I dial a primrose, they give me a pro

[sovay]

A meme! Via matociquala:

Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.

"I telephoned Ozanne's secretary and said that I needed to see the colonel on an urgent matter, that it would take about an hour and that I would be grateful if Colonel Pollock could be present."

—Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941–1945 (1998)

(The follow-up sentence: "I also requested the use of a blackboard.")

Comments

[selidor]

I'm cheating by skipping to the first sentence that isn't a formula.
The Determination of Orbits, A. D. Dubyago (translated from the Russian by a whole list of authors). Ch. 2. The Problem of Two Bodies.
"We shall not dwell more in detail on hyperbolic motion. Equations (#) through (#) give all that is necessary for calculations."

[sovay]

The Problem of Two Bodies.

That's pretty perfect all on its own.

I have a terrible desire to request a love poem of orbital equations.

[selidor]

Oooh. Poemlet! I'll do something happier later. 'Two-body problem' is shorthand in physics for the troubles of having two partners in the same field, given we all have to move so frequently. Seeing a lot of my friends having worries these days, sigh.

The Problem of Two Bodies

We shall not dwell in more detail, lemma-led and wistful,
there is the commute, here the commutator;
no longer can I convolve this life, project my hope,
sum every fleeting arc to a bound orbit: it resolves nothing.
If I follow you, I fall adjunct to ambition
if you follow me, no chance to keep your calling -
it is a null set, the space of which I speak
the intersection of hearth and home and happiness.
This the price of scribing and scrying the universe:
your continent here, mine half a planet away,
and travel that takes even light seconds, held between.

[sovay]

it is a null set, the space of which I speak
the intersection of hearth and home and happiness.
This the price of scribing and scrying the universe:
your continent here, mine half a planet away,
and travel that takes even light seconds, held between.

Nice.

(I mean, not happy. But beautifully stated.)