From: Jsn@cris.com (John S. Novak, III)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan
Subject: Re: TAN: Philosophy of Science
Date: 3 Nov 1996 08:29:10 GMT
Organization: Concentric Internet Services

In <55hegn$2uq@myrddin.imat.com> rick@hugin.imat.com (Rick Moen) writes:

>: Could someone please implement an 8-bit adder using NAND gates for me?

>Are 8-bit adders among the poisonous varieties? 

Only if you're bitten eight times.

>(Did they get surly when advised to go forth [1] and multiply?)

Reminds me of a joke.

After the Deluge, when Noah and his intrepid crew had touched down on
land and carefully set the animals free, they left them with the
command to go forth and multiply.

Everywhere you turned, you'd see a different pair of animals getting
it on.  Camels were humping in the hills, aardwolves were making the
sign of the eightlegged aardvark, the snotmonkeys were showing both
their backs...  everywhere, critters were fucking with joy and
abandon.

Except the adders.

Noah noticed this, and went to talk to the adders, and it was
explained that they just couldn't... well, they couldn't...  Do what
adders do.  Noah didn't really want the full details, but they just
couldn't.

He expressed his condolences, and made a note of it to pray for
guidance, but in the mean time he set him and his boys to gathering up
some of the smaller falled trees that were in the area, stripping them
of the branches, and building things.  Soon, they had a fine
collection of somewhat soggy, but passable (for a first attempt,
anyway) logs for building things-- houses, tables, chairs, and so
forth.

When they built that first table, the adders looked at each other,
muttered an appreciative comment about how nice the table looked, but
Noah and his boys were already off building something else.  By God,
they'd been on that bloody Ark wfor entirely too long, and they wanted
spacious, civilized quarters, and they wanted them NOW!

Later, Noah decided to go back and see how his adders were doing.  He
found them on the table he had built, well, doing what adders do.

"Well, I see you found your solution!  What happened!?"

And the adder turned to him and replied, "Noah, didn't you know?  Even
adders can multiply on a log table."

--
John S. Novak, III           jsn@cris.com
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html 
The Humblest Man on the Net