Let Pedestrians Determine the Walkways:
A new green college campus was built, but one thing was still debated:
Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?
Some felt the walkways should be around the edges, to leave the center green and untouched.
Some felt the walkways should cut diagonal, connecting all buildings to all buildings.
One professor had the winning idea: Don’t make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away, showing us where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.
Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?
Some felt the walkways should be around the edges, to leave the center green and untouched.
Some felt the walkways should cut diagonal, connecting all buildings to all buildings.
One professor had the winning idea: Don’t make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away, showing us where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
| — | H. L. Mencken |
“It dawned on him that I was unpredictable and might do things about which he didn’t give a hoot.”
| — | Benoit Mandelbrot |
“Let them Eat Chaos”
| — | This is a really cool title I saw in Pinterest. Posted by Colin Bills. It is of course, reminiscent of the famous and possibly apocryphal quote of Marie Antoinette “Let them Eat Cake” during the French Revolution. |
“We live entangled in webs of endless deceit, in a highly indoctrinated society, where elementary truths are easily buried”
| — | Noam Chomsky |
“Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”
| — | Benoit Mandelbrot |
“Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a “correct” one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena.”
| — | George E.P. Box |
