Seriously though, estimation game time: what is the genus of the earth?
Do we need to know the amounts of every:
Tunnel
Bridge
Underpass
Cave with two or more openings
Car???
Arches in Arches, the national park?
????
what about the space between atoms
Hmmmmm not counting it
Okay but
Like the Earth definitely isn’t a torus but,
I believe I remember learning in one of my astronomy courses that a torus is gravitationally stable so like,
Even though you’d need some pretty bizarre conditions for one to form and one or two asteroids could disrupt them and cause them to collapse into a sphere,
And so they’d be incredibly rare,
There could be toroidal planets out there.
And now I want to draw one instead of getting caught up on number theory. Crap.
In the spring, I got my septum pierced for my birthday. My friend who has his septum pierced went with me. The shape of my nose made it difficult for the piercer to get his clamps in my nose. So he did it without the clamps. And he did it crooked. Well. Crap.
So he went ahead and tried again, with the clamps this time even though it was uncomfortable to get them up there and they hurt a little- much more than the needle, which I barely felt. But whatever. I didn’t get my nose pierced because I wanted to be comfortable. And this time he pierced it straight and all is well and it looks great.
So I go back to school. And of course it’s the first thing Dr. W. notices about me when I’m chilling in her office. So I explain to her what happened, and how the second time the hole lined up on one side with the old hole but not on the other. Which led me to a very important question. Dr. W., how many holes are in my nose?
But of course she doesn’t know. She’s an analyst and a mathematical physicist. She wants me to go find Dr. K., the topologist in the department. But I’m like no, I’m not gonna go ask Dr. K. how many holes are in my nose I barely know him. So I draw these diagrams on her whiteboard and we think about it a while.
And then we hear Dr. K. in the hall, and Dr. W. says, go get him, you don’t have to say it’s your nose just show him the drawings. So I did. And we got Dr. K. to explain to us how many holes were in these shapes I drew on the board. Turns out it’s either two or three, depending on your definition of hole.
And then when we’re done, Dr. W. says to Dr. K., “That’s Lee’s nose!” And he’s like. What. “Her nose!” Her wot. And I had to explain what had happened. And Dr. K. was not amused about having been tricked into discussing the topology of my nose. And he left. And Dr. W. and I laughed about it for about twelve years.
Amazing
Alright, let’s go internet!
I have 6 piercings, so my genus is g=(Humans)+6, naturally.
This scienceblr does a fantastic job of discussing “the human genus problem.” I won’t spoil its conclusions here–go read it! It is slightly NSFW (as topology ought to be) so be warned.
The genus of the “average human body”(?) is, however, a matter of conjecture. There is a fair amount debate, which centers around what constitutes a “hole.”
Iron in the Sand 