Posts by Dr. Boli
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: When is the Nobel committee going to wise up and start offering a Nobel Prize in mathematics? My work on the commutative property of beer has gone completely unrecognized, and I’m a bit miffed about that. But I haven’t been discouraged from further mathematical research, and I’ve just made a discovery that blows the lid off the whole math racket.
Everybody knows there are two kinds of numbers, right? There are odd numbers and even numbers, right? We always arrange them so that there’s an odd number, then an even number, then an odd number, then an even number, and so on.
So let’s think about the most basic mathematical operation: adding two numbers together. There are obviously three possible cases.
1. You add two even numbers together.
2. You add two odd numbers together.
3. You add an even and an odd number together.
Now, what happens in each of these possible cases?
1. You add two even numbers together: You always get an even number.
2. You add two odd numbers together: You always get an even number.
3. You add an even number and an odd number together: You always get an odd number.
As you can see, two out of three of the possibilities lead to even results. But no one before me seems to have pointed out the obvious and inevitable conclusion: There are twice as many even numbers as odd numbers.
This leads us to an obvious question. Where are all the extra even numbers? I’ve been trying to work that out, and it will be a good topic for my post-Nobel research. For a while I thought they must be hidden in among the debris between numbers where the fractions and decimals hang out. But now I’m leaning toward the idea that there’s somewhere way up on the number line where a bunch of even numbers are crowded together. I don’t know exactly where it would be, but my preliminary data suggest that it would probably be somewhere past 150. I’ve always been pretty fuzzy on numbers over 150.
So sit up and take notice, Nobel committee. These are results that totally blow everything we thought about math out of the water. If this isn’t reason enough to institute a Nobel Prize for mathematics, what is? Give my regards to King Carl Gustaf, and tell him I’ll be seeing him soon.
—Sincerely, Bernie Riemann, Scranton.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: The problem with the world today is lack of responsibility. Why don’t people take responsibility anymore?
It used to be that we didn’t have to ask people to do things, or force them to do things. They did things that were of benefit to the people around them just for the love of goodness and justice.
Take my mother, for example. She used to make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day when I was nine years old. But now where is she? I’ll tell you where she is. Living it up with her friends in that “senior living” place in Upper Saint Clair, that’s where she is. While she’s having her grilled swordfish for lunch, I’m stuck here making my own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Why isn’t my mother taking responsibility like she used to?
When I was in high school, I remember that someone dumped out the trash cans in every classroom every night, so that they were all empty by the next morning. Where is that person now? My trash isn’t getting taken out at all. It doesn’t even fit in the can anymore.
And when I was in the state penitentiary, someone used to collect the laundry every week and take it off to be washed, so it came back all clean and fresh. Now I’m doing my own laundry. And it’s not getting done every week, either. What was the point of getting out of prison if I have to do my own laundry?
So I think someone should make other people take some responsibility for the things that need to get done. And don’t go telling me I should make them do it myself. That’s not my responsibility.
—Sincerely, The Guy at the Laundromat Asking People for Quarters
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
OREAL OR TORANGE?
Two films are coming out at the same time this month, and because they seem so opposite, natural human instinct is causing critics to lump them together. One is a movie about the atomic physicist Oppenheimer, which is called Oppenheimer. The other is a movie about the children’s doll Barbie, and the name of it will not surprise anyone.
It seems impossible to resist discussing these two films together. More than one critic has even placed clips of them side by side to point out the contrast.
It is an illuminating comparison. On one side of the screen, the fantastical color palette of a world that never existed outside the imagination. On the other side, Barbie.
Most critics do not seem to notice this curious fact, that the movie about a children’s toy in a fantasy world is the one that is filmed in natural colors, whereas the meticulously researched and painstakingly detailed biographical epic is filmed in the restricted and unreal tones that are fashionable these days. It sometimes seems to Dr. Boli that he has dropped back ninety years into the era of two-strip Technicolor. But perhaps history is repeating itself: perhaps Barbie is a sign that we have rediscovered the lost technology of filmmaking in natural color, and three-strip Technicolor will soon make its triumphant return.
Will Dr. Boli see either movie? Probably not. If he had to choose between them, though, he would choose the one in natural colors, just for the refreshing break from the seas of orange and teal in which current cinema has drowned us. He says that in spite of the assurance of respectable critics that Oppenheimer is a film of quality, because it is directed by the man who directed the Dark Knight trilogy about the tortured life of a comic-book hero in a funny outfit. This reminds Dr. Boli that he promised to continue our conversation about cultural neoteny, so he ought to get to work on that.
ANNOUNCEMENT.
EARN YOUR MARKETING DEGREE IN ONE EASY LESSON.
Now, Dr. Boli thought himself quite familiar with the workings of faucets, at least from the point of view of the occasional user. He had thought there was a perfectly serviceable pressure regulator in the faucet handle.
Yes, one of the scullerymen explained, but on this faucet, you can turn the pressure up to full, and then you can push the button and get more pressure.
Here Dr. Boli smiled and kept his mouth closed, because good scullery staff are valuable, and if they are made happy by spending a little too much money on a faucet, then that money is well spent. But you, our readers, know that there is no such thing as “more pressure.” It is not possible to open the valve all the way, and then push a button and get more pressure. It is, however, possible to restrict the flow to less than full until a button is pressed, and then remove the restriction. This is in every way less convenient than a simple valve that can be set at any arbitrary point from completely closed to completely open; it means that turning the faucet on full blast requires two motions now instead of one. But it is a feature. The faucet-seller can point to that button and say, “Here is something our less expensive competitor cannot offer you.”
Absorb and understand the lesson of the faucet with the “more pressure” button, and you will be fully qualified for a career in marketing.
Advertisement.
