Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Economics joke

Ian Cowie relates a joke to help explain the Greek credit crisis:
Some years ago a small rural town in Spain twinned with a similar town in Greece.

The Mayor of the Greek town visited the Spanish town. When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Spanish mayor he wondered how he could afford such a house. The Spaniard said; “You see that bridge over there? The EU gave us a grant to build a four-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with traffic lights at either end this house could be built”.

The following year the Spaniard visited the Greek town. He was simply amazed at the Greek Mayor’s house, gold taps, marble floors, it was marvellous. When he asked how this could be afforded the Greek said; “You see that bridge over there?”

The Spaniard replied; “No.”

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to explain how this relates to Connecticut's current budget situation.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

The humblest thing that V.I. Arnold ever said

This attempt to produce something useless ended with a failure.
- Arnold (1998) Higher dimensional continued fractions, Regular and Chaotic Dynamics (3) pp 10-17.

Arnold died last year at the age 0f 72.