Joke #1:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Interrupting Cow."
"Interrup—"
"MOOO!"

Joke #2:

Did you hear about the Indian who drank 50 cups of tea?

He drowned in his own teepee.

Mural on Van Ness St, San Francisco

"high symbolic value" = US Constitution.
"mass casualties" = Iraqi noncombatants.
"severe damage to US economy" = seen, for example, in my 401Ks.
"maximum psychological trauma" = recent midterm election.

An unusual and attractive edition of Euclid was published in 1847 in England, edited by an otherwise unknown mathematician named Oliver Byrne. It covers the first 6 books of Euclid, which range through most of elementary plane geometry and the theory of proportions. What distinguishes Byrne's edition is that he attempts to present Euclid's proofs in terms of pictures, using as little text—and in particular as few labels—as possible. What makes the book especially striking is his use of colour.

DEAR ABBY: I work in an office that's made up of cubicles, so there is little privacy. After two years at this job, I have, for the most part, learned to block out background noise. However, my co-worker "Gina," who sits in the cubicle next to mine, talks to herself constantly.

This woman provides me with a running diatribe of every single task she does all day long: "Hit enter, file—save—OK, done!" "Open new file," "Delete," etc. Her monologue goes on and on. It's extremely distracting and annoying. I have talked to my bosses more than once about it, and they've talked to Gina, but still she continues.

I feel like I'm slowly going insane. And now that I'm pregnant, my nerves are even more on edge. Her constant verbalizing has become to much to bear. What's the answer, Abby?

As we [at Grumman] performed comparative analyses on the [Apollo spacecraft] lunar module (LM) systems we came to doubt the reliability estimates for the MIT guidance, navigation, and control system that was provided to both the LM [lunar module] and the CM [command module]. We arrived at this conclusion while preparing our own estimates of the reliability of the backup abort guidance system, for which Grumman was responsible. This led us to challenge MIT's guidance, navigation, and control reliability estimates...

[The Apollo spacecraft program manager] Joe Shea convened a meeting of all interested parties in early January 1964 to find the truth and punish the guilty. We gathered in the well-appointed Apollo program conference room in Houston [...] Shea warned everyone that the meeting was being tape recorded...

Shea glowered under his black eyebrows and hunched forward toward his microphone, his hands knotted tightly together on his desk, his gold MIT ring visible:

Gentlemen, we have a serious problem. The problem is that Grumman believes that the MIT guidance system is two orders of magnitude inferior to other available systems, and that the Apollo program is being jeopardized by this choice. The issue centers upon the evaluation of the data used in drawing this conclusion and establishing its validity.

I intend to force a black-and-white conclusion as a result of this meeting. Either there is or there is not a significant basic difference in the inherent reliability of the MIT system and other comparitive data. Someone, Grumman or MIT, will have to leave this meeting admitting he was wrong—mea culpa, mea maximum culpa...

Paul Klee, Runner at the Goal, 1921

According to popular notion, jazz is something which you research and study, inspect and dissect, scrutinize and analyze. Jazz twists your brain like an algebraic equation, but leaves your body lifeless and limp. In the eyes of the general public, jazz appears as an elite art form, reserved for a select group of sophisticated (and rather eccentric) intelligentsia who rendezvous in secret, underground haunts (or inaccessible ivory towers) to play obsolete records, debate absurd theories, smoke pipes, and read liner notes...