Deep in the Hole

Denis

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2004
Messages
1,707
Stupid math. Why can't it just be easy?

WE'RE ALL HERE BECAUSE WE'RE NOT ALL THERE,
OR: DEEP IN THE HOLE

A long, puzzling title like this and I don't have an introduction.
Sorry. Best I can do is throw in a question and a thought. Then I'll
jump right in the meat of this philosophical masterpiece. Perhaps I
should grow a beard, get myself a pair of them intellectual rimless
glasses and roll my eyes as if I'm hurting from an overload of brain
cells.

THE QUESTION
------------
If you yell "JUMP" and the spider jumps, then you cut off the spider's
hind legs and yell "JUMP" but the spider doesn't jump, does this mean
the spider hears with its hind legs?

THE THOUGHT
-----------
It is not possible to look right and left by looking harder straight
ahead, or to dig a hole in a different place by digging the present
hole deeper.

We are all in a hole.
---------------------
And the hole is in the wrong place. We dig harder, faster, with
improved modern methods, but the hole remains in the wrong place. It
does not matter how obvious this is to most diggers: it is easier to
keep digging in the same hole than start over.

Getting holes in the head.
--------------------------
Education is designed to make future diggers appreciate the holes that
have been dug by their betters. Nothing new is learned: teachers
already knew... and proudly we graduate. Certified diggers with full
acceptance of the old holes.

Downward, Ho!
-------------
The new work force arrives on the scene with enthusiasm, gung ho,
updated and dynamical views, only to jump in the same holes, replace
tired old diggers... and the hole keeps getting deeper and deeper.

How low can you go!
-------------------
The shovels of logic carry on. The digging becomes smoother, better
organized. Progress is enlarging the hole, reward is getting in
deeper. A comfortable familiarity goes hand in hand with a well-worked
hole.

Holy expertise there, Batman!
-----------------------------
Experts are brought in to evaluate our digging. An expert is an expert
because he understands the hole better than anyone else, except a
fellow expert, with whom it is necessary to disagree, in order to
produce as many experts as disagreements. You find them sitting
happily at the bottom of the deepest holes, far from interested in
leaping out and considering where to start a better hole.

Shut up and keep digging.
-------------------------
Now and then, a brave digger will get official permission to start
digging elsewhere. Slowly but surely his hands and feet become bounded
with cold metallic red tape, while tons of rules and regulations crush
the ambition out of him. Finally broken, gratefully does he return to
the old hole.

Ain't gonna dig, no more no more.
---------------------------------
Gosh, I'm finished but I'm stuck again: I don't have an ending. Sorry.
Best I can do is lay on you a Probability and a Fact.

THE PROBABILITY
===============
Somewhere in North America, right at this moment, someone is wrapping
half an onion in cellophane paper.

THE FACT
========
If everybody on earth ate a Quarter Pounder today, the universal
intake speed would be 45.2 cows per second.

Note: the above calculation assumes 300 pounds of hamburger meat per
cow, which translates into 1,200 Quarter Pounders.

Source: the head butcher at Saslove's Meat Market.

Denis Borris.
 
Top