In fact, the paintings are not exact copies. A minute inspection reveals that the artist's perspective is slightly different than the original, as if she were looking at the same scene about seven centimeters to the right of the original painter's viewpoint.

Seven centimeters is about the distance between Veronique's eyes, and is the optical ocular basis for her art. She's trying to recreate the scene the artist saw centuries ago; she's trying to let the viewer look through the artist's eyes. I'm not sure if she succeeded.

Take Rembrandt's 1642 painting, The Shooting Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, aka, The Night Watch. When I used special glasses to simultaneously view a life-size reproduction of the original and Veronique's "copy," I experienced a three-dimensional effect, but it was far from an epiphany. The figures in the foreground certainly stood out from those behind them, but the effect felt like a cheap optical trick. I certainly didn't feel like I'd gone back in time three-and-a-half centuries.

Veronique seemed quite pleased with her work. I suppose that's the only thing that matters when it comes to art.

Later that evening, another friend said she was headed to the ill-fated techno-bar to see the presentation. I told her I doubted they had their connection working. I suggested she avoid the deluge and read a good book. She ignored my advice, a policy that's always served her well.

When she came back a wet hour later, I asked her how the show was. She said she had a good time watching embarrassed would-be engineers trying to get their equipment to work.

Modern art: it's not for everyone.

yankee echo tango.

When Li asked me how I was doing, I gave her my shortest honest answer: "I'm making bad art and having a great time."

"That's wonderful!" Li said smiling over the phone. (She can actually do that.) "I was worried you might be having a bad time making great art."

That's never been a problem for me.

Bethan told me every human spends the first few days of his/her existence/life with no input from the father, so to speak. Every month an egg starts to develop into a human, sans "dad," and it's only the lucky ones that later link up with a male wriggly go on to be born (only to die a number of decades later).

She also told me something I could have guessed, but never thought about. The unborn child drinks the serous fluid in which it is suspended, pees it out, then drinks it again! Over and over and over! (I once read that some people drink their own urine to maintain and improve their health; I guess we all did at one time or another.) I know pregnancy is perhaps the most natural thing in the world, but I still don't think I'd want another person doing that sort of thing inside of me.

All this thinking about nature and health is giving me a headache. I'm going to drink whisky, one of the most convoluted beverages ever devised.

How can I explain my complete lack of interest in my attire? I can't. Or, rather, I couldn't until I came across a brilliantly succinct explanation by Scott Adams:

Clothes are the lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic thresholds for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing or sticking together, and if no genitalia or mammary glands are swinging around in plain view, then the objective of clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.

They heard that Professor Rickie took a somewhat unusual approach to grading. He locked himself in his office with a bottle of absinthe, then drew a huge cross on the floor. He wadded up each exam, then tossed it at the intersection of the two lines. He then gave each exam an A, B, C, or D, depending on which quadrant the crumpled exam landed in.

That's all his students know. And, for once they're right. What they don't know is that Professor Rickie then flew off to Paris for a week of hedonistic excess with a famous musician. And when he returned, he discovered he hadn't noted which student received which grade.

What Professor Rickie does know is that some of the more aggrieved troublemakers in his class are planning on publishing an exposé. In the student newspaper! Shock! Horror!

I decided to help Professor Rickie, so we locked ourselves in his office with another bottle of absinthe and my computer. I then wrote a crude program that generated random grades. Since giving random grades might be considered somewhat unfair, Professor Rickie went through the list and adjusted the grades for some of the students he knew well. To be precise, he lowered all the rabble-rousers' grades.

A student newspaper exposé! Really! College kids should know better. But, if they did, I suppose they wouldn't still be in school.

"Googolplex" is written as the numeral ten with the word "googol" in superscript, i.e., 10^googol. (Nine-year old Milton Sirotta coined the word "googol," the numeral one followed by a hundred zeros. What a precocious tyke!) Googolplex could also be written as a one followed by 10¹⁰⁰ zeros.

That is, it could be written that way if that was possible. According to Arthur Eddington, googolplex can't be written with all the zeros because there are only [1 followed by 1,089 zeros] particles in the universe. Despite my tireless research, I have been unable to find a name for [1 followed by 1,089 zeros].

Where's Milton Sirotta when you need him?

(I apologize if I've offended any ostriches; they're fine and useful creatures.)