<Jess> -- <<5184 is (2^3 x 3^2)^2, or 8 x 9 x 8 x 9.> - Heh I thought you might appreciate the "calculating: here. I haven't the foggiest what it means ... >

Too coy, ma Reine, and too modest to boot. ("That *whacky* Jeffica ... she deserves a good kicking but she's too modest to boot ...")

Of course you understand what it means - it's just that CG's textual limitations force us to be awkward, lacking subscripts (bases etc) and superscripts (powers etc). Thus two cubed or 2 x 2 x 2 is normally writ as a 2 followed by a small 3, raised up a little. We can't do that; so the next-best code for powers (exponents) is '^', ie 2 x 2 x 2 = 2^3.

5184 is the square of 72. Breaking this down into prime factors you get 5184 = 72^2 = (8 x 9)^2 = ([2^3] x [3^2])^2

Another way of writing [some] whole numbers is as the sum of two squares, eg 41 = 25 + 16 = (5^2)+(4^2). This can be written as 41 = [5, 2]; where it's understood that you square 5 and 2 and add the results. There are mant innaresting tricks with such numbers - but only roughly half of all primes can be written like this. It turns out that if a prime has the form 4n+1, ie {1, 5, 13, 17, 29, 37, 41, 53, 61, 73, 89, 97, 101 ... etc) it can always be written as the sum of two squares. If a prime has the form 4n+3 or 4n-1 [same thing, if you think about it] then it can *never* be the sum of two squares.

This sequences goes 3, 7, 11, 19, 23, 31, 43, 47, 59 ... usw

If you multiply two primes of form 4n+1 the product can be expressed as the sum of two squares - in two different ways. Easily derived from the original primes, eg:

13 x 17 = 221
(9 + 4) x (16 + 1) = 221
(3, 2)*(4, 1)
= ([3x4]±[2x1], [2x4]±[3x1])
= (12 ± 2, 8 ± 3)
[± is 'plus or minus' - in this case, if you add the 1st pair you must subtract the 2nd, and vice versa]

= (14, 5) or (10, 11)

check: 221 =
196 + 25; or 100 + 121.

... and that's just the start ... I aim to turn these SOS sum o' squares into a private language with even less meaning than the fabulous Entropanto, the heat death of language... anyone who's read this all the way through has already been invaded by a brain parasite, Trial Cortoviral Penetrator #23 (TCP 23).

This numerical interlude has been brought to you by a a hypertrophied glial formation on my anterior calculatory fossa, somewhere in Stout Cortex, enjoying a Peak Experience in Darien.

- Trough night?
- No, I had a great time.

He's the coolest man alive - he even wore a hat like mine.

I still claim 2nd place, but His Bobness will have to drop back a few places.

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg 'sing' drunken backing vocals on Len's 1975 song, *Don't Go Home With Your Hard-on* - produced by Phil Spector, who waved a gun at our Lennie. It's on Death of a Ladies' Man,

Among the broken bottles
I saw a host of axolotls

In fact the minimal pairs (in standard English differentiated by one single phoneme) wacky/whacky and wacko/whacko (etc) are now largely interchangeable in British English, where the 'wh-' sound has almost vanished (assimilated into 'w').

Hence jokes about the Prince of Whales and the Isle of Whight. And new age magazines like *Which Witch?*

But other varieties of English - including the Canadian and Irish dialects (or 'accents', if you like) still make use of the w/wh distinction.

Similarly, Anglo-English has dropped the 'r' sound in many context - it's now just a way of lengthening a vowel. But Ireland, Scotland, and parts of North America still pronounce 'r'.

- I say, do you roll your r's?
- Witch whay do you mean? [*whiggles suggestively*]

These Shibboleths matter. Not because they are 'right' or 'wrong', but because of the original Shibboleth/Sibboleth story in the bible ["bible"?? - reference or citation needed], when the river ran red with the blood of mispronouncers.

"And they slew them".

*Innaresting etymological footnote* (= oxymoron?): 'slew' can also mean a crowd or large number of people - but it has nothing to do with the verb 'slay': it derives from the Irish Gaelic word 'slua', a multitude.

Witch reminds me of the small exclusive high-class medieval brothel which inadvertently found itself in the path of the Great Khan and his invading Asiatic armies. Normally troops are good for business, but there were just too many of these, and they smelled of horses and yak butter, and had a tendency to hit the koumiss too hard.

So the Madame put up a sign - under the auspices of the International Union of Madames and Brothelkeepers, a very powerful organization which not even the most hardened raper and pillager would dare to defy - that read, in several languages:

1600 is the *product* of two squares, 16 and 100:

1600 = (4^2) x (10^2) = 40^2

Apart from helping with basic understanding of powers and logarithms etc, products of squares are less interesting than sums of squares.

My Elo rating has now dropped below 2000, below 1900, below 1800, and I'm struggling to stay above 1700. I'm already excluded from the 2008 Irish championship despite my 4/9 score last year.

"They'll never reach the 8th rank,
At least not the one that they're after;
The pawnbroker's beautiful daughter
Turns each gambit to profit and to laughter."

"But I know the Way
And I know the Score
And the Knight will be fine
Will be fine, will be fine,
Yes, the Knight will be fine
... on h4."

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, like Almodovar never said. The Spanish is funnier. Es muy raro, sin embargo.

*Sin Embargo* is the latest Euro directive: it's why the Irish voted 'no' in last week's constitutional referendum. They'll never tell us how to sin.

Why, they'll be meddling with the fifty-seven deadly sins next.

Like Niels aka <achieve> sez, doublethinking here ... it's a precondition. A prerequisition.

"We are taking over your house just in case the other side want it" -- could be a whole new variety of gambit built round this idea, nicht wahr?

An army marching on its stomach. A great bowel shift. Sorry, a great *vowel* shift, though bowels and vowels both come in long and short forms ... vocalic and, um, bucolic? What's a bucolic diphthong?

Sounds like rural underwear of some sort. As worn in Bilbo, Newfieland, Canada, I should imagine.

Anyhoo, *two* things is merely metaphor. Everyone does metaphor, even the baggage carts in Athens. It gets innaresting when larger numbers of 'concepts' are 'juggled' (who has ever finished, or even finished starting?) -- I myself have juggled 23, but that's cos I only know 23 things (one of them is the fact that I'm a lapsed icosatriphobiac). Jess holds the current record with 29,308 -- but the race is not always to the swift. Except in 1980s Bruxelles/Brussels, where the race was to the sprouts. Or Kasparov.

The human race dominated by small feathered birdy beings? Sounds like Hitchcock (Hitch Hen?) or Hitch-a-phallus (guaranteed to get you across Amerika faster than Kerouac and Cassady combined) or Hitchrooster (bucolic again - must be disease of the day).

Not to mention the Dean himself, Dr Jonathan Swift, the houyhnhnm man. No wonder they opted for Yahoo. Considering the orthoepy.

Only orthoepical orisons operate optimally.

Do I have to spell it out? G-d only accepts prayers which have been run thru the sacred spellchecker.

"Cain at his orisons
Narcissus at his mirror."

(Alexander Trocchi ... who, incidentally, was helped to flee the USA around 1960 by an unknown young Montreal poet named Leonard Cohen -- who went on to write the sublime 'Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez Pour Nous')

"Your arms tell me
You have been humping the thorny crucifix
You have been piloting Mickey Mouse balloons through the briar patch."

Narcissus Marsh, Swift's successor as Dean, founded Marsh's library, still open after 250 years. While Swift?

"He left what little wealth he had
To build a house for fools and mad."

Each in his way did good.

"Hoo! Hoo-oo! A houri, a ho,
Like Curly and Larry, leaves you wanting for Mo."
(Wm Shagspere)

"Come into the garden, Maud
For the black bat-knight has flown."

The river teems with alligators
The banks are haunts for master baiters
No place to push perambulators
Or babies in a cot

She saw the dragon chase its tail
She gave a most blood-curdling wail
It moved just like a striking snail
Towards baby in the cot.

People can be so helpful, at times!

Best, Bill

(By the way, tell me that that Victorian masterpiece, with its fractured, splinterd narrative, changing perspective, and poetic experimentation, didn't have an influence on The Waste Land--not to mention the phrase "a handfull of dust" [Section Five, Verse One, line three].)

And what does Mr Cale say on the subject?
<Fear is a man's best friend.
Life and death are things you just do when you're bored.>

Which fear, though?
Algophobia?
Arithmophobia
Icosatriphobia?
Euphobia?
Dromophobia?
Eleutherophobia?
Kenophobia?
Theophobia?

Combine the last two - fear of god and fear of the void - and we get Pynchon's line from Lot 49:

Queen Victoria
Do you have a punishment under the white lace?
Will you spank her with a mechanical corset?

- Leonard Cohen

Welcome to the Garden Maudlin

But if any of you feel compelled to "discuss chess in general" - what a thought - you can do it right here.

"An activity I do for fun involving squares", eh? What about, y'know, chess?