Men, help me out here

[STUPID BOB]

You ain't got no corner on the market there Pop. They don't call me STUPID BOB fer nuthin' - I gotta pay 'em.

THINK about that a little while. Let me know when the Lightning Bulb pops on. I can't wait to hear your Eureka . . .

[Doreen Peri]

Hey, Stupid Bob.... You pay your women to call you Stupid Bob?

[STUPID BOB]

You've only found an edge there, dp.

I do note that the Lightning Bulb ain't talkin' . . .

[Doreen Peri]

He's working.

He can't talk when he's working. It's a gum and walking thing.

OK. So..... you pay them to call you Stupid Bob.

And you pay them to be with you?

I thought you were married.

Do you mean she doesn't work and you do?

No? She works, right?

So, you both contribute to the expenses.

I don't get it. Who are you paying? And what are you getting in return for the money you're spending?

love,

doe-doe

[STUPID BOB]

He's working.

He can't talk when he's working. It's a gum and walking thing.

OK. So..... you pay them to call you Stupid Bob.

And you pay them to be with you?

I thought you were married.

Do you mean she doesn't work and you do?

No? She works, right?

So, you both contribute to the expenses.

I don't get it. Who are you paying? And what are you getting in return for the money you're spending?

love,

doe-doe

You're still grabbin' edges.

As for Pop: He's got you falling for that? Sheesh. I've known him most of his life. He's NEVER worked. He gets "interested" but that's about all.

[Doreen Peri]

No, Stupid Bob....he was working. Yep. He works all the time. He gets paid for it, too, and gets benefits. The biggest benefit, of course, is working with me. He also enjoys our afternoon breaks together.

He's designing and updating web pages. He works on flyers and brochures. He helps with writing copy, text editing and proofreading. And he's been instrumental in helping me develop a marketing plan which includes employees of several companies using a similar discussion board as this one. Today, when I typed, "He's working," he was definitely working.

You may have known him all his life, and he may have a history of only getting interested, but that was then, this is now. If he doesn't work, an odd thing happens. He doesn't get paid. And that includes the benefits..... LOL!! hehe (I crack myself up.)

Afterward, however, when I went out of the office to handle some necessary chores, I got wind of the fact that he spent a LONG time on the telephone with YOU, Stupid Bob! It was a personal call which had nothing to do with work. Tsk, tsk.

Now, about the grabbin' edges thing. I'm tired of guessing. This is the internet. All we have are typed words. I tried to understand yours and when I didn't, I asked questions and guessed what you may have meant, but it seems I keep getting the answers wrong. So? *shrug*... gotta move on. If you want to explain farther, (or is that "further"? hmmm... yeah, I think it's "further"...) I'd be happy to hear it. But I have no more guesses. I'm fresh out.

But, since I'm a woman and all that, maybe you'd like to pay me to understand.... Would that be in keeping with your normal practice? lol

Did you read our Santa & Mrs. Claus letters?

Tonight, we're putting up the Christmas tree. Tomorrow night, the lights. Then, we will hang ornaments and candy canes and streamers and beads a little at a time until Christmas eve when the tree will finally be trimmed. It will be beautiful.

Sorry we didn't send you a Christmas card yet. I still haven't designed it. I hope your holiday is grand, nonetheless! (I hate that word "nonetheless" but I use it nevertheless.)

[STUPID BOB]

Ah dp, here you are trying to do Clay's work for him, aren't you.

It isn't that I won't tell you -- it is simply a matter of waiting Pop out and letting him try for the Eureka moment. And on the phone with him, I studiously avoided any reference to the original post. I had other things on my mind. (I love putting "and" in the front of a sentence, nonetheless; as well as passive voice and a parenthetical sentence structure). Just kidding.

I did post a RANT about Pereohsowhat that I'm not proud of. Damn me if I didn't rise to your defence without asking first. My gentleman's card is going to get revoked over that.

I'm digging way back in my files for a piece I wrote about antagonists more than 30 years ago. I'm sure it is much more in keeping with Pereohsowhat's obvious academic history. Having some of that myself, I'll keep digging for it and post it up when I find it.

I still maintain that Pop is just "interested" and in this particular case, under a different type of gun. Higher caliber than he was used to perhaps? Believe me, he's had a few paying gigs in his time where the financial rewards were astounding. He was even his own boss in a curious way. Stilll, it was interest and addiction to that interest that led him there. If he had half of the IQ he claims, he'd be on an island somewhere called Keep The Fuck Off Unless You (fill in the blank) and not have to lift a hand. I'm kinda glad he didn't get there. He wouldn't have met a firebrand named doe-doe.

[Doreen Peri]

Definitions of firebrand:

* noun:   a piece of wood that has been burned or is burning
* noun:   someone who deliberately foments trouble

Had to look it up.... hmmmm.... interesting adjective. Moi? LOL! Trouble? oh.. maybe you mean the first definition. I've been burned before pretty badly, true. And I've been told I'm hot!

I saw your rant. Thanks very much for the rescue attempt. I felt like I was tied to a traintrack and DoRight was coming to save me! I don't take empty insults seriously, though, just so you know. Looking forward to your antagonist piece.

About me trying to do Clay's work for him, nah... that's not what I'm trying to do. You just typed something I didn't understand and since this is a public bulletin board, I thought I'd ask you what you meant.

I mentioned this thread to him and he seemed rather uninterested in it. I donno, SB. You've known him longer than me. Maybe his uninterested demeanor was meant to sway me from knowing what he was REALLY thinking. Though, I don't really know. (I love starting a sentence with Though.) I try to keep him a mystery because if I know him too well, who knows what will happen? Similarly, I keep myself a mystery to him because, well... just because. I can't tell you why. And if he has a Eureka moment, I'm sure he'll AHA and let me know, but I think he has other things in mind (like whether he should start a sentence with And or include a parenthetical thought.) But I'm not sure. (I love starting a sentence with But.)

[STUPID BOB]

Definitions of firebrand:

* noun: a piece of wood that has been burned or is burning
* noun: someone who deliberately foments trouble

Had to look it up.... hmmmm.... interesting adjective. Moi? LOL! Trouble? oh.. maybe you mean the first definition. I've been burned before pretty badly, true. And I've been told I'm hot!

I saw your rant. Thanks very much for the rescue attempt. I felt like I was tied to a traintrack and DoRight was coming to save me! I don't take empty insults seriously, though, just so you know. Looking forward to your antagonist piece.

About me trying to do Clay's work for him, nah... that's not what I'm trying to do. You just typed something I didn't understand and since this is a public bulletin board, I thought I'd ask you what you meant.

I mentioned this thread to him and he seemed rather uninterested in it. I donno, SB. You've known him longer than me. Maybe his uninterested demeanor was meant to sway me from knowing what he was REALLY thinking. Though, I don't really know. (I love starting a sentence with Though.) I try to keep him a mystery because if I know him too well, who knows what will happen? Similarly, I keep myself a mystery to him because, well... just because. I can't tell you why. And if he has a Eureka moment, I'm sure he'll AHA and let me know, but I think he has other things in mind (like whether he should start a sentence with And or include a parenthetical thought.) But I'm not sure. (I love starting a sentence with But.)

The interesting thing here is that he started this thread. On the phone with him today, I pointed out the very thing I pointed out to you, mainly his "interest" factor. Or perhaps, in this case, I need to say his now profound disinterest. Oh yeah -- don't fall for the mystery routine. We're ALL in that boat. It's a question of degree.

On the subject of the subject and your question, perhaps this note from Tim will help:

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 0&from=rss

I don't know if you can receive RSS feeds, so to help a bit, the subject of the note is about the book, Mathematics and Sex, by Clio Cresswell. The book deals with models (the mathematical kind). I read Tim's post, several chapters off a BitTorrent feed and enjoyed it. I'm a novice modeler and I could understand the logic. In a weird way, Clio knows the meat of which I speak. Here's a little of it:

The way one studies patterns mathematically is by building models for the behavior being modeled. This is why most of this book is about mathematical models for interpersonal behavior. Well, that together with some amusing anecdotes that make the book a fun read even if you know the literature very well. Still, before I go any further with this review I want to remind everyone that the key question to ask oneself when reading any book that does mathematical modeling of any topic is always the same: are the models built realistic?. Mathematicians can't answer this question: only research by scientists (i.e., experience) can. Einstein probably put it best when he said:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

While we do study models for their applicability and their eventual predictive use by and for science, mathematicians can and do also study them for their intrinsic mathematics beauty, and some of the models Cresswell discusses in this book are certainly very pretty (in the mathematical sense of beauty--because the solutions are elegant, though the pun is intended.)

As an example of what this whole subject is like let me tell you about a long-studied model of interpersonal behavior that the author discusses in Chapter 3, a chapter titled "Road Testing the Bed"--I kid you not.

"You have to choose your life mate. The rules we adopt for this model are that you will be presented 100 choices one after another, you may date them, sleep with them, whatever. But, at the end, you must say yea or nay and if you say nay, you will never see them again."

What strategy should you adopt? Well, if you wait to the end, the odds are only 1/100 that the last person is the optimal choice; ditto if you choose the first person. The modeler then asks: what strategy should you adopt for optimum results? A little bit of mathematics involving infinite series gives the answer. You can prove mathematically that the best strategy is to look at (approximately) the first 36.787944117144235 people (rounding it to, say, 37 people) and then you should choose the first person from that point on that is 'better' then the previous 37 people. This increases the odds of your finding the best match from 1% to about 37%- roughly a 37 times improvement. (In the pre-politically correct literature this model was called "The Sultan's Dowry Problem," or "The Secretary Problem"; now, alas, it is usually called simply an example of an "Optimal Stopping Problem." )

Is this a good model for how we behave? Is this a strategy that one can realistically adopt? Certainly, 100 possibilities seems like a lot of choices to have if one is not the current day equivalent of a sultan -- a movie star or an athlete. But the model is intriguing, if not totally realistic and applicable.

Models that spring from modification of the rules of the Sultan problem have always been one of my favorites in this area. This makes Chapter 3 my favorite chapter: it is chock full of goodies with lots of interesting variations of the original problem, and thus even more interesting models. Some may be far more applicable. For example, if you get to play the cad and can keep potential mates 'stockpiled,' then, by stockpiling seven potential mates, there's a strategy that you can use to increase the odds of finding the best one to 96% or so! Or, in another variation of the model, whose solution she refers to as the "twelve bonk rule," there's a result that says that if you simply want to ensure that your choice is better than 90% of the other choices available, simply 'sample' the first 12 possibilities and pick the first person who is better after the first 12. This strategy gives you a 77% possibility of success.

BTW, I was using "firebrand" in the Texas colloquial sense. Down here, it means "HOT MAMMA" . . .

[Doreen Peri]

Interesting, Stupid B.

I write about sex and math and math and love and sex without math and math without love all the time. It's one my favor topics.

Here's one based on sex and physics or love and physics...

Until Time & Space Make Sense -
http://www.studioeight.tv/writers/doree ... space.html

See? Was that based on sex and physics or love and physics?....whichever... doesn't matter. Love is love is love is love, as one unfamous poet always says and that would be moi. And, similarly, sex is sex is sex is sex is sex. Sometimes love is sex and sometimes sex is love and versa visa...

But whatever it is, no matter which way it goes... I refuse to pay for it..... other than with my entire heart....

That's the part I didn't understand ... the part about you paying for it. I tried. The article you posted doesn't really explain it either but I thought it was interesting how it connected to my Time & Space poem.

My father was a nuclear physicist. Did I ever tell you that? He was pretty well known in the world of physics, though not like Stephen Hawking ..... though he died of the very same disease Hawking has .... choosing another route called OUT rather than being kept alive by a feeding tube like SH.

Anyway, it's all about love. We live. We love. We die. Just like the Universe. It's all physics.

And it's free. It costs you nothing other than your heart... (just like me)...

[STUPID BOB]

Interesting, Stupid B.

I write about sex and math and math and love and sex without math and math without love all the time. It's one my favor topics.

Here's one based on sex and physics or love and physics...

Until Time & Space Make Sense -
http://www.studioeight.tv/writers/doree ... space.html

See? Was that based on sex and physics or love and physics?....whichever... doesn't matter. Love is love is love is love, as one unfamous poet always says and that would be moi. And, similarly, sex is sex is sex is sex is sex. Sometimes love is sex and sometimes sex is love and versa visa...

But whatever it is, no matter which way it goes... I refuse to pay for it..... other than with my entire heart....

That's the part I didn't understand ... the part about you paying for it. I tried. The article you posted doesn't really explain it either but I thought it was interesting how it connected to my Time & Space poem.

My father was a nuclear physicist. Did I ever tell you that? He was pretty well known in the world of physics, though not like Stephen Hawking ..... though he died of the very same disease Hawking has .... choosing another route called OUT rather than being kept alive by a feeding tube like SH.

Anyway, it's all about love. We live. We love. We die. Just like the Universe. It's all physics.

And it's free. It costs you nothing other than your heart... (just like me)...

I just say Love Is or Love Ain't. One or zero if you will. I know quite a lot about Basic Physics, btw. Pop doo too. Been playin' it since 1972 I believe. (BIG GRIN)

What is your father's name? I may indeed have heard of him. I paid considerable attention to the sciences as a young man (even more now). Back in the late 50's I postulated the slowing down of light through a medium. It was finally accomplished in 1995 or 1996 to the satisfaction of the community by an adroit team led by (gasp) a woman. The medium was a Bose-Einstein Condensate that I would have given my eye teeth for in the early 60's. What marvelous electronic gizmo's I had in mind . . . I was a bit "out there" in my basic drive for this effect. I was thinking about encapsulating a human in a vehicle and then "letting the light go" . . . I was blind to the effects of inertia at the time.

I have trouble with the concept of love. Like religion, I believe it to be a man made device or construct at best. A reason to do all kinds of things at worst. Intense feelings, yes. Love? God? No thank you.

I am a Pantheist. Drop on by the WPM website some day. I am the Mgr. Ed of Pan Magazine.

http://www.geocities.com/wpmpan/WELCOME.html

Stephen Hawking is a Pantheist as was Albert Einstein and Henry David and a slew of other greater and lesser lights.

Heart. Another of my direct frontal assaults on Pop today on the phone. I'm sure he thinks I am a madman. I care for him greatly. I even slip sometimes and say love - - but I swear to you I'm only trying to get to a common denominator when it peals forth. The word love is a VERYLOUDWORD.

If I were you, I wouldn't discount science in the end of your poem with a cavalier casting off. Like it or not, there is a rational explanation and mathematics (science if you will) tends everywhere and when, throughout the fluid we swim in, this universe. And, it was around, the permeate force, even when we weren't there to hear it.

[Doreen Peri]

http://www.studioeight.tv/writers/doree ... lieve.html