Bert and Ernie makes Bernie and the Shell game...

Bear with me and see this through as I make my point...This one is interesting and fun...

Bert and Ernie were basically the only Muppets to appear in the Sesame Street pilot episode, which was screen tested to a number of families in July 1969. Their brief appearance was the only part of the pilot that tested well, so it was decided that not only should Muppet characters be the "stars" of the show, but would also interact with the human characters, something that was not done in the pilot.

Bert and Ernie are roommates. Bert is good friends with a pigeon named Bernice, and is President of the National Association of W Lovers, a club dedicated to the letter "W". I am unclear if he is a fan of George Bush...Ernie's performance of "Rubber Duckie," wherein he sings affectionately about his squeaking toy duck and the joy it brings him during bathtime, became a modest mainstream hit, reaching No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1970.

A typical Bert and Ernie skit follows one of two similar patterns, both beginning with Ernie devising a hare-brained idea and Bert calmly attempting to talk him out of it. Usually this ends with Bert losing his temper and Ernie remaining oblivious to his own bad idea. Sometimes Ernie's idea miraculously turns out to be correct, much to Bert's evident frustration.

An example of a Bert and Ernie skit is the banana in my ear joke:

Bert: "Hey, you've got a banana in your ear!"
Ernie: "What?"
Bert: "I said, YOU'VE GOT A BANANA IN YOUR EAR!"
Ernie: "What? I can't hear you; I've got a banana in my ear!"

Bert: "Hey, you've got a banana in your ear!"
Ernie: "I know, I'm keeping the alligators away."
Bert: "But there aren't any alligators on Sesame Street!"
Ernie: "I know, it's working!"




No, this is not a picture of Ernie's brain on drugs, but an Abalone mollusk. Scientists have identified a group of genes, in the tropical marine Abalone mollusk, that control the formation of shapes and color patterns on the shell. A study published in the open access journal BMC Biology reveals that the shape and color patterns on the shell of the mollusk mirror the localized expression of specific genes in the mantle, a layer of skin situated just below the shell. The authors of the study identify one gene in particular that controls the formation of blue dots on the shell of the mollusk.

Another report found in the publication, Nature, done by University of California, Berkeley, researchers, indicates that we share the same genes that have been responsible for establishing the left-right asymmetry of animals for 500-650 million years, originating in the last common ancestor of all animals with bilateral body organization, creatures that include everything from worms to humans.

If you look at the the myriad of pictures you can find of our universe of different galaxies and other constellation formations you can compare them with those from snowflakes, to seashells, to crystals, cauliflower, coastlines, and broccoli and blood vessels. Our world, as well as the universe, possess some incredible patterns. Nature is filled with seemingly unlimited examples of amazing algorithmic arithmetic art.




A fractal, as seen above, is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. This term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.

Recursion, in mathematics and computer science, is a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. The term is also used more generally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are almost parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of recursion, like the infinite mirror exhibit at the local county fair.

Ebber, found in the urban dictionary means: The ultimate, above all, astounding, incredible, the best, top, something that nothing is better than. Perhaps we need a new definition, through a fractal style of symantics?

Let's use the recursion definition and combine Bert and Ernie to make, Bernie. Then, let's look at a couple of repeating situations, in a similar way whose functions are applied and nearly mirror themselves on some financial parallel plane. I'm talking about Bernie Madoff (pronounced Made-Off) and Bernie Ebbers.

Bernie Ebbers was the CEO of WorldCom (later known as MCI) which filed for bankruptcy in 2002, the largest bankruptcy in US history at the time. In 2005, Bernie was found guilty for his role in accounting fraud that cost $11 billion, and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison - the longest term for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company at the time, says CNN.

Bernie Madoff, without regurgitating all of the latest dailies, was the CEO of the largest Hedge fund that was recently discovered as a 40 year long Ponzi scheme that bilked the investors to the tune of $50 Billion. A new world record!!

Now, according to the urban dictionary, Ebber is the grandest of them all...well, it seems that definition is now needing a change to a new Bernie.




This, the 229th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!


(c)Copyright 2009 Doug Boggs