Description To calculate the circumference of a circle seems to be an easy task – provided you know its diameter. But what if you don’t? You are given the cartesian coordinates of three non-collinear points in the plane. Your job is to calculate the circumference of the unique circle that intersects all three points. Input The input will contain one or more test cases. Each test case consists of one line containing six real numbers x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3, representing the coordinates of the three points. The diameter of the circle determined by the three points will never exceed a million. Input is terminated by end of file. Output For each test case, print one line containing one real number telling the circumference of the circle determined by the three points. The circumference is to be printed accurately rounded to two decimals. The value of pi is approximately 3.141592653589793. Sample Input 0.0 -0.5… Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
The More We Rely on Technology . . .
We had a brief network outage at the office, during which Mr. Frick walked over to Mr. Frack’s desk and said, “The network’s down. We can’t do the screen share,” i.e., they can’t see each other’s computer screen over the network because it’s down. I was waiting for one of them — Frick or Frack — to say “Let’s just sit together in front of the one computer here like they used to in olden days” but neither of them ever did . . . Read more →
Foot of Pride
Yeah, from the stage they’ll be tryin’ to get water outta rocks A whore will pass the hat, collect a hundred grand and say thanks They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in Sing “Amazing Grace” all the way to the Swiss banks Well, there ain’t no goin’ back when your foot of pride come down Ain’t no goin’ back — Bob Dylan, “Foot of Pride” Read more →
Essay on the One Hand and the Other
Consider the palms. They are faces, eyes closed, their five spread fingers soft exclamations, sadness or surprise. They have smile lines, sorrow lines, like faces. Like faces, they are hard to read. Somehow the palms, though they have held my life piece by piece, seem young and pale. So much has touched them, nothing has remained. They are innocent, maybe, though they guess they have a darker side that they cannot grasp. The backs of my hands, indeed, are so different that sometimes I think they are not mine, shadowy from the sun, all bones and strain, but time on my hands, blood on my hands— for such things I have never blamed my hands. One hand writes. Sometimes it writes a reminder on the other hand, which knows it will never write, though it has learned, in secret, how to type. That is sad, perhaps, but the dominant hand… Read more →
Say One More Stupid Thing to Me
Sing me one more song, about you love me to the moon and the stranger And your fall by the sword love affair with Errol Flynn In these times of compassion when conformity’s in fashion Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in. — Bob Dylan, “Foot of Pride” Read more →
A Set Pattern That MUST Be Followed
Thomas Jefferson on Hillary Clinton
My fellow Americans — Hillary Clinton is still rattling off all the “reasons” she lost the 2016 presidential election: misogyny, the FBI, sexism, the NRA, Russia . . . To my knowledge, she has never correctly identified the actual culprits: the patriotic men and women of this country. Read more →
How You Should Think Of Me
A disciple came to Maruf Kharki and said: “I have been talking to people about you. Jews claim that you are a Jew; Christians revere you as one of their own saints; Muslims insist that you are the greatest of all Muslims.” Maruf answered: “This is what humanity says in Baghdad. When I was in Jerusalem, Jews said that I was a Christian, Muslims that I was a Jew, and Christians that I was a Muslim.” “What must we think of you, then?” the man said. “Some do not understand me and they revere me. Others do not either, so they revile me. That is what I have come to say. You should think of me as one who has said this.” — The Way of the Sufi Read more →
Stop the Presses!
It’s official: older men like older women (as well as younger ones) — The Times Lazy River project still incomplete one year later — Laredo Morning Times Read more →
How to Tell if a . . .
I typed that into Google and here’s what autocomplete came back with: Guys want to know how to tell if a girl likes them. Girls also want to know if someone likes them, but not as much as they want to know if that egg is bad. Read more →
A Joke About Inequality
Igor and Boris are dirt-poor peasants in the Soviet Union (it’s an old joke), barely scratching enough crops from their small plots of land to feed their families. The only difference between them is that Boris owns a scrawny goat. One day a genie appears to Igor and grants him a wish. Igor says, “I wish that Boris’s goat should die.” Read more →
A Nest, a Haven and Calm Place
The low trolley on its cushiony rubber tyres luxuriously bore the corpse away down the middle of the ward. There was speed and secretiveness and deftness in its movement. Over the dead man’s face was a blanket, so that age, torture, ugliness and fear, all were hidden. Instead of looking on this covering, this careful manipulation as an hypocrisy and cheat, I saw it for what it really was, a desperate effort to make life bearable and sane. I admired the doctors and the nurses. I admired every human being in the world who, on top of a million, million horrors, yet built a nest, a haven and calm place. — Denton Welch, A Voice Through a Cloud Read more →
Overheard
“I thought that went out with zithers and tarot cards.” “I still use tarot cards.” “OK, I thought it went out with bread baking and Russian civilization . . . do you bake bread?” “I could bake bread.” Read more →
Terrifying Xanax Resurgence!
You know what’s good when you’re terrified? Xanax! Read more →
If You Act Like an Idiot, I’ll Kill You
When my son was growing up, I found a lot of opportunities to point to someone else’s kid and say, “You see what he just did? Don’t do that.” When I saw a kid acting like an idiot, I assumed the parents were idiots . . . the kid either learned it from the parents or the parents allowed it to happen. So if my kid were to act like an idiot, I assume other people would think I’m an idiot. A friend of mine recently shared some advice he got from his dad growing up. I’ve paraphrased it as the title of this post. Of course killing your own children is going too far, but in a figurative sense, I believe this is good advice and I endorse it . . . Read more →
Though Much is Taken, Much Abides
Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. — Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” Read more →
Oh by the Way, Doc . . .
I walked by a TV playing a pharmaceutical advertisement . . . Before taking [drug name], be sure to tell your doctor if you’ve had a liver transplant. Shouldn’t your doctor know if you’ve had a liver transplant? Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Work Hard, Play Hard
You work hard? Is that a boast? Maybe you have to work hard because you lack talent and finesse. You play hard? Are you a bad loser? Are you an even worse winner? How do those two words even go together — “play” and “hard”? Read more →
An Atheist Falls Into a Swamp . . .
[David Hume] once fell into a swamp near the house he was building in Edinburgh. Owing to his reputation among the locals as an atheist, a woman refused to pull him out of it until he recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Belief, which, being practical-minded, he did. But not before he argued with her about whether Christians were obligated to help their enemies. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan Read more →
How I Married My Mother
Oklahoma mom who once married her son will now go to jail for marrying her daughter — Fort Worth Star-Telegram Mom is being jailed for felony incest. I think we can all agree that marrying the son was a wrong thing to do, but I thought incest requires sexual intercourse. The two women are adults, there’s no child abuse, there are no reproductive issues to consider, so if you happen to hit it off with your mom in that way, why not? Look, they even have matching outfits! Read more →