Ken's blog

Mr. Jones, the math teacher, was told by his wife Molly to go to farmer Elmer Sudd’s grocery store to buy some eggs as she wanted to bake a cake for their son Seymour’s birthday.

Mr. Jones puttered out of the house in his loafers and headed for Elmer Sudd’s store by the farm.

“Mr. Sudd, do you have some eggs for sale,” inquired Mr. Jones politely, adjusting his thick-lensed glasses on his bulky nose.

“Mr. Jones, you flunked my son Homer in math. That’s why he didn’t graduate from high school this year,” growled farmer Sudd, fixing Mr. Jones with beady eyes.

Mr. Jones shuffled uncomfortably in front of the shop counter and began polishing his glasses with great concentration, checking the level of polish against the ceiling light every now and then.

“Yes, well… that was very unfortunate,” stammered Mr. Jones, “but your son Homer got all the problems wrong on the final exam, and spilled ink on my shirt – so I had no choice,” he apologized.

“But, please, do you have any eggs for sale?” repeated Mr. Jones. “My wife will be very angry if I show up without any eggs for the cake which she is baking for my son Seymour’s birthday,” appealed Mr. Jones.

“Is that so, Mr. Jones. I do have some eggs and you can have them if you can solve a problem I read in Reader’s Digest that should be simple for a math teacher,” said farmer Sudd with malicious grin.

“Very well, what’s this problem?” inquired Mr. Jones timidly.

“The product of the eight divisors of the number of eggs I have is 331776,” said farmer Sudd with a smile twisted halfway to his ear.

“If you can tell me how many dozen eggs I have, I will sell them to you for a premium price, Mr. Jones, so you can make your wife happy.”

Mr. Jones stopped polishing his glasses, pulled out a Casio calculator and tapped the keys ten times, after which he announced the correct dozen of eggs to farmer Sudd.

“Hmmm… Homer, get ready, I’m sending you to summer school to learn math,” announced farmer Sudd to Homer skulking in a corner.

Can you work out how many dozen eggs farmer Sudd had?

In the late afternoon of a sunny day, Jack sat under a spreading, umbrella-like tree on a campus hill studying his economics textbook and pondering on a problem assigned to him. Jack scratched his head and began to yawn and gaze into the distance.

Then, Jill walked barefoot up the hill on the verdant grass. “You look puzzled, Jack. What’s up,” she said with a big dimpled smile.

“I can’t figure out this economics problem professor Thrombastus von Vogelkopf assigned me,” Jack wailed.

“Tell me about it,” offered Jill and sat down, pulling up the legs of her tight jeans to get comfortable.

“Well, in this problem there is a Maya Insecurities Corp. which sells papers it calls insecurities, and last year they had a turnover of one type of insecurity to the value of 23,887.09 dollars. This year, sales of the  insecurity rose to 43,445.89 dollars. So the professor wants me to figure out how much the insecurity concerned costs, and how many of it were sold each year,” Jack explained in frustration.

What do you think about that, Jill? Any ideas?” he moaned.

“Doesn’t the professor like you, Jack,” said Jill with a sympathetic tone. “What did you do or say to him, Jack?” she said with a knowing look.

“Well, I did kind of say that ever since the gold standard was dropped modern economic theory, practice and structure can be compared to a house of cards and a Ponzi scheme on a large scale promoted and taught by unscrupulous types with little concern for the human race, and that it would eventually lead to a big crash causing a grand depression and large-scale suffering – even another world war,” said Jack sincerely.

“I told him that incorruptible gold is the metal of the powerful Sun, imaginary values are the stock in trade of the deceptive Moon, where justice is a forgotten concept,” explained Jack. “From the look on his face, I believe he didn’t appreciate my point of view,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Ok, I get the picture,” said Jill, and burst out laughing. “I am taking a class in number theory, Jack, where I have learned things that can help you with this problem. And what will you give me in exchange for this, Jack?” She briefly pursed her lips and arched an eyebrow.

Can you help Jill work out Jack’s economics problem and find the value and amount of the insecurity sold for each of these years?