Xah Lee's Unixism

[jmfbahciv at aol.com]

In article <kg08hc.bgc1.ln at via.reistad.priv.no>,
   Morten Reistad <firstname at lastname.pr1v.n0> wrote:
>In article <41376B82.C6A202FC at yahoo.com>,
>CBFalconer  <cbfalconer at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>Peter Hansen wrote:
>>> Brian {Hamilton Kelly} wrote:
>>>> wyrmwif at tango-sierra-oscar-foxtrot-tango.fake.org "SM Ryan" wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> There's a story about why railroad tracks are spaced the way they 
are.
>>>>
>>>> Is this the one about two Roman horses' arses?  If so, it also 
accounts
>>>> for the physical dimensions of the Space Shuttle's boosters.
>>> 
>>> A quick search using Google will show that while there is a
>>> certain amount of truth in the original story, most of the
>>> details are wrong, and the final bit about the booster rockets
>>> is unsubstantiated.  But it's still a cute story.
>>
>>I know nothing about those stories, but it seems reasonable to me
>>that the boosters would have been designed to be transportable by
>>railroad, which ties their dimensions to track gauge.
>
>ISTR there was some tunnel NASA had to relate to if they wanted
>to move the goods from production to launch. But that may have been
>earlier products. 
>
>But rail tunnels are also descended from the same asses, so to speak. 

There was a city getting restored in Turkey that JMF and I visited;
I cannot remember its name other than it's in the New Testament
written by Paul.  It was one of most fascinating places I'd ever
been other than aquariums and zoos.  There are ruts in the
stone-block pavements caused by running carts to/from harbor/city.
We were told that these ruts were worn down by usage.  I always
wanted to get a big stone and spend 5 min/day rubbing it to see
if the claim was true.

/BAH

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