Counting Effigy Ponies
As diligent Wonderfuse News and One-Ply readers will undoubtedly know, the highest-ever concentration of burned pony effigies at PDF occurred on Saturday night, when a total of 46 pony effigies were burned, including the infamous Mini-Meta-Pony, which itself included 43 pony effigies.
Some observant readers have noted that the temple effigy itself, titled The Unbridled Circle of Life, contained many pony effigies as decorations around the beautiful structure. But how many ponies would burn with the temple? Wonderfuse News sent its crack team of reporters to find out.
We enlisted the assistance of two nearby PDF participants, Tempissed and Draft Punk, who together counted each pony effigy on the temple structure as they waited (and waited) for the wedding ceremony to begin. When our counts and recounts kept returning inconsistent numbers, we realized there was a fundamental ambiguity in the question that required metaphysical reflection.
You see, dear reader, while the temple effigy indeed contained many pony representations, only some of them were actual wooden structures symbolizing ponies. By our count there were 29 such pony effigies on the structure. However there were also several instances of horse cut-outs, or what our fact-checkers came to call "negative ponies", where the pony representations consisted of the empty space where a pony had been cut out of the wood.
The choice hit us in the face like a shot of pizza malort. Do negative ponies count as burned pony effigies? On the one hand, each of these negative ponies will burn with the structure, and will cease to exist when the structure burns. This consideration suggests that negative ponies should count towards the total. A math purist might argue that negative ponies should subtract from the total, rather than add to it.
On the other hand: does the space taken up by a negative pony actually burn? If we try to count ponies in negative space we might quickly find an infinite number of possible negative ponies, making counting the number of ponies a fool's errand.
Regardless of your stance on negative ponies, we counted 10 negative ponies on the structure. With the 29 positive ponies, the temple contained at most 39 ponies, significantly fewer than the raw spectacle of 46 ponies burned on Saturday. This high-water mark for this community ritual may eventually be beaten, but not before we're kicked out Monday morning.
Some observant readers have noted that the temple effigy itself, titled The Unbridled Circle of Life, contained many pony effigies as decorations around the beautiful structure. But how many ponies would burn with the temple? Wonderfuse News sent its crack team of reporters to find out.
We enlisted the assistance of two nearby PDF participants, Tempissed and Draft Punk, who together counted each pony effigy on the temple structure as they waited (and waited) for the wedding ceremony to begin. When our counts and recounts kept returning inconsistent numbers, we realized there was a fundamental ambiguity in the question that required metaphysical reflection.
You see, dear reader, while the temple effigy indeed contained many pony representations, only some of them were actual wooden structures symbolizing ponies. By our count there were 29 such pony effigies on the structure. However there were also several instances of horse cut-outs, or what our fact-checkers came to call "negative ponies", where the pony representations consisted of the empty space where a pony had been cut out of the wood.
The choice hit us in the face like a shot of pizza malort. Do negative ponies count as burned pony effigies? On the one hand, each of these negative ponies will burn with the structure, and will cease to exist when the structure burns. This consideration suggests that negative ponies should count towards the total. A math purist might argue that negative ponies should subtract from the total, rather than add to it.
On the other hand: does the space taken up by a negative pony actually burn? If we try to count ponies in negative space we might quickly find an infinite number of possible negative ponies, making counting the number of ponies a fool's errand.
Regardless of your stance on negative ponies, we counted 10 negative ponies on the structure. With the 29 positive ponies, the temple contained at most 39 ponies, significantly fewer than the raw spectacle of 46 ponies burned on Saturday. This high-water mark for this community ritual may eventually be beaten, but not before we're kicked out Monday morning.
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