from "How the World Was Saved"
One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could
create anything
starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to
make needles,
then nankeens and negligess, which it did, then nail the lot to
narghiles filled with
nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his
instructions
to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it
produce, one after
the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses,
nymphs, naiads, and
natrium. This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably
irritated, demanded an
explanation.
“Never heard of it,” said the machine.
“What? But it’s only sodium. You know, the metal, the
element . . .”
“Sodium starts with an s, and I work only in n.”
“But in Latin it’s natrium.”
“Look, old boy,” said the machine, “if I could do
everything starting with
n in every possible language, I’d be a Machine That Could Do
Everything in the
Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts
with n in
one foreign language or another. It’s not that easy. I can’t go
beyond what you
programmed. So no sodium.”
--Stanislaw Lem
in The Cyberiad
"He's the kind of guy who can brighten
a room . . . ."
--Milton Berle
Halvard Johnson
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http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
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