A clip of Charles Fleischer, a stand-up comic, wearing an endigitted blazer and performing a routine with a lot of numerology in it:
I think the very first joke in this is funny and concise, but it quickly degenerates into a kind of sub-Robin-Williams “I talk loudly and quickly and change accents a lot and am kind of manic, is it funny yet? No? LOUDER, QUICKER, MORE ACCENTS!” schtick.
But the joke is on us, because Fleischer’s not kidding about his theory of “moleeds.” In 2005 he gave a TED talk about it. This is a weird and in some ways uncomfortable thing to watch — the audience still thinks they’re watching a comedy routine, and just keeps chuckling while Fleischer argues, with ever-increasing fervor, that the equation 27 x 37 = 999 somehow explains mirror symmetry and the theory of Calabi-Yau manifolds.
The talk doesn’t cast TED in the best light, to be honest. Don’t they have someone on staff who can do some minimal vetting of talks that claim to be about math?
(Note: there is always the possibility that Fleischer’s whole act is an extravagantly thorough Kaufmannesque send-up of people’s tendency to attach themselves to meaningless patterns and theories. But it doesn’t read that way to me.)
Quomodocumque 