silky coat of hair rather than a fur topcoat/undercoat. She is quite soft and smooth, but like a typical dog, gets in to her share of muddy messes. Since she has hair, she gets matted quite easily so we have to keep her brushed and groomed all the time. Our groomer sees dollar signs when we walk in.

All in all, she really is a joy to have around.

Smart People and Math Jokes

I just realized today that I hang around a lot of smart people. I think I do so, so I can try to feel like I am in kindred company. I don't think I'm very bright...sure, I'm a college grad, and I have both Microsoft's MCSE certification and Cisco's CCNA certifications...but, still. A chimp could pass the MCSE, and I know quite a few of what we call "Paper MCSEs"...people that just studied the books and tested, rather than having real-world experience to back up their certifications. I am rather proud of my Cisco certification, though. That was a tough one.

Anyhow, I was looking over geeky jokes this week, and sent my engineer friend RDW this...

Little Poly Nomial

Once upon a time pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the edge of a singularly large matrix.

Now Polly was convergent and her mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling particularly badly behaved, ignored these conditions on the ground that they were unnecessary, and made her way amongst the complex elements.

Rows and columns enveloped her on both sides. Tangents approached her surface; she became tensor and tensor. Quite suddenly two branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, lost all sense of directrix and went completely divergent. As she reached a turning point she tripped over a square root which was protruding from the erf and plunged headlong down a steep gradient. When she was differentiated once more she found herself alone, apparently in a non-Euclidian space.

She was being watched however. That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was lurking inner product. As his eyes devoured her curvilinear co-ordinates, a singular expression crossed his face. Was she still convergent, he wondered. He decided to integrate at once.

Hearing a vulgar fraction behind her, Polly turned round and saw Curly Pi approaching with his power series extrapolated. She could see at once by his degenerate conic and his dissipative terms that he was bent on no good.

"Eureka!" she gasped.

"Ho Ho," he said, "what a symmetric little polynomial you are. I can see you're absolutely bubbling over with secs."

"Oh, Sir," she protested, "keep away from me, I haven't got my brackets on."

"Calm yourself, my dear," said our suave operator, "your fears are purely imaginary."

"i,i," she thought. "Perhaps he's homogeneous then."

"What order are you?" the brute demanded.

"Seventeen" replied Polly.

Curly leered. "I suppose you've never been operated on yet," he said.

"Of course not," Polly exclaimed indignantly. "I'm absolutely convergent."

"Come, come," said Curly, "lets off to a decimal place I know and I'll take you to the limit."

"Never!" gasped Polly.

"EXCHLF" he swore, using the vilest oath he knew. His patience was gone. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He started at her significant places and began smoothing her points of inflection. Poor Polly, all was up. She felt his digit tending to her asymptotic limit. Her convergence was gone for ever.

There was no mercy, for Curly was a Heavyside operator. He integrated by partial fractions. The complex beast even went all the way round and did a contour integration. What an indignity. To be multiply connected at her first integration. Curly went on operating until he was absolutely and completely orthogonal.

When Polly got home that evening her mother noticed that she was truncated in several places. But it was too late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly increased monotonically. Finally, she generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place until she was driven to distraction.

The moral of the story is this: If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom.

Pretty funny, that. Such a horrible story line, but told in a geeky, funny way...I just had to laugh. RDW thought it was funny, but in his typical fashion, he had to come up with a corollary to the story...to make it a happy ending...

RDW's Response to Little Poly Nomial

All seemed truly lost. Poor Poly Nomial. Poor Bi Nomial! It seemed that there entire life was tied up in knots.

But then the mother of Poly Nomial, Bi Nomial, remembered that her husband, the father of Poly Nomial from whom Poly Nomial had been differentiated and derived would return home soon.

Multivariate Polynomial expanded into the space with a myriad of rational functions and all sorts of extensive sensitivity analysis.

Bi Nomial described the Poly Nomial conundrum and replicated the data into his cognizant set until the information was complete and congruent.

He knew that multivariate interpolation could resolve remainder formulas on interpolated knot sets. At Multivariate’s core expression, he knew that there must be a way to restore symmetry to Poly Nomial.

He remained unified and singular at his point of origin and hence was aware that the roots of any polynomial can always be expressed as multivariate hypergeometric functions. Poly Nomial was not just an arbitrary Poly Nomial. She had always been symmetric and rational and hence always consisted and expressed rational functions. Even the quotients of her derivative polynomials therefore must also be rational expressions. Any function that could be used to evaluate the situation at hand would evaluate rational expressions and hence would also be rational functions.

Multivariate decided to apply the Null Set, power sum symmetric polynomials, hyperbolic rational functions and complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials to the situation. Poly Nomial knew that she was being transformed, but was confident in Multivariate’s ability to neutralize dysfunctions and to restore rational functionality to he space. She began to experience an expansion of her matrix as Multivariate restored, applied and truncated her problems by exposing her to numerous infinite series, and by causing transformations rotations, inversions, permutations, combinations and transcendent functions.

This process indeed took time, but Multivariate increased the memory, expanded the bus width, increased the clock speed and utilized sets of multiple processors and coprocessors to minimize Poly Nomial's discomfort and divergence. Her problems were expanded to infinity. She began to experience a concept of googleplex. But just as she felt she was losing rationality, Multivariant dispersed the fragmented fractals into imaginary space and re-established singularity and unity.

Within mere moments, the infinite series had reached it asymptotic plane. All dysfunctions were normalized as the null set and imaginary space absorbed all discontinuities and hyperbolic space twisted the matrix back into normal Euclidian space once again. Poly Nomial's problems had all been transformed into imaginary expressions and sent to the void of the nulls set.

Poly Nomial was singular again with undefiled secs. Her brackets were restored and were symmetric again. Multivariate saved the day! And now there was little Quadrinomial that would need to be raised to a power. Multivariate, Bi and Poly were singular knowing that Quadrinomial could be raised to a power and could easily be integrated into their family regardless of the cause of his deviation and derivation.

All had been differentiated and normalized. The constants were clearly identified. Poly Nomial was rational and symmetric again.

And somewhere in the space, the sound of "Eureka" reverberated in the singularity.

Geniuses can have great senses of humor! I just wish I understood most of this stuff!

Happy Fun Poetry

Here is some silly, funny and patently naughty poetry that a friend sent me. I hope that it will lighten the mood from my last post...

Mary had a little pig,
She kept it fat and plastered;
And when the price of pork went up,
She shot the little bastard.

Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead.
Now it goes to school with her,
Between two hunks of bread.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To have a little fun.
Stupid Jill forgot the pill
And now they have a son.

Simple Simon met a Pie Man going to the fair.
Said Simple Simon to the Pie Man,
"What have you got there?"
Said the Pie Man unto Simon,
"Pies, you dumb shit!"

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kings' horses,
And all the kings' men,
Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again.

Hey diddle, diddle the cat took a piddle,
All over the bedside clock.
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
Then died of electric shock.

Georgie Porgy pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
And when the boys came out to play,
He kissed them too 'cause he was gay.

There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad...
She got a fur coat, jewels, a waterfront condo, and a sports car!

The Daily Coyote

Rx: Take one every few minutes until cuteness craving is satisfied.

This is a picture from the blog "The Daily Coyote". It is about a nice lady that takes in a baby coyote who's parents were killed. This is an absolutely adorable blog, and an absolutely adorable 'yote and I suggest you read it.