This is one of the cleverest things I've seen in a while.
The back story is that the assistant head of English at Park Hall needed the red hand truck (that's a "porter's trolley", for those who don't get the American dialect), and asked for its return:
We're looking for an errant red hand truck. Anybody borrowed it or seen it? Thanks. --Mike
The word "errant" sparked a flood of responses spoofing famous poems.
I can't resist, and I apologise in advance to the memory of Ogden Nash.
Lost hand truck
Is bad luck
But mimic
Is comic.
Moving house saps time and energy for blogging, not that I'm much of a high-energy blogger, but still. Figure I should say something.
Chuck Jones once related this story:
A young man was once sent fresh from Columbia University with a mutual friend's introduction to Robert Frost. Frost scanned the young man's writings, then looking quizzically up through his craggy white brows he asked, "What do you do, son?" The young man drew himself up proudly; he was, after all, one with the great Frost. "I am a poet," he said. Frost gently answered, "The term 'poet' is a gift word, son; you cannot give it to yourself."
Those days are long gone. But even if they weren't, I've officially been called a poet by another poet. So I guess I'm a poet.
Even more than that, I've now actually been paid for a poem. But for the full story, you'll have to wait.
The day after Pi Day is the Ides of March. In honour of the day, some classic Wayne and Shuster.
As first-generation television comedians go, these guys are a couple of my favourites. Their TV show was a fairly typical "acted out radio play" format, but what made Wayne and Shuster different was that their comedy was extremely literate.
This episode is an extended version of a sketch that they performed on their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and it's probably still their most famous.
Some trivia: Frank Shuster was the cousin of Joe Shuster (the co-creater of Superman) and father-in-law of Lorne Michaels.
Actual show is after the jump.
For those who put the month before the day (why?), today is 3/14: Pi day.
So happy Pi day! Have some pi:
let p d = take d(fix(\i y h->let(z,x)=fix(\f xs->case xs of{((n,d,c):y)->let{(z,k)=f
y;(q,r)=(c*10+k)`divMod`d}in((n,d,r):z,n*q);_->([],0)})y in case x of{9->i z(h++[9])
10->i z(map(\x->(x+1)`mod`10)h++[0]);_->h++i z[x]})((1,10,2):[(i,2*i+1,2)
|i<-[1..(10*d)`div`3]])[])in p 100
Feel free to change the "100" at the end to however much precision you need.
I left a comment as part of a review of the Real World Haskell book, but I thought it deserved a wider airing.
In what follows "Algol's type system" refers to the type systems of Algol-esque languages, such as C and Java. Essentially, if it's a pre-Hindley-Milner static type system, it's probably Algol. Unless it's really ancient, like Fortran.
(Fortran has the notion of a type, but it defaults to floating-point numbers. It has been said that in Fortran, God is REAL unless explicitly declared INTEGER.)
Read on after the jump.
This op-ed from The Age is a very interesting read.
It mentions two themes from the modern world: a decline in organised religion, and a view that death is unnatural. The mix results in a rise in the supernatural in our fiction, particularly with that part that deals with death.
Has anyone ever said "Season's Greetings" to you? I know it's on cards everywhere, on multiple continents. But has anyone actually said it to you?
In my case, it's happened once. Probably about 25 years ago.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about.
Scientists create glow-in-the-dark cats.
I find this just a little bit creepy. See after the jump as to why.
Tomorrow is Saturday, but I'm working.
Australia is holding its federal election, and I'm a polling official.
Obviously, as a polling official, I cannot and will not discuss party politics on this blog. However, I can talk about how it works behind the scenes.
Read on for more.
[texdisplay]\left( \begin{array}{c} n \\ 2k+1 \end{array} \right) = \sum_{i=k+1}^{n-k} \left( \begin{array}{c} i-1 \\ k \end{array} \right) \left( \begin{array}{c} n-i \\ k \end{array} \right)[/texdisplay]
The proof is left as an exercise.
