...And so you've got thirteen tens,
And you take away seven,
And that leaves five...

Well, six actually,
But the idea is the important thing!

I responded to Brad,

But I don't like being compared to New Math. I feel more like the Oracle of Delphi these days. Surely you remember the Oracle of Delphi-back before Eisenhower? Anyway, in those days gods and goddesses, warriors and philosophers, poets and sportscasters would make the pilgrimage to Delphi to pose their questions to the Oracle who would, after a few tokes on some killer weed, render an answer:

``Characterising all the relevant criteria into a cost/benefit matrix and performing a cross-tabulation of correlations between free variables and results yields convincing evidence, with three sigma significance, of a causal relationship between the proposed courses of action and the spectrum of consequent outcomes within the operative time frame.''

Then the questioner would go off and do what they intended to do in the first place and get screwed anyway.

``Hey John, whaddya think of scrapping AutoCAD and going into the COBOL compiler business?''

``I think it sucks.''

(Exeunt.)

(Later, in a meeting.)

``I asked John about it, and he called it a worthy aspiration....''