From MTROTH@JRVAX.BPA.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Oct 14 03:33:41 1994
To: Sueling_Cho@ccm.ch.intel.com, rodden@cats.ucsc.edu, adam at xent dot com,
        anndik@ccit.arizona.edu
Subject: Forwarded Humor about Butter...

From:	SMTP%"bfong@sdcc3.UCSD.EDU" 13-OCT-1994 18:04:30.98
To:	MTROTH
CC:	
Subj:	Auntie Gravity (fwd)

From: bfong@sdcc3.UCSD.EDU (TIGGER)
Message-Id: <9410140104.AA07334@sdcc3.UCSD.EDU>
Subject: Auntie Gravity (fwd)
To: mtroth@bpa.arizona.edu (Matthew Troth)
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 18:04:25 -0700 (PDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21]
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3292      

> THE SECRET OF ANTIGRAVITY...
> ------------------------------------------------
> 
> If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the
> floor butter-side down.  If a cat is dropped from a window
> or other high and towering place, it will land on its feet.
> 
> But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side
> up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window?
> Will the cat land on its feet?  Or will the butter splat on
> the ground?
> 
> - ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be
> able to deduce the obvious result.  The laws of butterology demand
> that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of
> feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash its furry back.
> If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to
> resolve this paradox.  Therefore it simply does not fall.
> 
> That's right, you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get),
> you have discovered the secret of antigravity!  A buttered cat will,
> when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of
> cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium.  This equilibrium
> point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing
> lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.
> 
> Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this
> principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system.  The
> loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of
> several hundred tabbies.
> 
> The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the
> bread off their backs they will instantly plummet.  Of course the cats
> will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good,
> since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of
> red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.
> 
> And now a few words on solving the problem of creating a ship using the
> aforementioned anti-gravity device.
> 
> One could power a ship by means of cats held in suspended animation
> (say, about 
> -190 degrees Celsius) with buttered bread strapped to their backs,
> thus avoiding
> the possibility of collisions due to tempermental felines.  More
> importantly,
> how do you steer, once the cats are all held in stasis?
> 
> I offer a modest proposal:
> 
> We all know that wearing a white shirt at an Italian restaurant is a
> guaranteed way to take a trip to the laudromat.  Plaster the outside of
> your ship with white shirts.  Place four nozzles symmetrically around
> the ship,
> which is, of course, saucer shaped.  Fire tomato sauce out in
> proportion to the directions you want to go.  The ship, drawn by the
> shirts, will automatically follow the sauce.  If you use t-shirts, you
> won't go as fast as you would by using, say, expensive dress shirts.
>  This does
> not work as well in deep gravity wells, since the tomato sauce (now
> falling down
> a black hole, perhaps) will drag the ship with it, despite the counter
> force of
> the anti-gravity cat/butter machine.  Your only hope at that point is to
> jettison enormous quantities of Tide.  This will create the well-known
> Gravitational Tidal Force.
>