Favorite Thread?

[Xyzzy]

The forum is quickly approaching its six year anniversary.

A lot of humorous and/or interesting threads have been forgotten.

Only a handful have been erased, and most of those were erased accidentally.

We are curious which thread is your favorite.

Please link us to your favorite thread and tell us why you like it. There is no need to be extremely verbose but a little narrative would help set the mood.

We currently have 103,200 posts in 7,002 threads.

Thread drifting is encouraged. Ernst will keep us on the right course.

[ewmayer]

[Sound of faucet dripping and mice scratching around in the walls]

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

The forum is quickly approaching its six year anniversary.

A lot of humorous and/or interesting threads have been forgotten.

Only a handful have been erased, and most of those were erased accidentally.

We are curious which thread is your favorite.

Please link us to your favorite thread and tell us why you like it. There is no need to be extremely verbose but a little narrative would help set the mood.

We currently have 103,200 posts in 7,002 threads.

Thread drifting is encouraged. Ernst will keep us on the right course.

This one: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=5897 without a doubt.

It starts with a wonderfully pompously stated misconception. It goes on to provide several object lessons in how, and how not, to be offensive to others. Its end result, though sadly not in the thread in question, is a classical crank implosion.


Paul

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

This one: http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=5897 without a doubt.

I still am in awe at the fact that an admittedly-cranky-nutcase-but-an-apparently-sober-one could come up with a deliciously non sequiturial phrase like

"As a citizen of said constitution, certain rights that I find to be infringed will be defended."

I mean, with great effort I've managed a few extended Spoonerisms in a constitutional-law vein like "Your honor, at this point I'd like to revoke my fifth commandment right against self-determination" ... but to come up with this stuff apparently without trying, that is serious natural talent there.

Good choice, Paul.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I still am in awe at the fact that an admittedly-cranky-nutcase-but-an-apparently-sober-one could come up with a deliciously non sequiturial phrase like

I don't know about that, he has had problems with the local police regarding drinking.

[bsquared]

This one:
http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3240

Sure, I have since come to be entertained by the misc. math thread, and sundry postings by Ernst, yourself, and others, but this thread is what first brought me to mersenneforum. I was implementing my own factorization library N years ago and stumbled here apon searching for mpqs implementation hints.

- ben.

[Spherical Cow]

Without a doubt, this one is my favorite:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=1255

Starting from the simple, old puzzle/joke about a hunter traveling from camp one mile south, one mile east, shooting a bear, and then one mile north arriving back at camp, this thread devolves quickly into tangents and tributaries that would make the Monty Python group proud. It passes quickly through discussions of the optical qualities of bear hair to polar bears attacking submarines, on to hunting regulations in the Antarctic, and includes Google searches for green-haired bears in Singapore.

Performed by Monty Python, similar to the European Swallow-African Swallow-Coconut routine, this would be a classic.

Norm

[retina]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

Without a doubt, this one is my favorite:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=1255

Starting from the simple, old puzzle/joke about a hunter traveling from camp one mile south, one mile east, shooting a bear, and then one mile north arriving back at camp, this thread devolves quickly into tangents and tributaries that would make the Monty Python group proud. It passes quickly through discussions of the optical qualities of bear hair to polar bears attacking submarines, on to hunting regulations in the Antarctic, and includes Google searches for green-haired bears in Singapore.

Performed by Monty Python, similar to the European Swallow-African Swallow-Coconut routine, this would be a classic.

Norm

Yes, yes. Me too. That is one of the very first threads I read here. I remember it with fond memories and I'm about to go back there an re-read it, now that I have been reminded of it. Thanks for the memories Spherical Cow.

Oh, and I think this thread can come in second. It starts off simply and ends discussing hollow spheres of toast and methods of spreading butter onto the inside of said sphere.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

Without a doubt, this one is my favorite:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=1255

Starting from the simple, old puzzle/joke about a hunter traveling from camp one mile south, one mile east, shooting a bear, and then one mile north arriving back at camp, this thread devolves quickly into tangents and tributaries that would make the Monty Python group proud.

I missed that exciting puzzle-thread when it appeared, but claim that I can in fact shoot bears anywhere on the globe [where bears live and the local lways allow, that is] according to the prescribed navigational scheme - without any of this "special latitude" business.

Now before you cry out "pull the other one", consider that I simply like to travel in style on my big-game hunting expeditions and thus have a suitably large retinue, which requires an extensive base camp to house.

In Pythonesque terms, I believe I would say this in slightly different terms, like "I blow my nose at you, you silly English peeg-dog cartographer types, you wipers of other men's Mercator projections..."

[cheesehead]

Re-reading retina's nominated thread http://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=4894
inspired me to add "AskOford" [sic] to my bookmarks after I rediscovered ppo's post #12 in that thread, but all I get when I try to browse http://askoford.com/ is

"Error 5: Could not connect to database server."

(Edit: Oddly, I now get a more verbose response with many interesting links to appliance manufacturers' sites and, after one further click, a Yahoo! site promising "Shopping Made Easy at Yahoo! Find Low Prices On why does bunsen burner have a capital b for bunsen" [sic].)

Ah -- a Google search on "AskOford" reveals that domain "askoford.com" expired on December 21, 2007. R.I.P.

Perhaps there's an opportunity here for some entrepreneur who desires a verbally-curious audience. (Edit: Perhaps someone has already jumped at that opportunity!)

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

"Error 5: Could not connect to database server."

I let google help and found:
http://www.askoxford.com/