http://primepuzzle.com/tc/sox.tc
output of run of the above program
http://primepuzzle.com/tc/sox.out
Feet I think that feet are really neat, I wish that I had more. If I could be an elephant, I'd stamp around on four. If I could be a dragon fly, My feet would number six, A spider's great 'cause he has eight, For scrambling over sticks. But if I were a centipede, I'd have one hundred then. One hundred socks, one hundred shoes, One hundred laces not to lose, One hundred knees that I might bruise. Perhaps, you know, it's best to choose To stick to feet that come in twos. The Centipede A centipede will certainly need One hundred stripy socks But what'll he do when he wears them out By climbing trees and rocks? What'll he do when his socks wear through, When all of his socks wear out? He'll sit in a heap and start to weep As his mother begins to shout. Here's what his mother will shout, Whenever his socks wear out. "I bought you ten, bought you twenty, Bought you thirty, forty, fifty, Bought you sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, Bought you one hundred socks! So off to bed now, sonny. Do you think I'm made of money? Until I can afford to buy you more, You can keep your feet right off the floor!" "Chamber Music of the New Idea" - Short Fiction Al Haddad Email: aih3@georgetown.edu Phone: +353 086 367 3183 Address: 40.1.05 New Square University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin 2 IRELAND I am studying in Ireland this year, so the above address is not exactly local. My home address, if you need it, is: 3402 N. 42nd St. Phoenix, AZ 85018 Class Year: 2009 School: College CHAMBER MUSIC OF THE NEW IDEA Cannot Be Cut - The Centipede's Shoes - Pig, Sheep and Wolf - Albert's Glass Ceiling Thoreau said "simplify, simplify." Why did he need to say it twice if he is aiming for simplicity? For emphasis, maybe? I don't know. Simplify! he should have said. Pare it all down so that there is only one piece left which cannot be broken. People since Aristotle have been working at this. Aristotle, he sat down with a piece of limestone and a rock saw and chipped away at that thing, halving and then quartering and eigth-ing and so on, that little piece of limestone, until he could cut no further. You know what he called the result - the smallest thing he could make through human measure? Atom. Which is Greek for "cannot be cut." I would remind you that, two thousand three hundred years later, when people tried to break things down further - to see if they could keep on stretching the possibilities of fragmentation, to finally cut what should not be cut - two hundred thousand people died instantly in Japan. Innovation knows when to let up. Once the world feels the heat of ten thousand suns like in the Hindu apocalyptic story, it needs to be reborn. I think next time this world is born it should come back as a centipede, and on each of the hundred feet it would have a different beautiful shiny shoe, a hundred beautiful wonderful unique handcrafted shoes. And you know what would happen? It would sit there. Or stand, I guess, centipedes I can't quite imagine sitting. It would stand there, in this ditch, see, just standing there, looking from foot to foot and saying, Goshdarnit. And it would look at each foot, craning its head around on its segmented arthropodal neck (do they have necks? Let's pretend for a moment that they do. This is a special centipede) to admire and appraise and think of the ways in which each shoe does a good job minimizing its calves or making its slender centipede ankles look so sexy. Then it would think about socks that would fit it, which would be color coded with each shoe and depending on its specially tailored one-hundred legged trousers and maybe some of those toe-socks, which might be very hard to make for centipedes, because if for simple humans the leg-to-toe ratio is one:five, then wouldn't that mean that centipedes have (we must be very literal here, so please do your best to imagine this) five hundred toes at the end of each of its hundred appendages? And wouldn't that mean that some poor sockmaker, what are they called, sock-cobblers? That this poor fellow would have to sew fifty thousand toe-shaped recesses into the end of one hundred socks, all of which mind you would vary in color and length and fabric and weave according to the impeccable fashion sense of our clothing-conscious centipede? And once the centipede figures out which socks match with which shoes he must then make sure that they somehow match with the rest of its ensemble, which would be impossible because actually the whole time the centipede has been hiding from us that it is color blind. So it must guess, mix-and-match, trial by error after fashion-disastrous error, until it comes up with some satisfactory arrangement. I cannot do math, but the possible permutations for this are represented in some absolutely ghastly number. I don't even want to think about it; if I tried, I doubt I would be able. One hundred factorial times one hundred factorial. Is that right? Please call me out on it if not, because I would like to use the correct method to come to know how absurd this figure actually is. How long does a centipede live? What length of time, for one of these animals, would constitute a single day? I would put the average shelf life of a centipede at around four weeks. Maybe less; you could freeze them like my uncle refrigerates the mealworms he feeds to my cousin's gecko, because my cousin loves animals but hates to see animals eat other animals, which he thinks is cruel and barbaric, so he is in a state of denial and my uncle must do the dirty work for him. It's fine; he is only fourteen years old; he has a right to be idealistic. But, back to it - either way, one month or two months, I do not think would be long enough for this centipede of ours to figure out and attempt each permutation of one hundred by one hundred shoes-and-socks (we are not even assuming, at this point, that there is a sockless option; or if there are sandals; socks-and-sandals, though comfy, are together a ghastly sight to behold). So what happens? The centipede remains in the ditch. The centipede metes out its days deciding, this or that, that or this. It does not look up at the sky; it does not think about how to get out of the ditch; it does not pick up even one of the one hundred perfectly useful feet at its disposal. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight weeks pass. It dies, still deliberating. Ants begin to nibble off little pieces of it, and eventually there are thousands of them there, swarming over the dead thing. Each one carries off his or her little piece of the centipede, going on every which way and to all corners of the globe with it, back off into the anonymous world that the centipede could not bring itself to explore. In the ditch there remain one hundred once- beautiful shoes and one hundred once-brilliant socks, stranded and purposeless now and bound for decay. Innovation marches along barefoot. In a cottage off somewhere down the road there is a wolf with bandages over his burned behind where those nasty little swine tried to cook him; he is talking on the telephone to his cousin a few counties over, who has just suffered an impromptu C-section at the hands of a crazed hunter trying to get this little gal's granny back. Both of them talk about heading into a new line of work. Maybe we could be philanthropists, says the one who used to huff-and-puff. I'd like that, says the big-eyed, big-eared, big-toothed impersonator. But we've got to be millionaires first, at least, and how do you come by all that money in the first place if you aint done a lot of harm already? I take your point, says huff-n'-puff. He just sat for a while and listened to the humming on the end of the line, and then he said, What about dogs? What about 'em, says bigtooth. What I'm saying is, we could be dogs not wolves. Yes, says bigtooth, and I reckon I can be a sheep, you can be a pig, and you and me both can just as well be the Twin Sheikhs of Araby. He laughs a big dry sarcastic lobo laugh. Are you forgetting yourself? There's limitations to these things you know. You caint be just anything you set yourself down to be. You know what they say: even if you tried you'd only be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Maybe you're right, says huff-n'-puff. Of course I am right, says bigtooth. You know, says huff-n'-puff, this whole business of wolf-sheep-pig is totally confining. Everybody sees me and thinks that I am big and bad. Actually, compared to you, Cuz, I am not that big. And how bad am I? For trying to survive? Ever since these rascals moved up here with their pump-action rifles and their mangy dogs we wolves have to eke out a pretty thin existence. You scarce might find a good rabbit once in a blue moon. Rest is rodents, offal; got to nibble a little offal once in a while don't do you no harm. What are we supposed to do, y'know, eat summer squash? We're carnivores! That's damn right, says bigtooth. Stick it to the Human! We oughta be ready to stand up and say, 'No, sir, I aint going to lie down.' But the wolf who huffs and puffs is not listening, his cousin's voice has faded out of his consciousness, because over the hill from the brick house yonder he hears three squealing voices laughing, and from the smoke wafting out of the chimney and riding along on the breeze all the way to his cabin he can smell the distinctive aroma of lamb kebabs roasting over an open fire. Innovation makes it so the bad guys can't get away with it anymore. In a schoolroom at the Luitpold-Kreisrealschule in Munich a long time ago a teenaged boy whose dark wiry hair is parted on the left with a few rebellious cowlicks standing up in the back sits glumly and feels a drop of spittle land on his cheek as the purple-faced rector yells at him for having finished his exercises too quickly. You have been cheating! He says. The boy sits for a moment with his eyes downcast, then shakes his head, No, Herr Purpleface. Ah! And now you lie to me! Fine, says Rector Purpleface, and turning to his desk he picks up a pamphlet. It is full of advanced calculus equations, far beyond the level of anything that thirteen-year-old brains should be able to comprehend. If you are so clever, he says, thick caterpillary Groucho Marx eyebrows quivering to and fro above his round spectacles, then take this into the examination hall and complete it for me in one hour. Maybe, Herr Einstein, I will not fail you from your mathematics course. The boy genius looks over the pamphlet once or twice before rising without a word from his seat to walk to the door. He hesitates, one foot out the door. Herr Purpleface, he says quietly, and the little man looks out from behind his desk, which dwarfs him. If my continued presence at this institution hinges upon my performance on this problem set, I should be very grateful if you allowed me thirty minutes more to check my work for mistakes. O, go on, says the rector, out of my sight. There is no doubt in my mind that you will find the pamphlet's contents entirely impossible to work out in one hour, much less a year. It is from the annual mathematics competition at Ludwig Maximilian Universitat. Max Planck of the German Physical Society fashioned the question. The prize is ten thousand marks but nobody ever wins it. You will not solve it. The boy, who has not yet even begun to grow hair on his chin, nods. May I still keep the pamphlet, sir? The rector, grunting, motions, yes, fine. Although I am afraid I cannot fail you for working too quickly, Herr Einstein, you can be sure that I will pay especially close attention to your work in the future, to guarantee that it is as ... valid - as is humanly possible. The boy nods, utters a word of thanks, and leaves the room, entering a great long hallway. At the end of the hall, he stops for a moment to look out at one of the gardens backing up onto Alexanderstrasse. The centerpiece of this garden is a large circular glass greenhouse. He watches as a small bird takes wing and then turning downward, bewitched by the glare of the afternoon sun, smashes abruptly into the building's ceiling, which although it is glass, does not break. The bird falls to the ground and sits, stunned, before it gets to its feet and walks away dizzily. Innovation nurtures genius.