Thursday, January 10, 2008

What you see is what you get!


From Harvey Krumpet in four dimensions
FAKT # cis pi/4
If you test for particles, you get particles.
If you test for waves, you get waves.
(corollary - people who don't answer surveys, don't show up in survey results....)
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From Dr. Doolittle's Terrible Secret (a fictitious book)
"How many dimensions do you think you have?". Dr. Doolittle was waiting for the badger to answer, when the horse said: "Three". The pigs nodded as though elevated by the erudition of one of their students. All of the animals began to recite facts about volumes, and areas, and mass, and coordinate systems, and such. The Owl, quite pleased with himself took the arrow from the weather vain and illustrated vectors in space by flying around with it in his talons; saying: "Now it's pointing this way and is this big", holding his great wings out just long enough to show the magnitude. The animal academy was simply percolating with rational certainty. Doolittle held his hand up and waited for them to recognize him. "How old are you?", he asked, and walked back to the house, not waiting for the answer and the blank stares. He dared not ask these same questions at the supper table.
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An Attainable Freedom
What freedom can I seek
and show good faith seeking it?
I can live my life in earnest
as the work of art that contains
all other art
I can live my life as
a living poem
and being such take the scorn
It is not theirs, but their masters'
My temples throbbing
I am free to understand this
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If you like
Impostors contaminate the mind
they foster re-appearances
Trust broken by mankind is
taken to heart
little by little
person by person
We never forget the impostor
One by one, hands are withdrawn
and the ones that remain
are sure to be broken

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