The Deacon’s Masterpiece
I’ve mentioned this poem a couple of times before.
Given that, once again, it’s All Saints’ Day, I think it’s time to hear it (or read it) one more time.
Eddie Albert reads "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay"
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
Space Awesome! Thanks @jaybirdReport
Is it OK to yet “Timber!” in a crowded shay?Report
It never occurred to me before, but this, written in 1858, has a very similar idea to Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, from 1845. In that story, a dying man is hypnotized, and kept in that state until death, and then long afterward. When his body is finally released from the hypnotic state, it instantly undergoes months of decay, and turns into a stinking, rotten puddle.Report
I’ve never connected those but, yeah. “Artificially prolonging the time before when things fall apart will result in catastrophic failure.”
One of the funniest (but true) things I’ve read on this was that Henry Ford sent a team to junkyards across the country to find the parts that never, ever broke. He figured that he could spend a little less effort on making those parts as good as he was making them.Report
I wonder if Microsoft ever did that kind of thing. “We’re spending way too much effort fixing slow memory leaks in Excel. They’ll never be a problem because Windows is going to crash every couple of days anyway.”Report