Eigenvalue Enthusiast Bumper Sticker

Once upon a time there was a village, and next to the village was a river. The river did not flow from north to south nor east to west. Neither did it flow from south to north nor west to east. It just flowed the way it did and the villagers never gave it a moment's thought. This because all roads in the village lay either parallel to the river or at right angles to it. If a stranger appeared, say, asking directions to the wenchkeep, a villager might respond thusly: "Good Sir, you walk toward the river three blocks, along the river four blocks, then away from the river for a block." Here in the telling the villager would pause, then hook a thumb though the button-hole in his hair shirt and look wistfully off into the distance. "There you may procure the finest wenches in all the land," he would proudly beam. One day the King came to town. The King brought with him a Sorcerer and the Sorcerer brought with him a device. The device looked to be a pocket watch, but on the face - where the numbered hours should have appeared - were inscribed only the names of the four conjectural winds, in clockwise ordered North, East, South, and West. Above these floated a black needle, which by unknown majick did always point to North, nonirregardless of which however way the Sorcerer waved it about. Clearly, this was an evil thing, and the villagers began to wonder aloud just what the heck the NSF had been doing with all those chickens and wool and other tax sundry they had demanded over the years. The King raised a fisted glove, silencing the twittering of the crowd. "My people!" he called out. "Henceforth shall ye navigate by this device, for it imposes upon the land a dividing up into north-south and east-west directions. You shall use these directions, and these directions are the ones you shall use. No more of this river-direction talk, or whatever the heck it is you backwater yahoos call your primitive system of circumnavigation." Upon hearing the King's proclamation. a great roar came from the crowd. Ramsock the Barrel Maker roared loudest of all. "But, Sire!" he roared. "Your system of dividing-up is unnatural! Consider ye this: at present, should need arise, say, to send my barrels to the bagelry, I simply tell the barrel-herders to go downstream for a furlong, then away from the river for seven blocks. Using your Sorcerer's devilry, "downstream" will become south-east, "away from the river" will become south-west and "toward the river" north-east. Or is it south-south-east or north-south-west? I know not, for who can reckon such things?" Ramsock turned to face the crowd. "Who here amoung us today are capable of these Pythagorean machinations?" Ramsock motioned to Dipthong the Miller. "You, Dipthong?" And then to Klaxxon the Barkeep. "Or you, Klaxxon? Verily, King, we can barely keep the less dolty amoungst us from coupling with the livestock!" There followed a chorus of spittle-flecked disparagement directed against the King, accompanied by obscene gesturing and suggestions demonstrating a profound ignorance of anatomy. "You are attacking our values!" Ramsock shouted over the din, now beating a pitchfork against his breast for dramatic effect. "You are attacking EIGEN values!" Ramsock bellowed, this time using his native tongue which we've assumed is Germanic for illustrative purposes. The King, though dismayed with this rather ham-fisted third act, recognized the need to wrap things up. Thus did he relent and permit the villagers to navigate according to their simple system of eigenvalues for the rest of their days. The End.