If you are going to play “52-factorial” seriously… pack a lunch.
Via TwistedSifter
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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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…it buggers the imagination… (aplogies to Mrs. Malaprop)
IIRC, my old HP-41CV would only return a numerical result up to about 47! due to memory limitations. When doing permutations and combinations calcs, we often had to reduce the numerator and denominator before plugging the rest into the calculator to get the final result. That was only sensible and kept us from being lazy. Good times!
I was in first grade when I first encountered the amazingly complicated math problem of 1+1=2 written by the teacher on the blackboard. Me, being an avid reader even at that age (if you count picture books as avid reading) stared at that equation and thought ‘I will NEVER understand this!’. Well, at 67 years of age, my fear of math has not abated one bit. This 52 factorial thing has just confirmed that math really isn’t my thing. And I am in awe of people who are math wizards!
Can I get the guy in that video to come over and balance my checkbook?
@Auntie
“Can I get the guy in that video to come over and balance my checkbook?”
The kids snicker: “Did you hear that? That Boomer lady still uses a checkbook.”
My dear azlibertarian, thanks for the laugh. Yet when I send them checks my kids don’t snicker. And I’ll bet that when their parents send them checks, other kids don’t snicker either – and they get real busy signing the endorsements in that supposedly obsolete cursive.
Yeah, our (adult) kids like receiving dollars from mom and dad, but their preferred method is a transfer straight into their accounts…like God Almighty Hisself had looked over their plight and dropped a benevolence into their lives. Reminds me of the soon-to-be-a-cancer-on-our-financial-lives that is what they’re calling a “Digital Dollar”. Watch out for that one.
Mrs. azlib and I pay our bills twice a month and each time we do, we reconcile and balance the checkbook to the penny. It has taken me more years than I should admit, but I have finally convinced my beautiful bride that when we run across that occasional 5 cent error, that it is perfectly ok to simply make the correction in the register rather than hunt through each entry to see exactly which transaction was entered in error. The value of your time is worth more than the correction. Dunno if my kids have ever balanced their checkbooks. They wonder why put in the effort at all…just accept the bank’s figure and move on.
At the rate at which our dollar is devaluing, they might have a point.
Dear AZ,
Once you understand that the dollar is the new dime it all follows.
Oh, I understand. I understand that this does not end well for any of us..not at all. The Federal Reserve is rapidly becoming what we used to joke about….Venezuela or Zimbabwe.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R