20. Existentially in Poland

By Don

My wife tells me my posts are too long. She only feels that way because she feels obligated to read them. The rest of you should feel no such compunction to do so. Sue, however, you’re right. You do have to read them.

As Dennis pointed out a couple of the rides in Poland have been less than pleasant. Imagine riding over a hundred km on the road from Edmonton to Calgary, only with two lanes not four, no shoulder, more traffic and fewer turns. As you develop white line fever (not the kind Merle Haggard wrote about, but the kind where you sweat and start shaking) hugging the side with a 3 inch drop on one side and a semi truck doing 100 k/hr on the other which is then followed by the inevitable entourage trying to pass him, you may ponder an existential question like, “I wonder if the driver had a fight with his wife this morning before he left and now wants to text her to see if she is home so he can call her and apologize. I wonder, when he reaches over to the right for his phone will he also swerve slightly over to the right, because there is a propensity to do this, and if so, how far to the right will he go? What if he notices and then over corrects into the oncoming traffic? What if he doesn’t notice?”

Now while riding on quiet roads through corn fields, which can get boring after a while, you may ask “What is Reversed Polish Notation, what does it do, why is it ‘Polish’ and really, why is it reversed?” You think no, you wouldn’t ask this but have you ridden through corn fields in Poland? So how do you know? OK, maybe, you retort, but it is not an existential question. But how many engineering students owe their lives to it, as it prevented them from throwing their slide rule out a 3 story window and then jumping out to follow it.

When the engineers of the world gleefully hung up their slide rules and bought their obscenely expenise Hewlett Packard pocket calculators they, the calculator, operated using Reversed Polish Notation. What is it? It is where you first enter the operands and then the operators. So 10 20 4 + * would be 10 plus 20 times 4. This meant the calculator didn’t have to deal with parenthesis. (10+20)*4 is very different than 10+(20*4) which would have been 10 20 4 *+. So why is it Polish? According to Wikipedia “The description “Polish” refers to the nationality of logician Jan Łukasiewicz,who invented Polish notation in 1924″ which separated the operators and operands. Why is it reversed? Good old Jan had the operators before the operands, I mean he did create it in 1924..

God, I can hear it here on the other side of the world and through all the time zones. Geez Don, you should listen to your wife. Why do you think we need to know this? GOD!!!! Well, because it has been a set up. The following is a picture of a Reversed Polish toilet that we had in Pultusk.

Now look at it and think about it. It should not conjure up anything pleasing in your minds eye.

Being Frank

As Ron, Hal and Steve wittingly hinted at in their great comments, the Patron Saint of Uzupiz is Frank Zappa, the leader of Mothers of Invention and father to Dweezil, Moon, Diva and Ahmet. Lyle in his comment pointed out that Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, also had a strong relationship with Frank Zappa. “Zappa and Václav hit it off immediately. Zappa was appointed as “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism”. Yes Marx, Lenin and Stalin; Frank Zappa is placed way higher on the pedestal than you. In fact they took you off the pedestal. Ironic justice. Spend some time reading about it to understand why, just ask Dr. Google about the Velvet Underground and the Czech Republic. It includes Lou Reed.

Literally

As you may or may not know, and if you do you may go back to reading about Donald Trump instead, Frederic Chopin, or Fred Chopping as Dennis and I refer to him, was born in Poland and grew up in Warsaw. He is a big deal here even though at 19 he left, started training in Vienna and ultimately lived in Paris. Today I was reading sign about him saying that he died in Paris but his heart was in Warsaw. Well they mean that literally. Apparently at his death bed request his sister cut his heart out, put it in a jar of Cognac and smuggled it into Poland where it is interned in the Holy Cross Church. So his heart really is in Warsaw. Somehow that does not fit into the category of cute in an absurd but pleasing way.