Moving towards the locus solus
he observed the lingering homophobia of the town and the disapproval of McKendrick’s fluid flow. Mathematicians are reasonably sure that the equation (which is written in the terse but information-dense notation of “vector calculus”) describes how fluids behave. Nature is thus failing to prevent the conflict between the Arab-dominated Khartoum government and the African Muslim rebel forces.
Alfredo looks closer to seven than 13
Dressed in clean blue T-shirt and jeans, he perches in the galactic centre of an immense vermilion sofa.
I know of instances
when priests have shown parishioners specific price lists, he murmurs. Also, paint was thrown over the sculpture in the dead of night – dislike of the scallops has ignited local politics. A counter-petition championing the scallops has opened in a photocopying shop on the high street, this time on the theme We cannot compromise on Andromeda.
Alfredo continues
The central fact of the streaming experience is that film is no longer a one-hit thrill flowing inexorably before you in linear space-time. Instead, it bends to your instincts, a submissive light to your all-influencing black hole. Streaming turns cinephiles into capricious obsessives, analysers and fetishers.
It’s not for nothing
that greed for money is regarded as a vile and murderous passion amounting to a betrayal of God, replies the Patriarch, concerned that such un-Christian practices were alienating the youth. It is an infernal sin.
Certain brain pathologies
induce states of hyper-religiosity: temporal lobe epilepsy, for example. This is sometimes associated with sensations of ecstasy and awe, oceanic feelings of connectedness with the cosmos and a sense of being in the presence of God.
The seven post-millennium problems
in the order that Alfredo presents them here are 1) the Riemann hypothesis; 2) the Yang-Mills theory and the mass gap hypothesis; 3) the P versus NP problem; 4) Breakthrough Starshot; 5) the Poincaré conjecture; 6) the Dalinean space-time enigma and 7) the Fermi Paradox.
At “bitch ‘n’ swap” parties
meanwhile, women get together in one of their own homes, drink gossip and swap their cast-offs, such as velvet embroidered mules reduced from $299 to $179.
© Dan McNeil 2005/2021