MSGID: 1:153/716.0 14d33402   
   REPLY: 2:221/6.0 610bbd62   
   CHRS: IBMPC 2   
   Hi, Anton!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:   
      
   AS>  Remember the book about witchcraft that the doctor shows    
   AS>  to the heroine in Suspiria? It has that double spacing    
   AS>  between sentences, and it looks good!   
      
      
             No, I don't.  But I see my copy of the KJV of the Bible, published   
   in 1950, also uses it.  AFAIC the traditional method of typesetting... which   
   folks later duplicated as best they could on the typewriter... is pleasing to   
   the eye while enabling the reader to slow down & think about the content.    
   I'll stop to admire a nice turn of phrase in whatever I happen to be reading,   
   and the KJV of the Bible is my "go-to" version unless I need a bit more   
   clarification....  :-)   
      
      
      
   AS>  Life was slower in the past,    
      
      
             Indeed.  A century or two ago the paterfamilias... if he could   
   afford it... would buy a book he liked, then read it aloud to his wife &   
   children.  In such situations the extra spacing printers used after various   
   punctuation marks probably made the task easier.  But by the time I was about   
   to enter university condensed books & speed reading appeared to be more   
   important to other folks.   
      
             Nowadays I often notice people on the street with a coffee cup in   
   one hand & a cell phone in the other, some of them so engaged in what they're   
   doing with their phone they can't take their eyes off it long enough to pay   
   attention to their surroundings even if they're crossing a busy street.  Such   
   things tend to happen gradually until people like you & me wonder how we got   
   there....  :-)   
      
      
      
   AS>  and many technical innovations were gained not so   
   AS>  much by disciplined engineering and research, but    
   AS>  by hard and painful trial and error, like groping    
   AS>  in the dark, through several generations of masters    
   AS>  and craftsmen.   
      
      
             Uh-huh.  I learned to make compost... AKA "black gold" among   
   overaged hippies like me... from my father.  If e.g. kitchen waste, grass   
   clippings, and fallen leaves can produce good fertilizer at no cost except for   
   a bit of effort or if the indigenous peoples learned to plant corn with beans,   
   why don't others pay more attention?  I guess they're looking for quicker &   
   easier methods.  The City of Vancouver will now accept whatever organic   
   material we put in the Green Bin, but we put the really good stuff in our   
   compost box.  Meanwhile others buy heavily advertised synthetics guaranteed to   
   keep the economy rolling... (sigh).   
      
      
      
   AS>  Thomas Eddison wrote about his method that failure    
   AS>  is the discovery another of way that does not work.    
   AS>  This approach is not always inferrior in that in can    
   AS>  lead to inventions that modern engineers, going by    
   AS>  the more direct route, overlook.   
      
      
             As a student, I noticed many paper aeroplanes outside the   
   engineering building at a certain time of year... and I noticed they all   
   looked exactly the same.  Yes, these things fly very well.  In theory, or so I   
   am told, bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly... although they do.  I imagine   
   Mother Nature had some ideas yet to be discovered by people like Thomas Edison.   
      
             Our daughter has a book called MISTAKES THAT WORKED which   
   illustrates this principle.  Allededly tea was discovered about 4700 years ago   
   by a Chinese emperor, e.g., who was boiling a pot of water outdoors when a few   
   leaves from a nearby shrub fell into it.  He enjoyed the aroma, and tasted the   
   water....  :-)   
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
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