Fugato

Two news items side by side on CNN Money:

Vífill Atlason (16) made the news last weekend for prank-calling a supposedly top-secret number at the White House, pretending to be the Icelandic president, and booking a phone appointment with President Bush.

Ha ha, but the US news outlets missed the good part: the followup. Two TV stations ran interviews with Vífill. He showed up for one, and had a very-different-looking friend do the other, pretending to be him.

The duped station made it funnier still by threatening to sue both Vífill and the other TV station (which seems also to have been pranked, in that Vífill had promised to appear only on that station that day. Technically, of course, he kept his promise.) The reporter tendered his resignation, which his boss did not accept.

The same station has a show called Tekinn (“Taken” or “Duped”), running pranks on people with hidden cameras.

Vífill may in all seriousness be denied entrance to the US in the future for this (and possibly shackled and denied food and drink for 14 hours), the Dept. of Homeland Security being the celebrated Orwellian juggernaut of common sense and discretion that it is.

But he’ll have no trouble getting into Icelandic showbiz. (Except perhaps on Stöð 2.)

My office address is in 101 Reykjavík, Iceland. We just received a letter from Reuters, addressed thus:

Laekjargata 4
200 Kopavogur
Norway

Pretty good work by the postal system! And as for Reuters, the dependable, accurate information source, well …

Sales blurb for the HTC P3600 mobile phone:

„Process applications faster and store more data with 256MB internal ROM …“

Kurt Vonnegut must have been the greatest optimist of all pessimists. His novel Cat’s Cradle ends with a jolly narrative of the destruction of life on Earth; armageddon with a grin.

The book probably does not translate well because Vonnegut seems to love wordplay.

In bokononism, a delightful religion made up by Vonnegut, one major ritual is boko-maru, wherein two people sit barefoot facing each other, “letting their soles meet.”

Cat’s Cradle tells of an ominous invention, a new crystal structure for ice having a melting point of 45.8 °C. Below that temperature, it swiftly crystallizes all water into ice upon contact, including the oceans and the water in the human body. This mischievous material is called ice-nine … which sounds like asinine. Vonnegut must have considered this word a good fit for man’s 20th-century pastime of finding practical, cost-effective ways to demolish the planet.

There are two rules of paramount importance in engineering innovation.

1. never reinvent the wheel.
2. always break the rules.

So I guess this was only a matter of time. Presenting: TheWheel™.

Me:	Do you have the MacBook mid-size in stock?
Apple store:	No, sorry.
Me:	When do you expect it?
Apple store:	Well, it was dispatched a week ago.
Me:	Okay, so it’s sitting in a ship somewhere?
Apple store:	(half-insulted) No no, not a ship. They come by airplane.
[a moment's pause]
Me:	That’s one slow airplane.
Apple store:	Well, it is coming all the way from China.

It better run faster than it flies.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

<sarcasm>

Founding the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa is just one of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s many charitable efforts to the furtherance of human prosperity.

The mathematics course descriptions at this institution hint at major breakthroughs in the interpretation of mathematics. A few examples:

• Infinity: From the Empty Set to the Boundless Universe of All Sets — Exploring the Full Range of Mathematics and Seeing its Source in Your Self
• Maharishi Vedic Mathematics: Mathematical Structure and the Transcendental Source of Natural Law
• Calculus 1: Derivatives as the Mathematics of Transcending, Used to Handle Changing Quantities
• Calculus 2: Integrals as the Mathematics of Unification, Used to Handle Wholeness
• Calculus 3: Unified Management of Change in All Possible Directions
• Calculus 4: Locating Silence within Dynamism

This guru revolutionized the field of national defence last February with his website, “Invincible Defence”. It prescribes no less than the complete eradication of terrorism for good, by measures such as a significant increase in the practice of yogic flying. This makes perfect sense: yogic flyers induce harmony around them which produces the Maharishi effect, much like the harmony of superconductance produces the Meissner effect. Just as a superconductor offers “invincible defence” against magnetic fields, flying yogas erect an impenetrable wall defending their nation from the scourge of terrorism.

Hopefully we will all internalize the yogi’s teachings with an open mind, unimpeded by the notorious arrogance of science.

</sarcasm>