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;)

alte kaker

ALTERNATIVE SPELLINGS

altakaka, alte kakker, alter kaker, alter kocker, alte kocker, alta kaker, alta kaka

DEFINITIONS

  • elderly person, old-timer [literally "old shitter"] "A crotchety, fussy, ineffectual old man." (Rosten)

EXAMPLE SENTENCES

  • "We'll have to have the program early, so the alte kakers can come."

LANGUAGES OF ORIGIN

Yiddish

ETYMOLOGY

אַלטער קאַקער alter kaker

WHO USES THIS

Jews: Jews of diverse religious backgrounds and organizational involvements
Older: Jews who are middle-aged and older
Ashkenazim: Jews with Ashkenazi heritage

REGIONS

North America

DICTIONARIES

The New Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush (New York, 2003[1968]).
The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words, by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, (Philadelphia, 2001)

NOTES

"Alte" used with "kaker" is incorrect according to Standard Yiddish grammar (alte is feminine and kaker is masculine), but correct in Jewish English. In Standard Yiddish, the phrase would decline as "alter kaker" in nominative and "altn kaker" in accusative and dative. This expression was once vulgar but now is not.

https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/15

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The Unlikely Pair

 
History Page Type: 
Date: 
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Quotes: 
That Oppenheimer and Groves should have worked so well together is really no mystery. Groves saw in Oppenheimer an "overweening ambition" that drove him. He understood that Oppenheimer was frustrated and disappointed; that his contributions to theoretical physics had not brought him the recognition he believed he deserved. This project could be his route to immortality. Part of Groves' genius was to entwine other people's ambitions with his own. Groves and Oppenheimer got on so well because each saw in the other the skills and intelligence necessary to fulfill their common goal, the successful use of the bomb in World War II...They treated each other in special ways. Oppenheimer could at times be sarcastic with students or colleagues who could not keep up with his quick mind. Not so with Groves. He patiently answered whatever query the general asked. On Groves' part he treated Oppenheimer delicately, like a fine instrument that needed to be played just right. ~Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man
J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves after the Trinity Test

General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer were a study in contrasts, yet both were indispensable to the success of the Manhattan Project. Both men were extremely ambitious and overcame personal differences to achieve their common purpose.

 

General Leslie Groves

A West Point graduate, General Leslie Groves was chosen to head the Manhattan Project for the Army Corps of Engineers in September 1942. Prior to his assignment, Groves was in charge of all domestic Army construction during the mobilization period for World War II. The projects included the building of camps, depots, air bases, munitions plants, hospitals, airplane plants, and the Pentagon. Groves oversaw a million men and spent $8 billion on Army construction with a peak month in July 1942 of $720 million, the equivalent of fifteen Pentagons. Groves' proven record of managing complex undertakings made him a logical choice to lead the Manhattan Project.

Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, district engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote of Groves: "First, General Groves is the biggest S.O.B. I have ever worked for. He is most demanding. He is most critical. He is always a driver, never a praiser. He is abrasive and sarcastic. He disregards all normal organizational channels. He is extremely intelligent. He has the guts to make timely, difficult decisions. He is the most egotistical man I know. He knows he is right and so sticks by his decision. He abounds with energy and expects everyone to work as hard, or even harder, than he does... if I had to do my part of the atomic bomb project over again and had the privilege of picking my boss, I would pick General Groves."

 

Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer

At the time of Groves' appointment, J. Robert Oppenheimer was already considered an exceptional theoretical physicist and held teaching positions at the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology. By the fall of 1942 he was deeply involved in exploring the possibility of an atomic bomb. Throughout the previous year he had been doing research on fast neutrons, calculating how much material might be needed for a bomb and how efficient it might be.

In May 1942 Arthur H. Compton chose Oppenheimer to head the theoretical group exploring these questions. Oppenheimer convened a summer study conference at Berkeley in July to assess where the research stood. Many members of this "galaxy of luminaries" would soon be recruited to go to Los Alamos and other Manhattan Project sites.

Oppenheimer was a captivating and charismatic figure that could easily draw people's attention and interest. "We were all completely under his spell," said physicist Philip Morrison, who would follow him to Los Alamos, NM "He was enormously impressive. There was no one like him." Isidor I. Rabi remembered Oppenheimer's mutable and dynamic personality: "He had this mystic streak that could sometimes be very foolish. Sometimes he made foolish judgments and sometimes he just liked to tell tall stories... When he was riding high he could be very arrogant. When things went against him he could play victim. He was a most remarkable fellow."'

 

Dynamic Duo

General Leslie R. Groves

"Oppenheimer had two major disadvantages—he had had almost no administrative experience of any kind, and he was not a Nobel Prize winner," wrote Groves in his memoir Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. However, the Military Policy Committee in charge of the selection could not produce a better candidate, and Groves made the astute decision to designate Oppenheimer as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory.

Another of Oppenheimer's flaws was his troublesome past associations with Communist causes, which Groves ultimately disregarded despite the concerns of some members of the committee. "I have never felt that it was a mistake to have selected and cleared Oppenheimer for his wartime post. He accomplished his assigned mission and he did it well," continued Groves, writing after Oppenheimer's security clearance had been revoked in 1954.

Despite their differences in style, Groves and Oppenheimer became an effective pair. 

For more information, our "Voices of the Manhattan Project" website features interviews with General Groves and Oppenheimer.

 

Related Video: 

Gen. Leslie Groves

The Atomic Heritage Foundation produced a documentary film on the life and work of General Leslie Groves. To purchase the film, visit our online store.
More Historical Resources: 
 
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For no particular reason...

S. J. Perelman

 
  • LanguageSidney Joseph "S.J." Perelman (February 1, 1904 – October 17, 1979) was an American humorist and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He also wrote for several other magazines, including Judge, as well as books, scripts, and screenplays. Perelman received an Academy Award for screenwriting in 1956...
  • http://s j perelman
 
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On 8/22/2020 at 1:14 AM, AdamSmith said:

For no particular reason...

S. J. Perelman

 
  • LanguageSidney Joseph "S.J." Perelman (February 1, 1904 – October 17, 1979) was an American humorist and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He also wrote for several other magazines, including Judge, as well as books, scripts, and screenplays. Perelman received an Academy Award for screenwriting in 1956...
  • http://s j perelman
 

He is also know for writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical "One Touch of Venus.". Famous for "Speak Low" and "That's Him.". Music by Kurt Weill. Director: Elia Kazan 

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Seven Bridges of Königsberg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_Königsberg

Konigsberg_bridges.png
Map of Königsberg in Euler's time showing the actual layout of the seven bridges, highlighting the river Pregel and the bridges

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1736[1] laid the foundations of graph theoryand prefigured the idea of topology.[2]

The city of Königsberg in Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) was set on both sides of the Pregel River, and included two large islands—Kneiphof and Lomse—which were connected to each other, or to the two mainland portions of the city, by seven bridges. The problem was to devise a walk through the city that would cross each of those bridges once and only once.

By way of specifying the logical task unambiguously, solutions involving either

  1. reaching an island or mainland bank other than via one of the bridges, or
  2. accessing any bridge without crossing to its other end

are explicitly unacceptable.

Euler proved that the problem has no solution. The difficulty he faced was the development of a suitable technique of analysis, and of subsequent tests that established this assertion with mathematical rigor.

Euler's analysis

First, Euler pointed out that the choice of route inside each land mass is irrelevant. The only important feature of a route is the sequence of bridges crossed. This allowed him to reformulate the problem in abstract terms (laying the foundations of graph theory), eliminating all features except the list of land masses and the bridges connecting them. In modern terms, one replaces each land mass with an abstract "vertex" or node, and each bridge with an abstract connection, an "edge", which only serves to record which pair of vertices (land masses) is connected by that bridge. The resulting mathematical structure is called a graph.

Konigsberg bridges.png → 7 bridges.svg → Königsberg graph.svg

Since only the connection information is relevant, the shape of pictorial representations of a graph may be distorted in any way, without changing the graph itself. Only the existence (or absence) of an edge between each pair of nodes is significant. For example, it does not matter whether the edges drawn are straight or curved, or whether one node is to the left or right of another.

Next, Euler observed that (except at the endpoints of the walk), whenever one enters a vertex by a bridge, one leaves the vertex by a bridge. In other words, during any walk in the graph, the number of times one enters a non-terminal vertex equals the number of times one leaves it. Now, if every bridge has been traversed exactly once, it follows that, for each land mass (except for the ones chosen for the start and finish), the number of bridges touching that land mass must be even (half of them, in the particular traversal, will be traversed "toward" the landmass; the other half, "away" from it). However, all four of the land masses in the original problem are touched by an odd number of bridges (one is touched by 5 bridges, and each of the other three is touched by 3). Since, at most, two land masses can serve as the endpoints of a walk, the proposition of a walk traversing each bridge once leads to a contradiction.

In modern language, Euler shows that the possibility of a walk through a graph, traversing each edge exactly once, depends on the degrees of the nodes. The degree of a node is the number of edges touching it. Euler's argument shows that a necessary condition for the walk of the desired form is that the graph be connected and have exactly zero or two nodes of odd degree. This condition turns out also to be sufficient—a result stated by Euler and later proved by Carl Hierholzer. Such a walk is now called an Eulerian path or Euler walk in his honor. Further, if there are nodes of odd degree, then any Eulerian path will start at one of them and end at the other. Since the graph corresponding to historical Königsberg has four nodes of odd degree, it cannot have an Eulerian path.

An alternative form of the problem asks for a path that traverses all bridges and also has the same starting and ending point. Such a walk is called an Eulerian circuit or an Euler tour. Such a circuit exists if, and only if, the graph is connected, and there are no nodes of odd degree at all. All Eulerian circuits are also Eulerian paths, but not all Eulerian paths are Eulerian circuits.

Euler's work was presented to the St. Petersburg Academy on 26 August 1735, and published as Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis (The solution of a problem relating to the geometry of position) in the journal Commentarii academiae scientiarum Petropolitanae in 1741.[3] It is available in English in The World of Mathematics.

 
Significance in the history and philosophy of mathematics

 

 
Present state of the bridges

 

 
See also

 

 
References

 

 
External links
 
 

 

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Childhood’s End

Arthur C. Clarke

Chapter 18 Summary

Jeffrey Greggson begins to have dreams six weeks after the tsunami. George wakes up in the middle of the night and sees that Jean is not in bed. He finds her in Jeff’s room, saying that she awakened knowing that Jeff needed her. Jeff describes his dreams, which are not terrifying. He sees a place with a blue sun and tall mountains that are not volcanoes but still are on fire with blue flames.

Karellen and Rashaverak discuss Jeff’s dreams, which they have been observing. They think they know what planet he is seeing. They do not dare question Jeff yet, nor will they interfere in any way. Jeff continues having dreams, but he is fine when he is awake. He continues to dream about other places. He is no longer lonely in his dreams, nor is he afraid. It was only on that first night that he had subconsciously called out to his mother. Karellen and Rashaverak begin to have trouble identifying the planets in Jeff’s dreams, but they know he is going further into the center of the galaxy. Soon they see that he has left the galaxy altogether.

George meets with Rashaverak at his own request. They speak of their first meeting at Rupert Boyce’s party. When Rashaverak asks George why he requested this interview, George tells him that he thinks he already knows. Rashaverak agrees, but wants to hear it from George, stating that the Overlords do not know everything. This surprises George, who thought the aliens were almost omniscient. George begins by speaking of Jeff’s visit to the island psychologist. George never believed that these dreams were just the product of a child’s vivid imagination. He knew there was a rational explanation for it. Rashaverak says that it all started at Rupert’s party, when Jean made contact with her yet to be conceived...

(The entire section is 469 words.)

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https://www.enotes.com/topics/childhoods-end-arthur-c-clarke/chapter-summaries/chapter-18-summary

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