News You Can Bruise for 1999 November 4

I think that The Register overestimates the place that Guy Fawkes Day holds on the U.S. calendar of holidays. On the other hand, I probably shouldn't have told Scott to proofread that Super Bowl article for Segfault.

The next Leonardonics items on the list are the Demon Dog and his catchphrase, "Rehrehreh!". I love doing Leonardonics, and I really wish more people would have personal slang dictionaries.

!!! Jon Katz has started actually using Katzdot to do his story headlines.

I finally got Dan to accept that no natural number is of infinite magnitude. The upshot of this is that he now has to accept that the real numbers can be diagonalized but the natural numbers cannot. Now maybe we can have some peace around here.

The proof is a simple proof by induction: Zero is of finite magnitude. If x is of finite magnitude, so is x+1. Therefore, all natural numbers are of finite magnitude.

I went to hear Michael Shermer speak. Not as good as I thought he would be, but still very good. I bought both his books (Why People Believe Weird Things and the new one, How we Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science), which he signed "Best skeptical wishes" and "In glorious contingency", respectively. The man is a nut! Heyooo!