OT: bridges
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, William Pitcock wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 19:12 +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 12:49:50PM -0500, William Pitcock wrote:
> > > Have you ever heard the fable concerning a father, a son and a donkey?
> > > In a nutshell, first, nobody rides down the road on the donkey, and
> > > instead lead him with a rope. People criticized them for doing so, e.g.
> > > "why not let the kid ride on top of the donkey?"
> > >
> > > So, the father told the kid to ride the donkey. Then people criticized
> > > them again, for not letting the father ride the donkey instead. So, they
> > > switched again. Then people criticized that too, so they wound up
> > > carrying the donkey. Eventually, they reached a stream and fell in the
> > > water because there was too much weight in once place on the bridge they
> > > were crossing.
> >
> > Wouldn't that happen whether they were riding or carrying the donkey?
>
> Mathematically, probably. But this is just a fable, so the laws of
Quite the opposite. Load distribution CAN matter a damn great deal.
The fable could be correct, if the bridge it describes is a weak one.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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