Collage 159               H u m o u r N e t               18 OCT 95

Sorry to open with the same topic as yesterday; I usually try to
avoid using the same topic two days in a row, but this one's just
too amusing ...

Louis Farrakhan, the voice of quasi-legalized racism and anti-
semitism, has announced that he might file suit against the U.S.
government to force them to "correct" their estimate of the number
of people who attended Monday's Four-Hundred-Thousand-Man March. :-)
He claims that the correct number is more than one million, and
that racially-biased U.S. Park Service officials intentionally
underestimated the total attendance.

The *really* amusing part? He's serious.

Loretta--our resident kindergarten teacher--says that Mr. Farrakhan
is probably just expressing anger over the poor marks he received in
the "Plays Well With Others" category as a child.

She may be correct. Personally, I think it's in the name:

              Louis--LOUsy Interpersonal Skills

Either way, the first piece in this Collage--the "Psychiatric
Hotline"--is dedicated to Louie F. (Many thanks to Mel for the Hotline
piece.)

As a tribute to Louie's mathematical skills, I have included a
discussion of quantum physics that employs the "chicken" paradigm.
(This one will only appeal to geeks, really. As a Ph.D. student in
engineering, I thought it was *great*.)

And since we're discussing animal physics, Collage 159 closes with
"Operation Cat Drop." Many thanks to Chris for both the "Chicken
Physics" and "Operation Cat Drop" pieces.

THIS JUST IN! ... Someone told a friend of mine that Louie shouldn't
have been allowed to organize the March at all, since he is not a
U.S. citizen. Her explanation? "Well, he's from the Nation of Islam ..."
(She was serious.)

I would have asked her to point to it on the map ... :-)

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com

P.S.--Rumors that Louie was overheard at the March saying, "We are
more than a million here today--in fact, we might be more than a
THOUSAND!" are entirely fabricated and untrue.
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1995 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: The Psychiatric Hotline

"Hello, and welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline ...

"If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

"If you are codependent, please ask someone to press 2.

"If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

"If you are paranoid-schizophrenic, we know who you are and what you
 want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

"If you are psychotic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell
 you which number to press.

"If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you
 press. No one will answer.

"If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware
 that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and
 about to bite off your ear.

"If you are suicidal, please hold for the next available operator.
 Your call will be answered in the order it was received. Please do
 not hang up and re-dial, as this will only delay the processing of
 your call. Currently, you are number 381; estimated wait time is
 three hours, twenty minutes. If you prefer to change your
 psychiatric affliction, press zero at any time to return to the main
 menu ..."

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Chicken Physics

A while back, someone asked how many generic chickens would fit into
a generic Pontiac. This question has been on my mind recently, so I
decided to work out this problem, for the benefit of all humanity.

I. It has been proven succesfully that chickens have a definite
   wave-like nature. In reproducing Thomas Young's famous double-slit
   experiment of 1801, Sir Kenneth Harbour-Thomas showed that chickens
   not only diffract, but produce interference patterns as well. (This
   experiment is fully documented in Sir Kenneth's famous treatise
   "Tossing Chickens Through Various Apertures in Modern Architecture",
   1897)

II. It is also known, as any farmhand can tell you, that whereas if one
    chicken is placed in an enclosed space, it will be impossible to
    pinpoint the exact location of the chicken at any given time t. This
    was summarized by Helmut Heisenberg (Werner's younger brother) in
    the equation:

          d(chicken) * dt >= b

    (where b is the barnyard constant; 5.2 x10^(-14) domestic fowl *
    seconds)

III. Whatever our results, they must be consistent with the fundamentals
     of physics, so energy, momentum, and charge must all be conserved.

     A. Chickens (fortunately) do not carry electric charge. This was
        discovered by Benjamin Franklin, after repeated experiments with
        chickens, kites, and thunderstorms.

     B. The total energy of a chicken is given by the equation:

                 E = K + V

        Where V is the potential energy of the chicken, and K is the
        kinetic energy of the chicken, given by

                 (.5)mv^2 or (p^2) / (2m).

     C. Since chickens have an associated wavelength, w, we know that
        the momentum of a free-chicken (that is, a chicken not enclosed
        in any sort of Pontiac) is given by: p = b / w.

IV. With this in mind, it is possible to come up with a wave equation
    for the potential energy of a generic chicken. (A wave equation will
    allow us to calculate the probability of finding any number of
    chickens in automobiles.) The wave equation for a non-relativistic,
    time-independent chicken in a one-dimensional Pontiac is given by:

          [V * P] - [[(b^2) / (2m)] * D^2(P)] = E * P

    P is the wave function, and D^2(P) is its second derivative.
         The wave equation can be used to prove that chickens are in
         fact quantized, and that by using the Perdue Exclusion formula
         we know that no two chickens in any Pontiac can have the same
         set of quantum numbers.

V. The probability of finding a chicken in the Pontiac is simply the
   integral of P * P * dChicken from 0 to x, where x = the length of the
   Pontiac. Since each chicken will have its own set of quantum numbers
   (when examining the case of the three-dimensional Pontiac), different
   wave functions can be derived for each set of quantum numbers.

It is important to note that we now know that there is no such
thing as a generic chicken.  Each chicken influences the position and
velocity of every other chicken inside the Pontiac, and each chicken
must be treated individually.

It has been theorized that chickens do in fact have an intrinsic
angular momentum, yet no experiment has been yet conducted to prove
this, as chickens tend to move away from someone trying to spin them.

Curious sidenote: Whenever possible, any attempt to integrate a
chicken should be done by parts, as most people will tend to want the
legs (dark meat), which can lead to innumerable family conflicts
which are best avoided if at all possible.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Operation Cat Drop

In the early 1950s, the Dayak people in Borneo suffered from
malaria. The World Health Organization had a solution: they
sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes which carried
the malaria. The mosquitoes died, the malaria declined; so far, so
good.

But there were "side effects." Among the first was that the roofs of
people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that
the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp which had previously
controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned
insects were eaten by geckoes, which were eaten by cats. The cats
started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened
by outbreaks of sylvatic plague and typhus.

To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World
Health Organization was obliged to parachute live cats into Borneo.

This is a true story--for more info, please see the Rocky Mountain
Institute's Home Page:

http://solstice.crest.org/efficiency/rmi/rmi_Guiding_Parable.html

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