You say, you say, you say

Blogreader Tom Bassler, who lives north of Seattle, Washington, USA (that's very close to Canada ;-) mailed me this table, correlating the voting patterns with state average IQs.

Bikini-bathing blogreading babe Anastasia Münze writes from an internet cafe´on the island of Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). She complains that they can't go outside because of there is a plague of locusts which has been swept over from Africa on the easterly winds. Igitt-Igitt-Igitt!

Stephanie (Mrs. CP) from Omaha, Nebraska, USA, is studying for the dreaded GRE so that she can continue her Graduate studies, thanks for the help she found on my maths pages.

Jimmy McCarthy lives on the very north coast of Scotland in the town of Wick in Caithness county. We correspond sometimes in the Scots tongue and now he points us to a website outlining the Caithness Dialect there.

Klaus Steigler, Alaska, USA, and I have been corresponding about the blogger from Anchorage who murdered her mother, then blogged about it. Thanks to Glassdog for the heads-up here.

posted by Stu Savory on 30th November 2004 at 11:11 Central European Time permalink Email

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What is acceptable?

Many of you laughed at saturday's poster-pic. Few objected, even when I used a picture which is obviously morally wrong and would "never" be allowed to happen. "Gratuitous cruelty, directed at man or beast, is a cold mouthful!" (mm). Are corporations entitled to ignore ethics in the halliburtonesque chase for the mighty profit dollar as suggested by saturday's poster? Have we become blase´? Are the american atrocities in Iraq desensitizing us? Do we now accept the american use of torture in Abu Ghraib? Are beheadings OK now? Do we accept the US ignoring the Geneva convention at Guantanamo Bay ? Is it now OK for GIs to murder defenceless wounded civilians at point blank range, as recently reported? Is it acceptable for elections to be rigged? Have the media dulled our sensitivities? Are we all just going to sit back and watch Bush's atrocities on his road to Hell? NO!!! Now that Christmas/Chanukkah are approaching, go out and join in at least one demo for Peace in Our World, please.

posted by Stu Savory on 29th November 2004 at 06:06 Central European Time permalink Email

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Saturday Cat Blogging

GOP note : Doesn't that guy in the Ad look like the young John Kerry ? ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 27th November 2004 at 06:37 Central European Time permalink Email

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Another view of Thanksgiving

Our american friends are celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend. Gifts are exchanged and not only the turkey gets stuffed. BTW : Have you noticed Condoleeza Rice has new earrings (see photo, left)? I wonder if they were a present from her 'husband' ;-) ?? Please excuse the quality of the photo, lotsa zoom needed there.
I heard she recovered from a Washington D&C hospital visit last week.

But for some, the US is no longer the best place to live since November second. Some may emigrate to Canada. But it is reported that Ireland is the best place to live in the world, according to a "quality of life" survey by the Economist magazine. But even there it's going downhill. No smoking in the pubs any more, and if you want to buy condoms, they only come in packs of five. Buy a milkmaid's rubber glove and cut off the fingers, 'cos the pope won't let you buy real ones ;-) Theocracies everywhere!

You'll need to be able to use the bible in political arguments there too.

Of course, if the Democrats in the US had stood up for proof of a fair election like the opposition party are doing in Kiev (Ukraine) right now, they might have exposed the election shenanigans and gotten their man elected instead. Then everthing'd be in butter for Kerry :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 26th November 2004 at 10:37 Central European Time permalink Email

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Heartstoppers

I am sorry to learn that Jeneane Sessum 's old dog Diva has passed away in her sleep. My condolences to you Jeneane, that's always a heartstopping experience when a dearly beloved - man or beast - dies. And that's a moving post you wrote today; thankyou for sharing it with us. Sympathies too from Wilma (upper left) and her gang, here posing as the Beach Boys.

Skyline Meme Heartstopper :-) Mike Collins, (Chicago, Illinois,USA) shows us the Chicago skyline from his Wrigleyville neighborhood. My heart did a BIG, BIG, leap when I saw the mail header, thinking the sender was THAT Michael Collins, and was sending a photo of an Earthrise skyline from lunar orbit in Apollo 11 taken back in 1969. Michael Collins was the astronaut who stayed in lunar orbit on Apollo 11 while Armstrong and Aldrin went down to kick the dust around Tranquillity Base and screw up the first lunar sentence. Heartbreaking, to go all that way and then NOT touch down. I remember staying up, it was 02:24 GMT AFAIK.
But even if you merely share his name, welcome Mike Collins from Wrigleyville :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 24th November 2004 at 09:37 Central European Time permalink Email

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Thick as a brick? Why can't Jonny do math?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I often rant about the falling standards of education, and here is yet another opportunity to do so, because the newest PISA results are in.

PISA is an international comparison of the standard of education achieved by schoolchildren. This time the focus was on maths and Germany here was in the lower half of class, rank 17 of 31 industrial nations. There were times when Germany produced the best mathematicians in the world, e.g. Einstein, Gauss, Lambert, Möbius, Riemann, to name but a few. Nowadays it seems that the 15 year-olds have the mathematical abilities expected of an 11-year-old only fifty years ago (I know, because I was one of those 11-year-olds, sharp as a marble, almost fifty years ago).

I'll tell you a personal anecdote and you can see how you fare. Several years ago I was interviewing some students for a job at the company of my employer of the day. These were people who had qualified to go to university. To see what they had learned and to test their ability to think on their feet, I gave them paper, a compass and a straightedge (Euclid's classical toolkit) and asked them to work out the square root of 1 ½. Stop reading now and try it yourselves.

Most of them didn't even have the slightest idea where to start, one even asked for a calculator! Two of them ignored the compass and straightedge and worked their way through 3 or 4 iterations of Newton's approximation on the paper provided. I explained gently that I expected them to get the answer geometrically, even giving them the tip about similar right triangles sharing a common side. Given this tip, stop reading now and try it yourselves.

It seems children are taught maths (e.g. geometry) by rote and seldom learn to use it creatively to derive a little proof of their own. Disappointing indeed. If you are still stuck, you may now follow this link to see how to get square roots using only a compass and a ruler.

Now that was easy wasn't it ? So why can't freshmen do it? We're not teaching them to think!

I was reading Shelley Powers blog the other day; Shelley is a professional writer of computer software manuals. She points us to a new Google service, Google Scholar, whereby one can look up scholars, publications etc and track through trains of thought in the history of a subject, for example. First off, I did a vanity search for SE Savory and yes, Google Scholar found some of my stuff, 12 out of over 50, not bad for a Beta version. It seems to focus on books rather than (maybe obscure) papers though.

I've been using it to track down old friends from university days by seeing what they've published. Often doesn't work though, many just disappeared into the maws of industry and never published anything academic. But if you ever wrote a textbook, odds are Google Scholar will find it and find you, find whoever you quoted, and whoever quoted you. A useful tool.

As I write this, Jethro Tull are singing their hit "Thick as a Brick" on the radio. Appropriate :-)

PS: Other spoonfuls of maths entertainment here.

posted by Stu Savory on 23rd November 2004 at 06:37 Central European Time permalink Email

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Your feedback & comments

Various comments, questions and feedback Emails have accumulated over the past 2 weeks, now I've finally gotten around to listing them all here (except the trolls).

• Norbert points us to this interview, The fractal life of Benoit Mandelbrot.
• Heike wants to know where she can watch those great BBC travelogues here in Germany. She also wants to know where to find a simple course on Computer Security.
• Eric Eisenberg, I think he's from Hungary, says my Russian translation was wrong, I should have translated Chernobylnik as mugwort.
• Someone anonymous searched my site for an explanation of Deep Link Ratios. He/she also looked here (sic!) for the Google help page.
• Ivan read my list of famous mathematicians and then pointed me to someone not on my list, see the Mikhail Lomonosov Memorial website. He also read my brief review of printing/typewriters and says The Gutenberg Bible was not printed with movable type, but rather with typewriter-like keys, says a printing expert (Johannes B. Kerning?).
• Jimmy recommends we read The journalism and films of John Pilger.
• Michelle knows I write short stories (with an acceptance rate of under 20%) and asked to see some rejection notices for a laugh. But there is no way I am going to annoy any editors by being snarky about them. So instead she (indeed, any of you) are encouraged to submit a story to All-Star Stories ; then you can read your own rejection notices. Michelle and I wrote some months ago about the difficulty of typesetting mathematical formulae for the web. Finally I found a markup language for maths , the great thing is that Firefox supports it, IE doesn't of course :-(
• A pTerry fan whose mail I've unfortunately lost, probably Queen Strumpet, gave me the URL of William Gibson's website. Thankyou.
• Jenny, who likes Bushwhacking, pointed me to a site on How to Hack the U.S.A Vote. I replied with some practical tips on how to survive the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Jenny points out a Rich poster collection : The Diebold Variations, which also led me to discover a great new (to me) blog, Slouching toward Urschleim; Who Yeats yeast?
  Jenny also asked if I could do translated excerpts of the news we get here in Germany, in the style that Melanie (SENTENTIAL AMMO) does in the US. Although one may make the occasional quote here in Germany, if I were to copy press articles wholesale, I would have to pay the going GEMA rate. Expensive, huh? Just recently, a German court fined a blogger here the GEMA rate for doing just that, so it's a no-no.
• Last week I had a visitor here from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. On a return visit, I saw that the WHOI has a faculty member called Michael Moore. I bet he gets a lot of unwelcome hate mail from those red states!
• Luxuriating in surreal mentality, indulging in wicked and special numbers, research chemist extraordinary Al Schwartz has been working on socially relevant ladies-friendly "Viagra Supplements," which include Talkra ("Revives flagging interest in what she has to say") and Anniversra ("Helps you to remember birthdays, anniversaries, etc."), whereas Scottish schoolboy David points us to this URL : "What's Special About THIS Number?"
• Finally, a UK blogreader and James Bond fan - definitely not John Scarlett (current bald head of MI6) - suggests that we take the UK Secret Service admission test. If you do, I hope you do better than I did! Michelle, how's that for a rejection notice? :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 21st November 2004 at 07:07 Central European Time permalink Email

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Earliest known photo of The Grateful Dead

There's a local rock magazine running a quiz, collecting and showing early photos of various rock groups, whom you then have to identify from the age-old photo. Just the thing for me :-)

So this is the photo I submitted as the earliest known photo of The Grateful Dead :-)
(actually it's a french woodcut, dated 1491 AD, entitled "Death Dance of the Women").

My copy of the 1486 "Malleus Malleficarum" is the 1928 edition, but it is available online now.

posted by Stu Savory on 20th November 2004 at 07:07 Central European Time permalink Email

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Taxing a parable

Mixed metaphors today, for you to unravel :-)

Once upon a time there were 10 american friends who went to lunch together each day. Nine of then wore red ties and one (a very rich man from the coast) wore a blue tie. The bill was $100 each day. The friends decided to pay their part of the bill as they paid their taxes. This meant that four (the poorest) paid nothing, the fifth paid $1, the sixth $3, the seventh $7, the eigth $12, the ninth $18 and the tenth (blue-tied and richest) $59.

That was OK and everyone was happy until the restaurant owner, a man called Mr.Tree, of stunted growth, proposed to lower the bill by $20 to $80.

A lively discussion began about how to split up the $20 savings. If split 6 ways (to the 6 men actually paying) it would be $3.33 each, so friend 5 and 6 would be being paid to go lunch!

This was obviously wrong, so Mr.Tree suggested that each pay percentually less than he currently paid (Watering-can principle). This meant that friend 5 now payed nothing too (100% saving), friend 6 payed $2 instead of $3 (33% saving), friend 7 paid $5 instead of $7 (28%), friend 8 paid $9 instead of $12 (25%), friend 9 paid $14 (22%) and Mr. Bluetie paid $49 instead of $59(16% saving). Thus each of the 6 paid less than before and now 5 (not 4) ate for free.

But the next day the argument erupted again. "I only got $1 of the $20" said friend 6, "and the rich guy got $10. Not fair, 'cos he's much much richer than I am!"

"And we got nothing!" complained the first four "The system exploits the poor!"

And the 9 wearing red ties turned on their blue-tied friend and beat him up mercilessly.

On the next day Mr. Bluetie didn't turn up for lunch, having seceded from the lunch-federation, so the nine red-tied friends ate a sumptious $80 lunch between them. But when the bill came, they soon discovered that they didn't even have enough money to pay even HALF the bill!

posted by Stu Savory on 19th November 2004 at 10:10 Central European Time permalink Email

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Blogging in Latin, like JC ;-)

The things one does to keep the old grey matter fit as old age approaches :-) I've resolved to try to wade all the way through Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico during december. So I've started polishing my Latin, starting by reading Henry Beard's rather funny "Xtreme Latin", so that I can read De Bello Gallico smoothly rather than just translating wordwise as I go.

Lingua Latina se pandit ubique. Iurisperiti ea utuntur ut te defraudent, medici hac lingua utuntur ut alvum evacues ex meta, et magistratus ea utuntur ad operienda vestigia cum te despoliant.

Translation : Latin is all over the place. Lawyers use it to screw you, doctors use it to scare you shitless, and politicians use it to hide their tracks while they rob you blind.

Apropos politicians, just imagine if the JC belief of Bush/Cheney really stood for Julius Caesar! Then Bush'd be quoting Latin at you, making himself even less comprehensible, e.g:-
Hebes sum et suffragia fero = I'm dumb and I vote.
Habe ante oculus devictionem mundi = Visualise world conquest !
Me semper rogo, quid facerat Julius Caesar? = I alway ask myself, What would Julius Caesar do?

Beard's aforementioned book has a few pages explaining all the subtleties of that barbative Latin syntax with those manifold and complex verb tenses. I give examples below:-

Imagine, if you will, the ever-polite Vice President Dick Cheney using 5 (of 14) different tenses:-

• As used by Cheney, Futue te ipsum! is the imperative form for "Go f*uck yourself!"
• Utinam te futueres, imperfect subjunctive expressing a wish for the present, meaning "Would that you would go f*ck yourself".
• Te opertet futuere tete, infinitive with impersonal verb, with the arrogant aristocratic meaning "It behooves you to go f*ck yourself"
• Tete fututure, te saluto, future participle denoting intention or likelihood, with the meaning "You who are about to go f*ck yourself, I salute you"
• and finally, the future imperative, Tete futuito, = "make it your policy to f*ck yourself"

BTW, a little googling points us to a few other bloggers who blog (partially) in Latin, id est:-

• BlogLatin
• J-Walk Blog:  Everyday Latin Phrases (Comments)
• Latin, the easy way.
• Martialis

Ave blogii, scrivere te salutant!

posted by Stu Savory on 18th November 2004 at 09:47 Central European Time permalink Email

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MODEL-MAN'S RAGBAG ;-)

I've been playing with anagrams at the weekend (yeah, it's raining outside!) and have anagrammed some 30 of my favourite blogs'- or bloggers' names.

Sometimes the anagrams are rather apt; not always though ;-)
Find your own. See if you can work out who the others are. Try hard first. Refer to my blogroll in the sidebar if you need help to guess them.

If you can't, then click on the fullstop at the end of each anagram's line.
(I've done it thus, so that you are unlikely to see the link by accident).

If you too have an anagram of a blog title or blogger's name that you think is apt, please mail it to me for listing here. Please avoid anything too snarky which might offend. Humour is best. Perchance your blog is not (yet) in the list, so mail me a link & I'll anagram it (if possible) here.
Maybe we can start a new "MODEL-MAN'S RAGBAG" meme here :-)

• A MAGNUM MISS .
• A PENNY EEL .
• ABYSMAL SEPULCHRE .
• ADENOIDAL TROOP-SHIFT .
• ADULT LINENS . Erotic sheets for the bed, maybe?
• ARCADIA MET NAZISM .
• BLASTS GROOVY U.S . At least in Meg's opinion!
• BOIL MY KEG .
• CIA SAY : "SHINDIG" .
• CREPT GARBAGE .
• DESK-CARAVANER RAJAH .
• DOLE GUARD .
• DUD INPUTER .
• ENVIED BYTES .
• FIT FOR BATMAN .
• GINGHAM KILT .
• GRANDMA DINES IN .
• HEAL, QUIT CAVIL .
• HITS DASHING SUNS . Neat anagram for an astro-geek, huh?
• I, HUEY BELLE . (The Bell Huey was a Vietnam-era helicopter)
• KERRY PANT FAN .
• LINEALLY LIKE A.I .
• NOTION IS JUMPY .
• PROPOSES FIREPLACE BLUEBOOK .
• RURAL MICE .
• RURALIST REGIME .
• SEEN JESUS, AMEN .
• TEACH STEEL FORT .
• WETTABLE PUNJABI THYMUS . Written by SENTENTIAL AMMO.
• YE OBSCENE KAVA . (Erotic coffee, I guess?)
• and last but by no means least, YELLOW SPHERES .

Novum : If appropriate, photos in the sidebar are now clickable for associated sound effects.

APPENDIX : Readers' anagram suggestions (added Monday) :-

• ANARCHIC OEM ITEM . Suggested by an anonymous admirer.
• HORNY JERK . Suggested by a texan Dubya fan.
• ME SOLEMNLY CHAT . Also suggested by the aforementioned anonymous admirer.
• PUN REQUEST MET .
• RUBBING RIND . Suggested by GAOL UDDER .
• WASTREL BELCHES GOOD .

posted by Stu Savory on 14th November 2004 at 08:15 Central European Time permalink Email

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We almost forgot : Remembrance Day

Les Hall's lovely girlfriend Eva Gordon (Scots/German/American) is buying him a kilt for Xmas. The whole nine yards in the Hunting Leslie tartan, or should that read 'Hunting Eva' ;-) ?

When a girl asks me (a Scot) "What do you wear under your kilt?" I usually feign indignant shock and then innocently reply "Socks wi' shoon, lass, we dinna gae barefit ony mair, ye ken!"

posted by Stu Savory on 12th November 2004 at 06:55 Central European Time permalink Email

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Did Bush steal the US election again?

It may be only a conspiracy theory, but there is gathering evidence and statistical argument that the Bush/Cheney/Rove gang hacked the US election. These are some links I've found so far:-

• Common Dreams report that Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked.
• The Left Coaster reports too on Vote Cheats.
• Global Research reports on electronic voting machine problems Electronic Voting : The stolen election of 2004
• Voters Unite tell us about Broken Voting Machines.
• Newstarget reports that 'States with electronic voting machines gave Bush mysterious 5% advantage; bloggers do the math that broadcast networks fail to follow'.
• For Ohio, Truthout reports that 'Voting Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes'.
• For Florida, US Together reports on 'Surprising Florida Presidential Election Results'.
• Also for Florida, Americam Samizdat reports that there were more votes than voters, indeed there were more votes for Bush in each of these 12 counties than voters!
• This background info is also worth reading. As is Bruce Schneier's dispassionate analysis of The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines.

This is something that not only Americans need to worry about, but the whole world too. When Jefferson sat down to write the US constitution (which he didn't invent, BTW, he copied major ideas from the Iroquois Nation's constitution) he could not forsee the possibility of non-auditable electronic counting. The Bush/Cheney/Rove gang could. And maybe did?

At least when a man gets stabbed at a Green Party meeting, it's one voter stabbed in the chest and not 51 million voters stabbed in the back! 'Tis a banana republic.

America now has just one party running all three branches of government. One party only. Just like in Stalin's Russia or Honecker's Communist Germany or Saddam's Baath party in Iraq. I won't even name the one party system in WW2 Germany. History shows us that 'one party only' ends up in a dictatorship. History also shows us that dictatorships are evil.

America need to investigate all of this, despite bullying suppression attempts by that 'one party'. If the allegations turn out to be true, then Impeach Bush and hold a fair election as suggested (in Madison, WI) by Prove it on Paper!

posted by Stu Savory on 11th November 2004 at 06:51 Central European Time permalink Email

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The fall of the wall, 9th November 1989.

Today in Germany we remember the fall of the wall (the Iron Curtain), 15 years ago to the day.

9th November 1989 : Until 1990, Germany was divided by the Iron Curtain (in Berlin, the Wall, which Ulbricht said was NOT going to be built :-), into BRD(=West) and GDR(=East). East Germany built the Berlin wall on 13th August 1961 during the Cold War. If you already forgot East Germany, you may not remember the GDR national anthem (680 kByte MP3 file). They suffered a single (SED=communist) party system, and of course, the Party was always right! (394 kByte MP3 file). At least until 9th November 1989, when the Berlin wall was opened up. Thankyou Mikhail Gorbatschow (Perestroika) and Ronald Reagan. Thankyou Willy Brandt too.

The 9th of November (coincidentally 9/11 in the way we write the dates, DDMMYY) seems to be a fateful day for Germany. 9th November 1923 was the march on the Feldherrenhalle in Munich. 9th November 1938 was the Reichskristallnacht. 9th November 1989, the Berlin wall fell. Truly third time lucky, I guess :-)

Here are some historical links for those of you who can read German.

• In Mödlareuth the Wall went right through the centre of the village (see photo above).
• They have a dedicated East/West German museum there now.
• Here's another page about the Mödlareuth museum.
• Here is the border museum in the Harz mountains Grenzlandmuseum.
• Finally, here is a list of East German (GDR/DDR) Museums and Memorials.

Enjoy today's history lesson and never forget the price of freedom (we're still paying!).

@Doc Searles : In Doc Searles' blog yesterday, he was looking for photos of aurorae, so I've added one down in the right sidebar. Is that what you wanted, Doc? An Ion Curtain ? ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 9th November 2004 at 06:59 Central European Time permalink Email

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Dog Blog Sunday

And the winner is . . . . . . recovering :-)

posted by Stu Savory on 7th November 2004 at 11:11 Central European Time permalink Email

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A plug for some friends

Sonja Glass : If there's one thing I like, it's a pretty girl who knows a lot about sax. No, guys, that's not a typo, I DO mean the saxophone ;-) So if any of you blogreaders are anywhere near Halle(Westfalen) on Sunday morning, go to the Ravensberger Lichtspielen in Halle, Lange Strasse, at 11am, where Sonja will be playing the saxophone with her band "B61". If you can't make it, then please go over to Sonja's website and listen to some of her soundbites which are called "Hörproben" in German. Sonja plays sax, contrabass, and electronic music. Go listen! Navigation on Sonja's website is by pressing the saxophone valves BTW :-)

Robert Reynard : Bob is, like me, a crypto-geek and is the author of the "Secret Code Breaker" series of crypto books. He also has a website Secret Code Breaker Online. You might be interested in the latest addition to the free downloads. Bob mailed me yesterday with the following info which I quote here :-

"In my (Bob's) Codes section, on the SCB web site, there is a Keyword Cipher Cracker program and a Polyalphabetic Crypto Program - which is a Zip file download that contains a Visual Basic program and an Instruction text file. The program performs polyalphabetic encryption and decryption using a cipher alphabet of any desired sequence and character content of up to 39 characters in length. The key has no length limitation. This program is particularly useful for performing encryption and decryption when a cipher alphabet is being used that is different from the usual Vigenere 26 character alphabet. It also allows a 'codemaker' to create a polyalphabetic cipher system of his own design. The PolyAlphabetic Crypto Program is extremely flexible and a very useful crypto tool. It was written for Secret Code Breaker by David Smith."

It is also worth pointing out that Bob's beginners' crypto books are all now available via www.amazon.de ; they are written in English.

Jimmy McCarthy, up on the North Sea coast in a town called Wick (in Caithness, Scotland) corresponds with me in broad Scots ( Ye widnae ken mair then twae wurrds whar screivit sae guid. Dinna fash yersels, ah maun screivit fe Sassenachs). Jimmy's Fotocommunity webpage has lots of nice scottish scenery. Makes me feel homesick, Jimmy does :-)
Jimmy's statuesque photo for the Skyline Meme illustrates the US election result well too ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 6th November 2004 at 06:44 Central European Time permalink Email

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End of Days.

One hundred and seventy people read my blog "Checkpoint" yesterday. Several condolences, but three of you (Ivan, David, Jane) who are not christians asked what was all the "Wormwood" stuff about, explain pls.

America is becoming a christian fundamentalist theocracy. Bush professes - despite his old testament actions ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth") - to be a born-again christian, believing especially in the Book of Revelations. Bush gets his instructions directly from God, he claims, and sees it as his job to fulfill the prophesies. Examples from The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, vi.2 :"He went forth conquering, and to conquer." and Ibid. vi.6 : "see thou hurt not the oil".

The star that appears to announce the end of the world crops up in Revelations viii.11 :"And the name of the star is called Wormwood". Even the US elections are predicted there in ibid. xvi.15 "Behold, I come as a thief." Also the prospect of him lobbing nukes in the Middle East is there in ibid. xiv.8 "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city" and in xv.2 "And I saw it as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire." When you nuke sand you get glass. Armageddon is near Iran.

End of Days. Four more years. Bush will be a Hell of a President.

But enough of this blasphemous satire. Yesterday, I promised you an old (7 years old) prize-winning SF (science fiction) short story of mine about the End of Days, not the SF of Revelations. Inspired by Hawking's book title "A brief history of time", here it is:-

Tempus fugit

(c) Stuart Savory, 1997

Adam sat alone musing in the garden of Eden and once thought "I don't think it really matters, in which direction time flows..."

"That's true," hissed a passing snake. "By a single bite in this apple you could change the direction of time."

Adam became curious, and, taking the apple, bit...

...tib ,elppa eht gnikat ,dna , suoiruc emaceb madA

".emit fo noitcerid eht egnahc dluoc uoy elppa siht ni etib elgnis a yB" .ekans gnissap a dessih ",eurt s'tahT"

"...swolf emit niotcerid hcihw ni , srettam yllaer ti kniht t'nod I" thguoht ecno dna nedE fo nedrag eht ni gnisum enola tas madA

posted by Stu Savory on 4th November 2004 at 10:51 Central European Time permalink Email

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