a strange underwear drawer of their own

Generally, it's hard to be friends with mathematicians. Sure they occasionally provide some useful information. But for the most part, they're smart asses. Like this mathematician I know that I was trying to get to help me think of a practical use for the Goldbach Conjecture should it ever be proved (I like to stress myself out by thinking about problems that can't be solved but that don't involve Pakistan):

I wrote:

I've been taking tests for an hour to see if I pick the golden rectangle out of a series of rectangles and I can't do it. Like, 90% of the population can do it. I'm so depressed.

I've been reading a book about chaos and numbers. Discovered a neat card trick, which is how to suspend a card completely off of a table using only four cards and no glue. And have been caught up in wondering about a practical use for the Goldbach Conjecture.

And, ha ha:

There are three types of people: those who count precisely and those who don't.

I'm bored. When are you getting home?

He wrote:

I'm home. I’m remembering that one time during the week I had an insight about chaos theory, but I’m too rushed right now to articulate it. Remind me later.

The original interest in Goldbach’s Conjecture was to use it as a gravel screen in the search for prime numbers I would assume. But that has probably gone by the boards these days, with modern machine searching algorithms.

I wrote (to be a smart ass):

It's this:

Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes

So the multiplication of 2 primes can be used to encrypt data because it's so hard to figure out what the two original primes were, I was thinking about, if Goldbach's conjecture could be proven to be true is there a practical application.

He wrote:

I know/knew what Goldbach’s conjecture is, and was merely speculating on its usefulness myself. But think of your encryption proposal this way – it will only be useful if the GC remains unproven, just because any proof of the GC is liable to include a calculation engine that will determine the primes involved that sum to a particular value. In other words, you would only have a trustworthy, computable code if the GC were proven. But, if the GC were proven, then its proof could be applied in the deciphering of your encryption. Zero sum game.

Best place to hide stuff is still across the borders of adjacent second order mathematical languages – i.e. book codes and the like, that are generated anew for each message and user.

Though, your underwear drawer can work pretty good, too. No one ever stole my credit card numbers from there.

And since he said "your underwear drawer" (people are normally good at math or english, and, he's a mathematician) I wrote:

Why are you hiding your credit card numbers in my underwear drawer?

You're right. No one looks in there.

It should be noted I don't have an underwear drawer.

He wrote (because he can't admit he's made even an english mistake):

Think of your underwear drawer as my personal version of cloud computing, except that your underwear drawer won’t be subject to repetitive hacking attempts.

Okay. Denial of service attacks, maybe.

Anyway. Everyone should have one. You know... they could arrange a strange underwear drawer of their own.

 Um, what?????

Though, I did laugh about the cloud comment. Reminded me of the obnoxious consultant sitting in his own personal cloud.