By Frederick Soddy
For pairs of lips to kiss maybe
Involves no trigonometry.
‘Tis not so when four circles kiss
Each one the other three.
To bring this off the four must be
As three in one or one in three.
If one in three, beyond a doubt
Each gets three kisses from without.
If three in one, then is that one
Thrice kissed internally.
Four circles to the kissing come.
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the center.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There’s now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend’s a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of the squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
To spy out spherical affairs
An oscular surveyor
Might find the task laborious,
The sphere is much the gayer,
And now besides the pair of pairs
A fifth sphere in the kissing shares.
Yet, signs and zero as before,
For each to kiss the other four
The square of the sum of all five bends
Is thrice the sum of their squares.
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We had sleet and snow forecast, so we all slept late, only to wake up and discover that it was merely raining and not even all that cold. We had eggs, veggie bacon, and pecan pancakes for brunch, did various chores, and eventually all took Maddy to work at the very crowded mall, where Paul, Adam, and I remained so we could meet my parents and go see Hidden Figures.
What a joy! It's fantastic -- wonderful acting, lots of humor, nods to the developing civil rights movement without it taking over the women's stories as individuals. Structurally it's a pretty straight-up historical drama, which tends to get overshadowed by Hollywoodesque stuff during awards season unless it's about European royalty, but it's really nicely done.
We were full from popcorn, so we came home afterward and had peanut butter sandwiches eventually for dinner. Having seen the end of the Falcons game, we turned off the middle of the Patriots game to watch Cowboys and Aliens, which we'd only seen once before; it's mediocre yet better than its reputation. From the C&O Canal last April, because I miss them:
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