AIR VENTS -- EXHALATIONS FROM OUR READERS
A QUICK GAVEL
Professor Anastasio is not alone in experiencing the phenomenon of the accelerated meeting.
At the March annual meeting of my professional society, the Chairman responded to every item raised by slamming his gavel and saying, "That's a stupid idea. Next item." The entire meeting lasted seventeen minutes -- it usually takes three full days. You can imagine the uproar.
I admit that our meetings usually accomplish little, and that looked at this way, our Chairman's actions represent an impressive gain in efficiency. But at what cost?
HIRSUTE AND PUZZLED
I am puzzled by your letter of February 6 in reply to my submission of my research paper "Gravity Anomalies and the Periodic Table." I had sent you two copies of my article, and in order to establish my bona fides, had also enclosed a copy of my curriculum vitae as well as a recent photograph.
Your letter did not refer to my paper at all. It said (and I quote it in its entirety), "We think you should shave off your beard."
This does not make any sense. Undoubtedly your letter was intended for someone else. Could you please advise me as to the status of my paper.
THE WARRIER MENSCH: YES
Three cheers for Roberta Baye's incisive analysis of the ideal man paradigm ("The Warrier Mensch: A Psycho Assessment of the Ideal 90s Male"). Professor Baye makes several cogent points about the vital differences between men, women, and the rest of us.
As I explain in my book, THE NEW MENSCH, the power to do and be is subservient to one's assessment of the self's place in psychostructural strata. Professor Baye's research merely confirms this finding.
DON'T MENSCH IT
I am shocked and appalled by Roberta Baye's article and refuse to read it. For too long have Jewish-American men been mocked and derided as neurotic wimpish worriers. For too long have Jewish-American women been barred and excluded from the community of Jewish adults by an androcentric discourse about mensches.
The racist, misogynist stereotypes which you are shamelessly perpetuating are particularly dangerous, perilous, and wrong during this treacherous time.
MAIS NON
Roberta Baye's article was an insult to every man of Gallic descent. Frenchmen are not irreproducible. I am hereby canceling my subscription.
TO THE POINT
The chart on page 41 of your most recent issue contained an error. The value in column 4, row 16 was listed as 392411115.000000000000000118. It should be 392411115.000000000000000117.
COUNTERPOINT
There is an error, probably typographical, in the chart on page 41 of your most recent issue. The number in column 4, row 16 should be 450, not 392411115.000000000000000118.
BESIDE THE POINT
Some of your readers may not be aware that your new issue presents a most interesting number.
The chart on page 41 (see column 4, row 16) contained the value 392411115.000000000000000118. This is a most fascinating number! This single number contains: (a) the value of Plankk's [sic] constant; (b) the average distance in meters between the moon and the earth; (c) the characteristic frequency of the distress call of the worker ant of the species Aphaenogaster rudis when it is deprived of Sanguinaria canadensis, its favorite food; and (d) the molecular weight of silicon.
INDIRECT COMMUNICATIONS
Dear Sir:
I am the ghost of Sir Issac Newton. I have never heard of Adelbert Gruner, M.P. of Crewe, England. Please so advise him of this fact.
MUSKMELONS: A REJOINDER
I wish to correct an impression that your readers may have drawn from my former student Karen Ix's letter. Professor Ix's letter has nothing to do with muskmelons (and muskmelons, as I pointed out in my previous letter, have no connection, at least on a metaphorical level, with leptons). Nor has her letter any connection with the ongoing theoretic disagreement between my colleagues (Schank, Bandsenhoffer, Aaaibdoy, deSelby, Hansbury-Tinglehoff, Chou, etc.) and myself.
Professor Ix's letter is not, to use her own words, "untinged with personal malice." Ix writes that I have "much to answer for." This is an allusion to my refusal several years ago to share private living quarters, and privates, with her. I was not, and am not, that kind of boy.
I hope this puts the matter to rest.
THEORETICAL HEARING
As an audio engineer and a lifelong aesthete, I was delighted to read Kevin Kelly's clear, thoughtful expression of his views about contrapuntal diphasic atonal composition. Doubtless he speaks for a large majority of listeners who share his inability to find much satisfaction in this music.
But the fact that contrapuntal diphasic atonal music has little appeal for the great majority of listeners is not the decisive, or even a relevant, measure of its worth. If the music provides an intense and moving experience for even one listener -- even if that listener is hypothetical -- than the music will have demonstrated its enduring cultural value.
As contrapuntal diphasic atonal music leaves Mr. Kelly and his fellow human beings, so Mozart's quartets, no doubt, left those "reasonably experienced listeners to modern music untouched and shamefully eager for intermission."
HE LOVED LUCY, TOO
I am greatly disappointed that you chose to publish Reginald Penna's. Mr. Penna was indeed a neighbor of ours during the 1950's. My personal memories of Mr. Penna are necessarily vague, as I was a very young child at the time (see "Titular Dominance in 'I Love Lucy'"). As to the nature of Mr. Penna's relationship with my mother, that is a matter unsuitable for a public discussion in a scientific research journal. Readers who wish to examine the relevant sociological facts would be better served by consulting my recent book "Lucy And The 1950s Shift In World Culture."
SCIENTIFIC GRAFFITI
I realize you have no control over your readers, especially your younger readers. But I would be very grateful for any influence you might bring to bear on the science students who persist in writing "Long Live the Annals of Improbable Research" on all our restroom stalls and walls.
© Copyright 2001Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
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