Dromes, Phones and Graphs

Early in September in this year of quadrennial madness, I had written to Dr. H.K. Wombat at his retreat in the Alpujarras in Spain for his prediction of the outcome of the Reagan-Mondale contest. Weeks elapsed without an answer, and I supposed that the worthy marsupial had either gone walkabout or was again engaged in the matters of international intrigue which had taken him to Spain in the first place

\u27Or\u27 Son Visits The Escorial

I wended my way down the walk to The Wombat\u27s winter wickiup overlooking the Wrapahammock River. It had stormed the night before and the landscape was covered with what Iranians (the whilom Persians) call barf, but when we English-speakers more sensibly refer to as snow. The Wombat\u27s chatelaine, Pocahontas-like in a feather chaplet, purringly raised the weighty woolen blanket serving as a door to admit me. Gazing on her feline svelteness and chrysoberyl eyes I reflected that my friend must be a secret Encratite or Hieracite not have married this direction descendant of the Marquis de Carabas\u27 right bower

Good-Bye, Dr. Wombat!

Wombat Manor had always had an air of distinction that set it apart from any other house, but now in the dying afternoon sunshine, even after a surprise Southern California September thunderstorm, its windows blankly reflected the light of the declining daystar and seemed to have lost their whilom sparkle

Beyond Malayalam?

We wordsters owe a debt of gratitude to the thousands of indefatigable delvers in the mines of language who bring out the ore which we smelt to fashion our tools and toys. Let me illustrate this by singling out an important and fascinating book by C. F. and F. M. Voegelin, a husband and wife team of linguisticians, called Classification and Index of the World\u27s Languages in the Foundations of Linguistics Series under the editorship of Prof. Charles F. Hockett of Cornell University, a contributor to Word Ways, distinguished linguistician, composer, poet, and doughty marshal of the hosts of the Hockettites in their jihad against the Chomskyites

Nomen Est Omen

The last time Dr. Wombat invited me over for strawberries and cream I finally got into a discussion about his title with him. I furry phascolome possesses several doctorates, which he declines to discuss in any detail, but he did enlighten me about his iatriatrical specialty, which he considered his most trivial, but at the same time most lucrative

Ultracold polarized Fermi gas at intermediate temperatures

We consider non-zero temperature properties of the polarized two-component Fermi gas. We point out that stable polarized paired states which are more stable than their phase separated counterparts with unpolarized superfluid region can exist below the critical temperature. We also solve the system behavior in a trap using the local density approximation and find gradually increasing polarization in the center of the system as the temperature is increased. However, in the strongly interacting region the central polarization increases most rapidly close to the mean-field critical temperature, which is known to be substantially higher than the critical temperature for superfluidity. This indicates that most of the phase separation occurs in the fluctuation region prior to superfluidity and that the polarization in the actual superfluid is modest.Comment: Final published versio

Unsherlocking Unsherlock

We were seated side by side on a bisellium, Dr. Wombat and I, before a tea wagon bearing an elegant silver tea service and such necessaries of life as fresh apricots, sour cream, baklava, Sachertorten, chocolate truffles, and any number of soft and fragrant cheese. I had just crossed my legs and The Wombat had just leant over to pick up a necessity

A Balancing Act

As the heavy oaken door to Wombat Manor swung open to reveal the svelte outline of its laird\u27s chatelaine mine eyne dazzled and became fixed upon the vertical line of quivering chatoyance issuing from the depths of the baroque chrysoberyl ferronniere which, like a third eye, made up with her own two a trefoil whose threefold reflection of the waning January sun distilled the essence of light. Her civilized purr broke through my optical enchantment, and as she pressed into my hands an elegant little hamper of ample weight I found myself being given subtle instructions supplementing the telephonic message that had brought me thither

A Comber Comes a Cropper

It was along toward the autumn of the year that I found Dr. Wombat, the learned logothere, lying reading under the spreading cover of a beech, a picnic basket at his side. Surveying his classic pose I remarked that he should be reading Virgil\u27s Eclogues

Gypsy Hobby Gry

As I dismounted from my mule in the courtyard in front of the low two-storeyed gray-stone farmhouse, the windowless door opened and out stepped a besmocked Dr. Wombat. Greeting me and my mule with equal cordiality, he ushered the latter into a spacious room on the ground floor and me to a cozy parlor on the second where Mlle, de Carabas was roasting chestnuts. Soon we were all seated before the grateful fire, drinking eggnog, and exchanging news. The masia was about twenty miles inside Spain from Port d\u27Oo