Awesome 19th century nerds thread

[Heraclitus]

My pick from wikipedia:

* Babbage once contacted the poet Alfred Tennyson in response to his poem "The Vision of Sin". Babbage wrote, "In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry."[38]

[loinburger]

That is awesome. Babbage was awesome.

Unfortunately, pulling out the trick usually used by biblical literalist apologists (which is actually appropriate here since Tennyson's work has the same merits as many biblical passages), saying that a man is born each moment does not preclude the possibility that sixteen men are born each moment.

[Kuciwalker]

It says one man is born each moment.

[loinburger]

But it doesn't say only one man is born each moment.

[Jon Miller]

No, the key is 'what is a moment?'

Generally, moments refer to instantaneous points in time.

Since time appears to the same order as the reals, there are infinite numbers of men dying and being born every second.

The more correct lines are these:

In a moment dies a man,
In a moment one is born.

Also, generally as far as language goes, I would understand that line to be 'at least one'.

JM

[Fve Crathva]

In a suitably long period of time
One man or more is born, or dies.

SP

[BeBMan]

Or is just alive.

[duke o' york]

I didn't realise you were talking about nerds in the 19th century.

I was hoping you were talking about nerds obsessing about the 19th century, at which point I was happy to launch into yet another "How awesome was Emile Zola?" spiel. (Answer: most decidedly awesome. Er, dude)

[Fve Crathva]

Or is just alive.

That doesn't scan.

SP

[loinburger]

In a suitably long period of time
a period of time passes

My poem truth value is apocalypse-proof

[ZEE]

Yes, but whats the definition of the word "is"?

[duke o' york]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/is

[ZEE]

UH HUH, THATS FASCINATI-

[SlowwHand]

My pick from wikipedia:

* abbage once contacted the poet Alfred Tennyson in response to his poem "The Vision of Sin". Babbage wrote, "In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry."[38]

You're right. Nerdy.

[Az]

This is one of the worst threads ever, and I have barely recuperated from that youtube of two animated homosexual acrobats fighting a lawnmawer thread that Saras posted.