Few people realize that John Venn Neumann, the inventor of the Venn diagram, lived here in Palo Alto. He used to play poker with other notable geniuses like Dr Richter, the inventor of the Richter scale, Nathan Oliveira, who invented the nude or if not the nude the idea of Xeroxing your a** on a copy machine, and Hewlett and Packard, in fact they used to play strip poker and do a life drawing session — or was it a collage bee? – -in that famous garage on Addison Street (which is now the world’s most expensive piece of property, or after the Japanese Imperial Palace, if you excuse the digression).

Anyhow, as part of our heritage, staff is required to use a Venn diagram in every report.

For example, here is one from tonite.

Although to the average reader, or citizen, this looks like 4 ideas and a bunch of overlapping ovals, it is actually 10 or 11 separate ideas. That’s the geniousof of it.Tune back in later as I break down ideas, 4 thru 11.

(Note: people think Plastic Alto is about music, but before that I was an English major at Dartmouth; but before that I was the highest scoring student in the honors math lane at Terman Junior High, which was named for the guy who invented the Theremin. Before he left to join the Beech Boys.

Backed with so to speak: Ed “Sharkey” Shikado announced to mixed reaction that we are disbanding the Public Art commission but hiring conceptual artist and my Gunn classmate John Beech to succeed Pasco Sam as head of Utilities: