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In This Issue

• Confessions of a Dangerous Broccoli Head
• English Majors, Decades Later
• How to Spend Your Time After Co-Founding Apple
• The Cyborg Army of Death
• Salvation is a Prophet Away
• Chris Tucker to Play James Bond
• The Fed Point–Counterpoint: You Just Stabbed Me
• What Would You Do-ooh-ooh...
• Loose Lips Sink Credit Reports
• Bowling as Symbolism
• The Wonders of the Undersea World
• It is Imperative that You Spoon that Fruit Indiscriminately
• “They” Watch Reality TV, Drink Coke Blak for Fun
• Behind the Scenes at MythBusters Headquarters
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Campus Bureaucracy Replaced With Rube Goldberg Machine
• The Seeker
• Tales of the Inexpressible
• The Most Trusted Name in News
• It Swings Both Ways
• They Watch
• The Fed Index
• King Kong Returns

I do say, that is quite offensive.

Really.

I find what you are doing to be in very poor taste.

That fruit salad was mixed by the professional chefs of John Jay Dining Hall to have a delicate, balanced ratio of melon to grape to berry, and you are doing everything within your power to upset that equilibrium.

Yes, yes, I understand. You want more berries in your salad than the original ratio would produce. But, you see, when you take those extra few berries, you change the ratio for future consumers in a manner opposite to that in which you change it for yourself. Do you understand the relevant math here?

It goes like this: one berry to every four pieces of either type of melon-approximately the originally-prescribed ratio-is an affordable and gastronomically pleasant mixture. But if you serve yourself, say, a fifth of the bowl at a ratio of one berry to one piece of melon, you will have taken one half of the bowl's berries. The resultant ratio for a subsequent spooner is one berry for every seven pieces of melon. This is not a fruit salad that anyone would want to consume.

Do you understand what I am saying? Are your ears even processing my plea?

I am sorry, but there is only one way to solve this problem. You must be blindfolded while you scoop. I am perfectly willing to serve as a director to your appendages while you are blindfolded, in order that some fruit salad may actually find its way into your bowl.

But what you are doing now is unacceptable.

If you have no blindfold, at least look the other way. Or make large sweeping motions with the spoon. It is inappropriate for any of your spoon strokes to be less than seven inches long. That was six. No, I saw it. It was six. Larger.

What's that? Is that your finished product? No, I simply cannot believe you. Extensive experience teaches me that for the small bowl you are using, the chance of obtaining two kiwi slices is miniscule. If you do not believe my experience, I urge you to listen to the unambiguous logic of combinatorics.

You see, approximately 15 pieces of fruit will fit in your small bowl. Of the 200 pieces in the serving bowl from which you scooped, only five were kiwi. Thus, there were: 5!/(2!(5-2)!) x 195!/(13!(195-13!) = 628,950,368,845,249,423,200 bowls of fruit spoonable that have exactly two slices of kiwi in them. This number seems large, but hold!

Consider the total number of bowls spoonable: 200!/(15!(200-15)!) = 14,629,416,353,818,682,834,880. Divide the first number by the second to get 0.043, or a 4.3 percent chance that you will get two pieces of kiwi. For three pieces, the odds are 0.3 percent. So ask yourself: is this your luckiest day of all the past 23 fruit salad days? I submit that no, no, it is not. I saw you take two kiwi last time. You get one slice of kiwi. Yes, I know that one is not very many. Consider this: it is more than none.

Yes, I acknowledge and admit the truth of your current point: in its half-filled state, the fruit salad bowl has likely already slipped away from its once-mighty and correctly-proportioned ratio. Most certainly, others before you have done what you must have the strength not to do now. They took more berries than they should have taken. Consider this: one day they will pay for their sins.

But that day is not today. An eye for an eye and a strawberry for a strawberry leaves the whole world blind and filled with honeydew.