LiteratureLiteratureThis I sent Matt a while back, it's humorous, honest, so laugh damn you, LAUGH!!! Right fine, what's Shaun's number?
I was
thinking the other day
Me - 'Julian, what would have
happened if the literary greats and the famous in general were
scientists or mathematicians.'
Me - 'Well, Julian, I don't know,
what do you think?'
Me - 'I'm not sure, lets
imagine it'
There followed what can only be described as a wibbly wobbly moment, in my head the visions quivered as if indicating a 'what-if' scenario. The following are transcribed from my dream :
"I wandered lonely as an extremely rarefied liquid of
molecules that are capable of hydrogen bonding with itself and other
molecules, for this reason making it one of the most important
molecules in the entire world, alas this aforementioned sparsely populated object
contains harmful chemicals that can by the Bronsted-Lowry theory be described
as acids."
-- W. Wordsworth Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry
"I
have a strange neurological phenomonem that can only be described as
a series of random images that bare only a slight relation
to the reality that we live in, this event happens at
such a time when the mind appears to be in it's
least active state and is indicated by the apparent movement of
the spherical optical receptors (by the un-learned called eyes) in a
random oscillatory fashion."
-- Dr M. L. King Professor of Neurological
Science
"Is this an object that can, for
the purposes of this instance, be described as a uniform inextensible
rod of diameter 20mm, which the square root of minus 1
speed of light before me, One of the perfectly uniform ends
that could, should one have the disposition, be clutched, toward my
five digit appendage [left or right? - v. important]? Come, let
me clutch thee: the square root of minus 1 have thee
not, and yet the square root of minus 1 the speed
of light thee still."
-- W. Shakespeare Professor of Mathematics and
Theoretical Physics
"It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times (which may appear outwardly bizarre, how can
best be worst, how could negative and positive be the same
thing. To explain this is simple by means of the 1/x
graph (as mentioned in Little Dorritt) as you increase x from
a negative number nearer nought you see it's y value decrease
so it approaches negative infinity, in such a way as to
let the observer assume that at x=0 the y value is
negative infinity. BUT, by doing a similar process but down from
a positive number to nought, you can see that at x=0
the value of y should be infinity. Thus at x=0 y=positive
and negative infinity. So 1/0 = negative and positive, thus best
and worst, QED I could start 'It was 1/0 of times'
which would certainly be more mathematical and decidedly shorter. In fact
I think I will]"
-- C. Dickens Professor of Mathematics
It is worth noting that Mr Dickens often criticised Mr Shakespeare for his degredation of eloquent flowing words into mathematical statements, something that he could never be said to do.
It was here I woke up, quite disturbed it appears.
Page last updated on 12th November 1998
Maintained by Julian Fletcher (julian@innocent.com)