[Novalug] apropos current remarks.

[Gary Knott]

A story from the net.

Two mathematicians were having dinner in a restaurant, arguing about the 
average mathematical knowledge of the American public. One mathematician 
claimed that this average was woefully inadequate, the other maintained 
that it was surprisingly high.

"I'll tell you what," said the cynic, "ask that waitress a simple math 
question. If she gets it right, I'll pick up dinner. If not, you do." He 
then excused himself to visit the men's room, and the other called the 
waitress over.

"When my friend comes back," he told her, "I'm going to ask you a 
question, and I want you to respond 'one third x cubed.' There's twenty 
bucks in it for you." She agreed.

The cynic returned from the bathroom and called the waitress over. "The 
food was wonderful, thank you." The other mathematician said, 
"incidentally, do you know what the integral of x squared is?"

The waitress looked pensive; almost pained. She looked around the room, 
at her feet, made gurgling noises, and finally said, "Um, one third x 
cubed?"

So the cynic paid the check.

The waitress wheeled around, walked a few paces away, looked back at the 
two men, and muttered under her breath, "...plus a constant."

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EUROPEAN UNION LANGUAGE HARMONISATION

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been 
reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European 
communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that 
English had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year 
phased plan for what will be known as Euroenglish (Euro, for short).

In the first year, 's' will be used instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, 
sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard 'c' will 
be replaced with 'k'. Not only will this klear up konfusion but 
typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the 
troublesome 'ph' will be replaced by 'f'. This will make words like 
'fotograph' 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted 
to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have 
always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the 
horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgracful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 
'th' by 'z' and 'w' by 'v'.

During ze fifze year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaning 
'ou' and similar changs vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of 
leters.

Aftr zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl writen styl. Zer vil be no 
mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech 
ozer. Ze drem vil vinali kum tru!

----------

I think George Bernard Shaw would approve, and perhaps this undertaking 
was reported by the Readers Digest some time ago.


- extracted from "amusements" at www.civilized.com


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