On 05/14/2017 7:02 AM, Frank wrote:
http://dilbert.com/
There's much in the area to remind one of Mark Twain's observation in
"Life on the Mississippi"
"The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and
fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago...Its length is
only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and
€ślet on€ť to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had
occurred in a given time in the recent past...what an opportunity is
here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi
has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average
of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm
person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic
Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower
Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand
miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and
forty-two years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and
three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One
gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact."
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