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Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:26 -0500
From: steve@kinzler.com (Steve Kinzler)
Subject: Internet Oracularities Digest #1578

To find out all about the Internet Oracle (TM), including how
to participate, send mail to help@internetoracle.org, or go to http://internetoracle.org/ ("Internet Oracle" is a trademark of Stephen
B Kinzler.)

Let us know what you like! Send your ratings of these 10 Oracularities
on an integer scale of 1 ("very bad") to 5 ("very good") with the volume
number to vote@internetoracle.org (probably just reply to this message).
For example:
1578
2 1 3 4 3 5 3 3 4 1

1573 15 votes 16521 02751 27240 25332 03552 11643 14541 02193 13722 16350
1573 3.1 mean 2.7 3.3 2.5 2.9 3.4 3.5 3.0 3.9 3.1 2.8

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:27 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-01

Selected-By: MVS Gmail <mvsopen@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

What are we going to do about all the stray ostriches? My back yard is
full of them, and they are eating the petunias. I called the Animal
Control office and they reminded me that "Animal Control" is merely a euphemism for dogcatcher, and that they only catch dogs. And not much
of those, either.

Oh, and I should grovel. You are a smart Oracle, and too smart to fall
for the joke about, "Is there no bomb in Gilead?" At least not this
time.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} There are several simple solutions to your problem.
}
} Fix 1:
} Rabid dogs have no fear of any animal and will bite with abandon. Use
} some trained rabid dogs to chase the birds away, then have Animal
} Control come and deal with the rabid dogs. Rabies is why dogcatchers
} were first instituted and why they are still considered "law
} enforcement officers" under the few gun control laws the US has.
}
} Drawbacks:
} Rabid dogs have no fear of any animal and humans are animals. And just
} because dogc^H^H^H^HAnimal Control can carry guns, doesn't mean they
} do. Also rabid dogs tend to forget their training.
}
} Fix 2:
} While "Animal Control" may be a fancy name for "dogcatcher", they
} *are* responsible for dealing with all reported rabies-infected
} animals no matter how much they'd rather shirk that duty. So, if you
} infect all your ostriches with rabies, you can force Animal Control to
} do something without needing rabid dogs.
}
} Drawbacks:
} Rabies only infects mammals natively, so you'd need to do some genetic
} engineering on the virus first. Also an ostrich bite is terrifying
} even before you have a rabid bird.
}
} Fix 3:
} As an invasive species not native to the area, ostriches are not
} protected by the Migratory Bird Act of 1918. You are free to shoot the
} birds, trap them and behead them, or (for slower control) raid their
} nests for eggs. The eggs taste like chicken eggs, only are sized like
} two dozen. The meat has some popularity as a lean alternative to
} hamburger.
}
} Drawbacks:
} There's a lot of blood in those things. Your petunias will get soaked.
} And raiding the nests is dangerous, since there's that ostrich bite
} thing to deal with. Also the talons. Did I mention the talons?
} Ostriches don't have teeth but do have long sharp talons. And with a
} natural instinct to fight by kicking, that's a concern.
}
} Fix 4:
} Bring in the leopards. They can easily climb trees to escape the
} flightless birds and from trees than can wait for an in-attentive
} moment to pounce on your pesky petunia eaters.
}
} Drawbacks:
} Still a risk of bloodying up your flowers. Also the leopards will move
} on to other prey, like junior, after the birds have been dispatched.
}
} Fix 5:
} Plant some petunias in your neighbor Paul's yard. When the birds go
} over to eat them, quickly string up an electical fence. Either around
} your yard to keep them from returning, or around Paul's to keep them
} from leaving.
}
} Drawbacks:
} Paul is just crazy enough that he may try to ride the ostriches and
} lead them on a charge against you. Also Paul will just find some other
} animal to release into your yard once you get rid of the ostriches he
} put there.
}
} You owe the Oracle a large quiche.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:28 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-02

Selected-By: Mark Lawrence <mtlrph@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

This year instead of asking you what you are going to give up for Lent
I have a different question.

Oh, and I am giving up smoking for Lent, which is very easy because I
don't smoke.

Anyway, my question is about Maundy Thursday. March 29th this year.
There has got to be some way to make a GOOD joke about Joe Friday
marrying Tuesday Weld on Maundy Thursday, and somehow getting
Wednesday into the joke as well.

Please tell me that joke, or else have a really, really good excuse. A
few years ago your excuse was that you had a "code in your nodes" and
it was ROT13, which is probably the most lame code there is, and thus
a very lame excuse.

So without further delay, the joke is ... (Ta-Da!):

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} So, did you hear the news? This Maundy Thursday Joe Friday is
} marrying Tuesday Weld at a church in Temple. The ceremony was to be
} ministered by Wednesday Addams. Basically Wednesday will make
} Tuesday a Friday on Maundy Thursday in a Temple church.
}
} Unfortunately Abbott and Costello were in charge of printing the
} invitations, so no one is likely to know who, what, or when.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:29 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-03

Selected-By: Mark Lawrence <mtlrph@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

You've heard of Rogue One. Will the sequel be Nethack Two? It only
makes sense.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} My plans are to get Willie Crowther and Donnie Woods back into a replay
} of their childhood adventures, including much-enhanced exploration of
} the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems. They do not yet know the full
} extent of those caves nor of my intent. In particular, the Hollow Earth
} theories of Sprague de Camp and other sceptics and septics will be
} found full of the much-needed emptiness required to extend the original
} ADVENT adventure game to the point that it can run on a real virtual
} implementation, written in INTERCAL, of a PDP-6 executing on a
} mechanical Babbage engine. Nothing like this has ever (and with good
} reason) been attempted before. We are on the forefront of
} speleomathematical computation and explosions.
}
} You owe the Oracle a PhD thesis that explains why the Crowther-Woods
} code for ADVENT was some of the best-written Fortran software ever
} developed. (YOU write the thesis and sit for the orals. I get the PhD.)

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:30 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-04

Selected-By: Ian Davis

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

Would you say atheists and agnostics are "substitious"?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Ahhh, putting atheists and agnostics into the same boat, are we?
}
} Let's look for a moment at the true meaning of those words. The atheist
} refuses the idea that the unprovable must be accepted as the given, and
} thus refuses to accept the burden of proof for believing in gods or
} oracles. The agnostic claims, through a magnificent sleight of hand, to
} have special knowledge through which he knows he is unable to know
} whether or not he should believe in gods or oracles. The agnostic is
} thus far more useful to me.
}
} Thus we have fully examined the positions of those two guys. Except for
} them, everyone else has some sort of religious or superstitious belief.
}
} Now we finally arrive at your purported "substitious" supposition. The
} word has no meaning to the true atheist. (False atheists, a dime a
} dozen around here, are in the same category as agnostics or shell-game
} operators.) Agnostics, and no small number of the deeply religious as
} well, believe in The Lottery, and see it as a particularly worthwhile
} investment strategy, in spite of the provably dreadful return on the
} investment. The Lottery is a tax on Bad Mathematics, being right up
} there in utterly foolish behavior with trying to get sensible answers
} from an anonymous and fake genius on the Internet.
}
} So as any fool can plainly see, the answer to your question is a real
} mess, with "substition" being used as a substitute for superstition by
} the religious and the irreligious as they buy their Lottery tickets, so
} that they can claim they are not superstitious.
}
} You owe the Oracle condolences over his off-by-one error in selecting
} the latest Mega Million, where 14 38 51 64 70 9 was the winner and the
} Oracular Selection was 14 37 51 64 70 9. So close! Maybe next time.
} I've lost so often I'm due for a big win. I can feel it in my bones.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:31 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-05

Selected-By: Dave <lightinchains@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

Please tell me about the decline and fall of Edward Gibbon. He has
nothing to do with the Gibbous or Waxing Moon, as you told me before. A
silly idea and especially wrong. This time I will flunk faster or not
at all.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Gibbon is best known for his work "Decline and Fall of the Roaming
} Primate", in which he describes the tragic end of an Archbishop by
} slipping down a greased pulpit step into the font below.
}
} He was born in 1737, in Numpty, South Lanarkshire, and due to poor
} health had a very long bath before being sent to Oxford to dry off. He
} proceeded to deny the existence of miracles, but recanted when he
} discovered Suzanne Kirkwood, a Swiss woman who went cuckoo with a
} small penknife.
}
} Gibbons spent twelve years writing his most famous work, "Why The
} French Smell", but also found time to critique Christianity. His main
} reason for denying the existence of God was the proximity of the
} smelly French to England, God's own country. He also maintained that
} if Jesus' feet did walk upon England's mountains green, at least he
} had the decency to put some proper shoes on first, and not wear
} sandals like some Middle Eastern hippy.
}
} He spent much of his later years in The Grotty, a small hovel with 6
} bedrooms, 3 kitchens, 4 internal toilets, and a view over the South
} Downs. He is buried in grounds the Sheffield Mouse Museum, where his
} powdered wig is on display and is nibbled daily by the inhabitants.
}
} You owe the Oracle a copy of Gibbon's "Journey from Geneva to
} Aromatherapy" (in French).

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:32 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-06

Selected-By: Mark Lawrence <mtlrph@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

O Wide Oracle, oops I mean Wise Oracle, whose fingers never leave his
hands, unlike mine that smoetimes get crossed, please tell me/

Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} To get halfway around, the quick way.
}
} You owe the Oracle a wit. You're halfway there.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:33 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-07

Selected-By: Klone (aka Daniel Klein)<daniel.v.klein@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

Oracle most calculable,

Will it ever be the good times again?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Sure. If you say, "Six times nine is forty-seven," (or even 56) then
} that is bad times. If instead you say, "Six times nine is fifty-four,"
} then that is good times.
}
} A proper appreciation of mathematics will improve your life.
}
} You owe the Oracle a factorial!

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:34 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-08

Selected-By: Ian Davis

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

I hate complaining because that suggests the blame is yours, rather
than someone else's. So don't blame me if you misunderstand this mild complaint as an attack. It isn't. I just wish you would get things
right once in a while. Especially when I grovel.

What I want to say is that I really really,

I mean, really really really really really really really really really really,

needed headlights for my car. Headlights.

There was a slight misunderstanding.

Perhaps you gave the task to Zadoc or some other entity whose ears are swathed in blankets.

Anyway, I don't need the headlice. How can I get rid of them, and where
shall I send them?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Sorry, no refunds. But as a special service to a faithful supplicant,
} I have upgraded them to crabs for you.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:35 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-09

Selected-By: Klone (aka Daniel Klein)<daniel.v.klein@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

You've never heard of me. My name is Nathan Spungzupp. I'm certain you
know nothing about me because I am only a figment of my own
imagination, sort of like Bishop Berkeley. He denied the existence of material substance, and thus of course of himself. It's kind of neat,
because I can get away with almost anything. Watch as I set myself on
fire and nothing happens!

Oops.

A bucket of water, please. Quickly!!

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} SPLASH!!!
}
} There. You owe me your life savings.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 11 May 18 11:03:36 -0500
From: Internet Oracle <vote@internetoracle.org>
Subject: Internet Oracularity #1578-10

Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

I demand results.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Good supplication! It gives me a chance to illustrate some
} disadvantages of my favorite calculation tool, the venerable "dc"
} program.
}
} Sometimes our calculations do not match our expectations and hence the
} results are not quite what we wanted. In the first example, below, we
} extract some square roots. (The v operator in dc was presumably chosen
} for its visual similarity to the radical symbol. Sidewisely, the _
} operator is the unary negative symbol, because - is already the
} subtraction operator.)
}
} $ dc
} 625 625*p
} 390625
} vp
} 625
} vp
} 25
} vp
} 5
} 625 vp
} 25
} _625 vp
} dc: square root of negative number
} 25
} q
} $
}
} That's not the result you demanded.
}
} Next we attempt division, forgetting for the moment that the dc program
} truncates the results miserably unless you use the k operator.
}
} $ dc
} 144 24/p
} 6
} 154 24/p
} 6
} q
} $
}
} Again, that's not the result you demanded.
}
} You owe the Oracle an unwary operator, such as k. Indeed try the last
} example yourself, but start with "5 k" beforehand.

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End of Internet Oracularities Digest #1578 ******************************************

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