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Cosmic Gall
by John Updike
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
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Weapons of Math Instruction
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a
public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in
possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a
calculator. At a morning press conference,
Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the
notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying
weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,", Ashcroft said. "They desire average
solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a
search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and
refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a
common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every
country.
"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every
triangle," Ashcroft declared.
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted
us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more
fingers and toes.
"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on
protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with
calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every
sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences,
we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."
President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential
to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we
become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of
vertex."
Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my
ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to
multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their
necks."
- from Anders Jacobsen's blog
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Parodyc Table
(for high-res version click
here)
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