Let's commit the major crime of reshaping the framework to closer semblance of reality. "All adjectives are self-descriptive, non-self-descriptive, neither or both." Where's the paradox now? It has ceased to exist. Obviously, as an attempt to define a feature of adjectives the new setup is quite meaningless. What of it? The human mind is no more than half-functioning when it can contemplate only positive values and not negative ones. In the problems of real life lack of fact can and often does convey some other fact by what the lack implies. The presence of a negative points to a previously unsuspected positive.
I wonder how many paradoxes exist only within a twisted framework that is ignored, no attempt being made to alter the terms within which they are confined. For example, let me erect without argument the proposition that all human beings are white-skinned or black-skinned and—alley-oop—five hundred million living paradoxes in China.
ASF's numerous mathematicians may like to try this one for size providing they keep to the rules by not changing the framework. I have a box three feet long with a two-inch diameter hole at each end. The box contains a skunk which sticks his head through one hole, runs like hell and sticks his head through the other hole. He goes on doing this for days, weeks, months. The problem: If the skunk makes his first trip at one mile per hour and doubles his speed on each successive journey, how many trips must he make before he can stick his head through both holes at the same time?—Eric Frank Russell
Don't just deny the paradox; of course it is unimportant for itself. Just as nobody has been killed by the bad smell that leaking gas has. The smell is not important for itself alone.
But people who ignore the bad smell are killed—because the bad smell gets into the room due to a leak in the system, and that can be fatal, if not attended to!
Dear Sir:
I have been a reader of Astounding Science Fiction since its first issue and it has been about twelve years since I have been moved to write to your Brass Tacks section. I have some comments to make on your articles by Gotthard Gunther, since he deals with a subject which has been of great interest to me for more than fifteen years. I disagree with some of Mr. Gunther's ideas and conclusions, and I will do my best to set forth my thinking as clearly as possible. As a physicist and an engineer, I
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