Moved

This stuff has moved;
just follow this link.
That's where you'll find
even more, I think.

Football and slot machines

In most sports they play
a large number of games
to try to make sure
that pure luck's not to blame.

But football is different;
you can see at a glance
they play so few games
there's a big role for chance.

A game can be changed
by a trip or a spill,
obsessive game planning
and world-class skill

are much less important
than what luck might hand 'em.
The outcome of football's
designed to be random.

Bubble Bath

Lorenz contracted his Alcubierre
so before he quite left
he was already there.

Poleeching

When law enforcement's secret,
it does not take deduction
to see this thing for what it is:
it is itself corruption.

A degree of charity

So chilly outside
it's knocking my knees.
Please send in donations;
we need more degrees.

Who's news

Williams and Olberman,
Susteren, Blitzer.
News -- these folks
think they lead it.
The BBC may have a better idea;
"there is news", they say,
"I'll just read it."

Unintended effects

Glass is made from opaque sand,
plants grow out of silent land.
The bile the Rush can generate --
can it result in more than hate?

Newt: carrier or germ?

Gingrich disguises divisive ideas
in pretty plastic prose to beguile us.
It slips right through our morals
and attacks our better minds
a strategy used by a deadly virus.

But what is dreaming

Overzealous guarding over
things they claim are theirs,
many-layered management,
oak desks and leather chairs,
business plans and powerpoint,
marketing to spare,
given to obsessive
detail-centric stares,
no apparent self reflection,
chasing thin forms of perfection,
hierarchic non-election,
ever more precise inspection.
Strangely twisted corporate dream
or just the average football team.

The game plan, the head coach, and the very big wish

They play a few seconds
then wait for a while,
get silent and set in their stance.
They play for a moment
and try it again,
in the hope that it's not really chance.

The NFL loves complexity

Each NFL team has an offense
and a defense, as everyone knows.
The two should be made independent
and each Sunday play different foes.

They're all the same to me

It's said and repeated that snowflakes all differ;
there aren't any twins anywhere.
Outside there are billions
to shovel and right now
I can't recall why I should care.

It's only funny at first

MacArthur Wheeler was astounded --
humble beams of light
had passed right through his lemon juice
as if they had the right
to obey the laws of physics
and ignore what he believed;
this kind of thinking's all around --
folks ought to be peeved.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The agonizing Dunning-Kruger
confidence of fools
is maddening; you can't explain
arithmetic to mules.

Common Household Pests 35

Dingo moves in;
you'd like him to go.
And that means
you must join his pack
don't you know.
Now, he doesn't do email,
you can't telegram;
your only recourse
is the entrance exam.
To take and to pass
such a test from a dingo
requires, to start,
that you master his lingo.
Figure that out
then a challenge for you:
convince him you mean it
when you say "adieu".
You must be convincing;
he must think it true
when you say in his language
"yap yip yap aaarroooo".

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

The finder of X-rays -- he did it so well,
he received in '01 the first-ever Nobel.

Max Planck

Precise bits of energy -- that was the clue
as he worked out the formula E is h v

Galileo Galilei

He wrote about astronomy
and so lost his autonomy.

Discourse, Datcourse, when's recess?

How do you know that you know what you know?
Is it frequent retelling that makes it all so?
Is it argumentation that wins a position,
with truth as the prize for the best rhetorician?

Sophistry's misuse has grown so eclectic
I think that of late we neglect dialectic.
Teachers should clearly explain that "to know"
is less about "argue" and more about "show".

Thomas Edison

His methods did not include ruminating;
experiments he thought more illuminating.

Nicola Tesla

Causing in Edison great consternation
his current inventions gave us alternation.

Charles Darwin

His Beagle-voyage sleuthin'
made him think 'bout evolution;
he observed with fascination
still-evolving speciation.

Niels Bohr

He introduced clarity
to complementarity:
you can't know where-went-um
for things with momentum.

Ernest Rutherford

When he met an atom he
studied its anatomy.

Well, it's a job...

By some system, perhaps gravitational
the zodiac's thought to mean lots
'cause I guess back when we were gestational
it affected our prenatal thoughts.

But it's oddly convenient and facile
when you say that the future's ordained.
It just means we agree you're important --
in the end nothing's really explained.