Narrator: Hello Big Bird. What's all this mess?
Big Bird: I'm planting a binary tree. That way, I can nest in it and I won't have to fly South for the winter.
Narrator: How long will it take for the tree to grow tall enough?
Big Bird: If I add branches randomly it will take me log_2(t)/1.386.
--
Narrator: Hello Oscar, how are you today?
Oscar the Grouch: Go away: I've just found a new garbage collection algorithm.
--
Neil: Ow, WOW heavy! My lentil binary trees are growing exponentially.
Vivian: This calls for a subtle combination of mathematics and extreme violence.
Rick: Oh you couldn't theorize even if you picked your nose with a silicon chip.
Vivian: OK, watch! This is how you dismantle a binary tree in constant time...
CRUNCH, CHOP, CRASH...
Neil: WOW. Heavy. Look at the mess. Look at all the garbage!
Garbage: Now they'll try to clean me up in constant time, but they've forgotten about all those cycles caused by curly lentils...
Vivian: Oh no we didn't because I cut all the cycles before I chopped down the tree...
Rick: You can't do that in linear time! What sort of a snotty nosed gullible girlie do you think I am?
Vivian: Well I had him fooled!
Neil: No you didn't! I was just waiting for the tree to spontaneously re-assemble.
--
There was a mad scientist (a mad SOCIAL scientist) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and
locked each of them in separate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can
opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was
developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his desicated corpse was propped
calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:
THEOREM: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
PROOF: Assume the opposite ...
A rare species indeed, with all the quirks and complexity of a dislocated elbow.
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