The Bits

With apologies to Edgar Alan Pogle.


Learn some math by using bits,
Abstract bits!
Look how well into my brain the one and zero fits,
How they toggle, toggle, toggle in the bright fluorescent light
Of the classroom where profs thunder,
"It's not error, it's a wonder:
One plus one is ten, all right!"
Counting twos, twos, twos,
It's the radix used by Zuse,
Til the number overflows and makes twos-complement'ry fits,
Of the bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits,
Of the adding and the padding of the bits.

Now define some useful bits,
Carry bits!
Just build a J-K flip-flop and you'll find a bool var fits.
In an adder (full, not half; don't repeat that newbie gaffe)
It announces its result with great panache.
What a stream of data pours from dynamic RAM, and cores,
And SanDisk flash,
Oh, unless it's on the fritz,
What a gush of open/closed, true/false, and dahs and dits,
How it thrills! How it fills all your memory! How it kills
Bandwidth til you're taking pills
For the shifting and the drifting of the bits, bits, bits,
Of the bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits,
Of the twiddling and the fiddling of the bits.

Feel the terror of the bits,
Quantum bits!
What a world of strangeness as the light traverses slits,
Among dice not rolled by God, we've lost parity, how odd!
Now I cannot seem to get a dial tone,
And we're never certain that
The life of Schrodinger's cat
Is quite known,
And the boffin, ah, the boffin
Who comes up with this stuff off in
Goedel space,
And who, droning, droning, droning
To make good his clever case
Caused the space-time that old Einstein lived for
To become erased.
I can't call a man a hero
Who says "It's not one or zero,
It is both."
And the universe, it roars,
As it pours, pours, pours
Cosmic rays upon the bits
And their value strangely flits
From reacting to the blitz,
Til their p-n junction quits
Over time, time, time
As their MTBF's climb,
Til you're picking at your zits.
Damn those bits!
Over time, time, time
As their MTBF's climb
To the jangling of the bits,
Of the bits, bits, bits,
To the mangling of the bits,
Over time, time, time
Til your furrowed browline knits
From computing every prime,
To the shaking of the bits,
Of the bits, bits, bits,
To the breaking of the bits,
Of the bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits, bits,
To the thrashing and the smashing of the bits.