Dormice and so on

[dungrollin]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, Barry Arrowsmith 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
> >
> >  Dot
> >  Who was wondering how the sociologist, biologist and 
mathematician were all so damn sure it was definitely a sheep.
> >
> 
> It wasn't, the biologist knew that straightaway, being well aware 
> that real black sheep lurk on Welsh mountains keeping a wary eye 
> open for stunted tenors in wellington boots.
> 
> The sociologist was unaware that it was in fact a prime example of 
> a sub-adult Equus asinus, but since like most social scientists he 
> couldn't find his ass with a map and ground approach radar, it was 
the first one he'd seen. The biologist thought better than to 
> enlighten him as it is a well-documented behavioural trait for 
social scientists to embed themselves head first in the rear end of 
> said beasts whenever one comes into their possession.


Dot:
Thanks for the clarification.  Presumably the mathematician was 
too busy working out whether any quasitropic hedroid is indeed 
diatonically sub-similar to itself to look out of the window at the 
real world, and simply took the sociologist's word for it. 

Incidentally, I ran across this list of Rules for Good Writing:
http://www.noggs.dsl.pipex.com/la/rules.htm
I particularly liked this one:

65. Let P(x) be the probability of reader x being impressed by 
displays of mathematical pseudery. Then it can be shown that, for 
all x except those in a set of Lebesgue measure zero, 
                        P(x) = 1 + e^i(pi)
where e is the base of natural logarithms, pi is the ratio of the 
circumference of a circle to its diameter, and i^2 = -1.