Letters and Flames

Letters

Dinner at G's new place on Thursday threw up a few ideas.
First was the concept of doing a "number one" or a "number two". I usually just call it "small business" and "big business", but I realised that people all over the world probably have their own euphemisms for the respective calls of nature, and that got me thinking further. I wonder what else we would call it. Perhaps a Brave New World fan would call the "little convenience" Chinese "doing a Delta". A slightly more direct way might simply be to "do a pi" or "do a sigma".

Which leads me to wonder about fraternity (and sorority) names, and why they use Greek letters. Is Singapore in reality run by the Pi Alpha Pi fraternity? Are they being opposed by the Sigma Delta Pi (led by Juan Cheeson?)

I shall try not to think about it too much the next time I drive down the Pi Iota Eta (or is it Epsilon?)

Flames
I saw the fires of Mordor on leaving G's place. I am fairly certain Tolkien saw something similar in his day. I still haven't figured out whether it's a refinery or an incinerator, but either way the flame at the top of a tower is a stark reminder of global warming and how much energy our modern lifestyle consumes.
Which should actually be an incentive to cut this post short and move on quickly, but some things are worth destroying the planet for.