I have to admit I love this scene from the movie Airplane! in which Striker, at the cockpit, is thinking to himself in an echoey voice:
I've got to concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. I've got to concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. Hello, hello, hello. Echo, echo, echo. Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon ... Manny Mota, Mota, Mota.
It's been a while since my last blog entry so that scene came to mind when I thought of the audience for these words.
(crickets chirping)
So, what does it mean that I'm writing this? There's the philosophical question about a tree falling in the woods and sound and whether anyone's around to hear it. Another quote, this time from N. David Mermin, Professor of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at Cornell:
We now know that the moon is demonstrably not there when nobody looks.
What am I saying? Not what you think I'm saying, which brings to mind the final quote for today:
Hofstadter's law: it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law.
