The Woman of the New Millennium
Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.
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In the book American Prometheus, a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, there is a discussion between physicists about the potential of igniting the earth’s atmosphere - the entire atmosphere, like, all of it - when the first atomic bomb is detonated. The fear is that the explosion would cause nitrogen to combust and, since the earth’s atmosphere is made up of 79% nitrogen, cause all life on the planet to be snuffed out.
The scientists got together, ran their numbers, and determined that the risk of lighting the world on fire was minimal.
Imagine that conversation.
Oppenheimer: Did you run the numbers, Hans? We’ve got to be sure about this and we won’t get a second chance. We’ll destroy all life on the planet if we’re wrong.
Bethe: Understood.
Oppenheimer: No pressure or anything.
Bethe (finishing his equations): I think we’ll be ok.
Oppenheimer: Are you sure?
Bethe: I am sure.
Oppenheimer: It’s only every living thing.
Bethe: I am sure.
Oppenheimer: On the planet.
Bethe: Oppie!
Oppenheimer examines the calculations.
Oppenheimer (pointing at the chalkboard): You forgot to carry your two.
Bethe: %$^@!!&
Glad they got it right.
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This is only for word geeks, but I thought this comment from Terry Eagleton’s book How to Read a Poem was funny:
‘Mercifully’ [we pay more attention to the content of speech and not the form of the language],because this insensitivity to the texture, and rhythm of our speech is essential to our practical lives.There is no point in shouting ‘Fire!’ in a cinema if the audience are simply going to linger over the delectable contrast between the violently stabbing F and the swooning long-drawn-out vowel. (Those among the audience disadvantaged by an old-style literary education might even detect in this verbal performance a mimetic image of the fire itself: the F representing its abrupt beginnings, and the swooning vowel the rush and roll of its inexorable spreading…)
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Lest you think that I’ve gone all highbrow, I’ll leave you with this goodie: I think I may have found The Woman of the New Millennium.
I wonder if this is what Gloria Steinem was thinking when she fought so hard for equality of the sexes.