FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for November 29, 2018

A geek who doesn’t read fiction???

I think that I shall never see/ A matrix lovely as a tree./ Trees are fifty times as fun/ As structures a la PL/I/ (Which Dijkstra claims are too baroque)./ And SNOBOL’s strings just can’t compare/ With all the leaves a tree may bear./ And COMIT strings are just a joke./ Vectors, tuples too, are nice,/ But haven’t the impressive flair/ Of trees to which a LISP is heir./ A LISPer’s life is paradise!

Google for “Only LISP Can Make a Tree” for the rest.

Grey code has a better symmetry and simplicity. You need binary for calculations and gray code for real moving parts.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height an array can reach…"

APPEAL:

listen (please, please);

open yourself, wide;

join (you, me),

connect (us,together),

tell me.

do something if distressed;

@dawn, dance;

@evening, sing;

read (books,$poems,stories) until peaceful;

study if able;

write me if-you-please;

sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone);

do*not*die (like this)

if sin abounds;

keys (hidden), open (locks, doors), tell secrets;

do not, I-beg-you, close them, yet.

accept (yourself, changes),

bind (grief, despair);

require truth, goodness if-you-will, each moment;

select (always), length(of-days)

listen (a perl poem)Sharon Hopkinsrev. June 19, 1995

I was stunned recently to learn that Joyce Kilmer was a dude. And it’s kind of peculiar that surnames used as given names keep becoming exclusively (or nearly) feminine, like Joyce, here, and Shirley and Vivian. I dunno if Tiffany counts, here, that probably was feminine from the get-go.

Probable-Possible, my black hen,

She lays eggs in the Relative When.

She doesn’t lay eggs in the Positive Now

Because she’s unable to Postulate How.

……………..A Space Child’s Mother Goose.