[Sca-cooks] Re: dropping buttered bread - OT

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 23, 2005, at 6:48 PM, Devra at aol.com wrote:

>         Two Talmudic scholars were debating: Why is it that bread  
> always
> falls buttered side down? One of them (probably not a true scholar,  
> because true
> scholars debate, rather than experiment) took a slice of bread,  
> buttered it,
> and dropped it. And Lo! It fell buttered side UP.
>      Then the other scholar said, 'You buttered the wrong side.'
>
>             Devra, who's a VERY reformed Jew

There's a glorious 1970's short story (or maybe a novella) by a guy  
named Phil Bertoni (again, I think) called "Abandon All Heat, Ye Who  
Enter Here". It posits the theory that Maxwell's Demons are actual  
demons who regulate the laws of probability by, in turn, controlling  
otherwise unpredictable events via thermal updrafts. They create tiny  
winds that cause the bread to land butter side down, because that's  
their job, among other things such as causing the phone to ring when  
you're in the tub, the bus to arrive immediately after you've just  
lit a cigarette or put a quarter in the pay phone, etc.

The story concerns the events in Heaven, on Earth, and in Hell when  
Maxwell's Demons go on strike, causing, among other unlikely  
phenomena, Hell to freeze over, giving greater chances to any  
snowballs that are in the immediate vicinity.

One of the main characters is, as I recall, a mathematician studying  
probability using bread and butter.

Me, I'd just assume that adding enough butter to bread moves the  
center of gravity of the mass toward the buttered side. But then,  
people tell me I'm no fun.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04