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Sunday, February 12, 2023

I am Cubically Culpable

I am a fan of Sacred Cow Shipyards. 

One night, in a fit of fangirl inspiration, I wrote and recorded this... thing. I guess you could call it a fanfic?

Except that I then shared it with the Dockmaster, who liked it enough to publish it to his channel, so it's canon now. 

Anyway, I am responsible for this delightful monstrosity.  


The following synopses are all from Wikipedia:
In geometry, the neusis (νεῦσις; from Ancient Greek νεύειν (neuein) 'incline towards'; plural: νεύσεις, neuseis) is a geometric construction method that was used in antiquity by Greek mathematicians.

Doubling the cube, also known as the Delian problem, is an ancient  geometric problem. Given the edge of a cube, the problem requires the construction of the edge of a second cube whose volume is double that of the first. As with the related problems of squaring the circle and trisecting the angle, doubling the cube is now known to be impossible to construct by using only a compass and straightedge, but even in ancient times solutions were known that employed other tools.

The problem owes its name to a story concerning the citizens of Delos, who consulted the oracle at Delphi in order to learn how to defeat a plague sent by Apollo.  According to Plutarch, however, the citizens of Delos consulted the oracle at Delphi to find a solution for their internal political problems at the time, which had intensified relationships among the citizens. The oracle responded that they must double the size of the altar to Apollo, which was a regular cube.

The answer seemed strange to the Delians, and they consulted Plato, who was able to interpret the oracle as the mathematical problem of doubling the volume of a given cube, thus explaining the oracle as the advice of Apollo for the citizens of Delos to occupy themselves with the study of geometry and mathematics in order to calm down their passions.

According to Plutarch, Plato gave the problem to Eudoxus and Archytas and Menaechmus, who solved the problem using mechanical means, earning a rebuke from Plato for not solving the problem using pure geometry. 
As for the "why"... I dunno, it seemed like a good idea. I even have a half-baked idea for how it fits into the SCSU (Sacred Cow Shipyards Universe): 

The Dockmaster has never specified, but I always assumed that the shipyard has some manner of AI drones to do the work. At some point the Dockmaster thought it might be useful to expose the drones to things like sea shanties on the assumption that it might make them work harder. At the very least, it would be funny to have them all singing "The Wellerman."

One of the drones apparently fancies itself a bit of an artist, dove down the rabbit hole of music to discover filks and fan songs, and ended up with singing The Delian Song.

The Dockmaster isn't sure how he feels about this, especially with that reference to Barney.

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