[math-fun] The guy who coined the words scientist, physicist, ion, dielectric, anode, cathode, ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted: "Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line which is accurately straight" http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxj4g9;view=1up;seq=74 He hastily deleted it from future editions. --rwg
On 28/04/2015 02:12, Bill Gosper wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted: "Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line which is accurately straight"
I've seen it before with "... which shall be absolutely straight", and it's pretty obvious why: that has the "correct" metre, unlike what Whewell apparently actually wrote. -- g
On the subject of "found poetry" in mathematics, I've often thought that the following sentence (from Marsden's book on manifolds; I've modified the typography) has some of the characteristics of modern poetry: For example, the restriction of any vector bundle to a chart domain of the base defined by a vector bundle chart gives a bundle isomorphic to the local vector bundle. The combination of obscurity and banality is what impresses me. :-) Jim Propp On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Gareth McCaughan < gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 28/04/2015 02:12, Bill Gosper wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted: "Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line which is accurately straight"
I've seen it before with "... which shall be absolutely straight", and it's pretty obvious why: that has the "correct" metre, unlike what Whewell apparently actually wrote.
-- g
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Some citizens of Konigsberg Were walking on the strand Beside the Rivel Pregel With its seven bridges spanned 'Oh Euler, come and walk with us', Those burghers did beseech, 'We'll walk the seven bridges o'er And pass but once by each'. 'It can't be done', thus Euler cried. Here comes the QED. Your islands are but vertices And four have odd degree. From Konigsberg to Konig's book So runs the graphic tale And still it grows more colourful In Michigan and Yale. William Tutte On Apr 27, 2015, at 8:16 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
On the subject of "found poetry" in mathematics, I've often thought that the following sentence (from Marsden's book on manifolds; I've modified the typography) has some of the characteristics of modern poetry:
For example, the restriction of any vector bundle to a chart domain of the base defined by a vector bundle chart gives a bundle isomorphic to the local vector bundle.
The combination of obscurity and banality is what impresses me. :-)
Jim Propp
On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Gareth McCaughan < gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 28/04/2015 02:12, Bill Gosper wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted: "Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line which is accurately straight"
I've seen it before with "... which shall be absolutely straight", and it's pretty obvious why: that has the "correct" metre, unlike what Whewell apparently actually wrote.
-- g
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_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted:
Gack, not even by me!
"Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into [AN] horizontal line which is accurately straight" http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxj4g9;view=1up;seq=74 He hastily deleted it from future editions.
of http://books.google.com/books/about/An_Elementary_Treatise_on_Mechanics.html...
--rwg
But even with the "an" correction, Google gets zero hits. Not even the above URL to the original. Bad OCR? --rwg
I tried googling on the quote below, and the treatise on mechanics was the top Google hit, which was on the exact page of the quote when I clicked on it (with or without the "[AN]"). --Dan
On Apr 28, 2015, at 4:18 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted:
Gack, not even by me!
"Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into [AN] horizontal line which is accurately straight" http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxj4g9;view=1up;seq=74 He hastily deleted it from future editions.
of http://books.google.com/books/about/An_Elementary_Treatise_on_Mechanics.html...
--rwg
But even with the "an" correction, Google gets zero hits. Not even the above URL to the original. Bad OCR? --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
Yes, now I'm getting loads of hits, with and w/o string quotes. I have to believe Google is fiddling with the searchware as we speak. I'm sending this from Roundcube because GMail has gone absolutely nuts. I try to click on Send, and it jumps out of the way. The text jumps up and down on alternate keystrokes. I try to paste in some text, and it pastes in an IMAGE, which it then won't send. I try to undo pasting the image and it goes into a loop. Sell your stock. --rwg On 2015-04-28 16:30, Dan Asimov wrote:
I tried googling on the quote below, and the treatise on mechanics was the top Google hit, which was on the exact page of the quote when I clicked on it (with or without the "[AN]").
--Dan
On Apr 28, 2015, at 4:18 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted:
Gack, not even by me!
"Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into [AN] horizontal line which is accurately straight" http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hxj4g9;view=1up;seq=74 He hastily deleted it from future editions.
of http://books.google.com/books/about/An_Elementary_Treatise_on_Mechanics.html...
--rwg
But even with the "an" correction, Google gets zero hits. Not even the above URL to the original. Bad OCR? --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 4:57 PM, rwg <rwg@sdf.org> wrote:
I'm sending this from Roundcube because GMail has gone absolutely nuts. I try to click on Send, and it jumps out of the way. The text jumps up and down on alternate keystrokes. I try to paste in some text, and it pastes in an IMAGE, which it then won't send. I try to undo pasting the image and it goes into a loop. Sell your stock.
I suspect you're either using an out-of-date browser that's not supported any more or the browser's memory got corrupted and you just need to refresh the page. "In general, Gmail supports the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari." At the moment, that's - Chrome 41 and 42 - Firefox 36 and 37 - IE 10 and 11 - Safari 7 and 8 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6557?hl=en If your computer is so old it can't run those, you can either use the HTML mode (https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html) or use a dedicated mail app and connect to the pop/imap server (https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/1668960?hl=en). -- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com
participants (7)
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Bill Gosper -
Cris Moore -
Dan Asimov -
Gareth McCaughan -
James Propp -
Mike Stay -
rwg