One of the Classics

I've loved this one since the first time I heard it, and thanks to a comment by publiusfestus on one of ozarque's posts, I can now link to it: George Carlin on the difference between baseball and football.

Department of Say What?

Seen on another board:

[O]ne of the questions that the committee asked me in my interview was "If you were a kitchen utensil, which one would you be?"

After pondering for a while, I decided that I'd be a barbeque skewer; I tend to pick lots of disparate things up and refuse to let them go.

Goodies

The nice man from the USPS just came by bearing packages. I ran outside and met him halfway - which would not be remarkable, except that it's about 30F out there, and I'm wearing a short-sleeved shirt and am barefoot.

In the packages, the following:

• We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis


• The Accusers, one of Lindsey Davis' "Falco" mysteries


• All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer, an account of the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh


• Rhapsody: Child of Blood, a fantasy novel by Elizabeth Haydon


• One Hundred Philosophers by Peter J. King


• Analytic Theory of Polynomials by Q. I. Rahman and G. Schmeisser

That last one deserves a bit more of a comment. Last year, I proved a certain theorem, by brute force. I don't understand why it's true, but it definitely is. It's outside my usual haunts, and I'd really like to get a better grasp on it; the book by Rahman and Schmeisser seems likely to help me get that grasp.

It cost $246.

Advanced works in mathematics have such a small market that fixed costs make up an unusually high fraction of the price. There are other factors at work as well, all tending to push price up.

I'm almost sure that it'll be worth it. Almost.