well that tears it. On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 12:18:18 -0700, Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From the, TGIF tears-to-tears dept... or was that tares-to-tears? > > Theodore Sturgeon wrote a fine little story in the Phillip K. Dick tradition of > less-is-more, entitled appropriately: "It Was Nothing - Really!". It is about a man > who tears a sheet of toilet paper, and sees it tear across the middle so that none > of the perforation seems to works according to design. > > Out-of-the-box hypothesis: The perforated section is stronger than the rest of the > sheet, ergo the perforations themselves are the real source of strength. Remove more > of the weaker paper, and it becomes stronger still. Continue ad infinitum, and you > get down to an indestructible substance made of nothing at all. > > The aether, of course... > > Moral of the tail... err, tale. Great discoveries occasionally derive from small > "out-of the-box" observations, even while in the box, combined with "off-the-wall" > logic, hopefully not to be taken literally. What I like to call "near-sequiters". > Usually though, the observer is either the butt of the "end-of-the-roll" joke or > walks out of his bathroom-mediation (aka BM) with little more than a long > paper-trail... > > "So when it happens next time, and you're stuck in some smelly > 'train-spotting-esque' box, having already forgotten to check the available > resources, so to speak, don't just say Damn-it... and do the manual thing. Stop a > minute and think it through. Someone is going to wipe that contented smile of the > smirking mugs of the oil barons of the world, and it could be you" > > Jones > > "Hey, kid, you just saved our lives, you know that?" > "Oh, well, it was nothing really...." > "Was it? Oh well, forget it then." > -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" > > PPS. I missed my pun-op a few days back when the manure-fuel idea flatulated... but > not to be outdone in any bathroom humor contest, I will complement our resident > poets for letting-go of their "inner-ethyl"... > > But of course, Keith may be too young to appreciate the... how shall I say... many > talents? of the irrepressible Ethel Merman... > http://www.claykeck.com/ethel/ > >
-- Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. -G.K. Chesterton
