Message #1068

From: David Vanderschel <DvdS@Austin.RR.com>
Subject: Recommended TV: new Futurama
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:54:08 -0500

The latest episode of Comedy Central’s Futurama series, titled
"Lethal Inspection", should be especially amusing for members of
the 4D_Cubing Group. Rebroadcast times in next week: Monday
11:30PM, Tuesday 7:30PM, Thursday 8:30PM - all Central Daylight
Savings Times. (I also believe you can already find a torrent
for this program.) (The introductory Sith Invasion Recreation
segment does not bear on what I consider interesting about this
show.)

Hermes and Bender go to Hermes’s cubicle at the Central
Bureaucracy. In the Cubicle Room, we find what could be regarded
as a 3D presentation an order-3 6-pile. I.e., a 3x3x3 x 3x3x3
pile of cubicles. More specifically, it is a 3x3x3 pile of 3x3x3
piles of cubicles. If we call the 3x3x3 piles of cubicles
"pods", then the 3x3 slices of pods in the pile of pods can be
twisted and the 3x3 slices of cubicles in any of the pods can
also be twisted. It is not entirely analogous to a 6D analogue
Rubik’s Cube because the cubicles always retain their upwards
orientation. (The animation of the pod twists does not show this
quite correctly.) Furthermore, a twist in a pod is not applied
uniformly to all pods, as would be required for a faithful
analogy to the order-3 6-puzzle. Nevertheless, it is an
interesting animation to observe. One may wonder how the idea
was conceived.

The show also includes more amusing in-jokes than usual for us
techies.

Regards,
David V.