________________________________________________________________________________



        Food for Thought


        "The power output of the sound produced by a man who talks for
        three hours a day throughout an average life-span is roughly
        sufficient to heat a cup of tea up to the temperature at which
        it is normally drunk! In other words, if the speaker's food
        consumption is 3000 kcal/day, his lifelong oratory will absorb
        the energy equivalent of only a couple of slices of bread and
        butter!" (from R. Houwink, The Odd Book of Data.)

        Writing, however, would be a real expenditure, and typing, I
        think, at least as great. Drag-and-click or drag-and-drop mouse
        techniques, however, do a great deal of work for us. I want you
        to think of this as I translate my work into code and protocols,
        taking away the breath, the fingers run into the keys,
        periodically slammed to a halt at a runaway speed. This is each
        and every finger, the wrist and palm constantly changing
        position to accommodate them. No mean feet. The drop can be up
        to an inch at times, depending on the keyboard, the dance, the
        illuminated thought itself.

        All of this energy of speech, this labor, doesn't take into
        account the labor of the mind and brain - its oxygen absorption,
        its furnace. That adds quite a bit into the account; when I
        write, it's as if I am a machine generating the symbolic - or
        perhaps the symbolic writes itself through me, parasitic on my
        energy reservoir. I'd stop to eat and drink before more symbols
        emerge.

        Of course the reception itself requires energy - the eyes
        furiously inundating the rest of the brain with continuous
        data-processing, the mind converting letters on an autonomic
        level to something of the order of received thought, hardly
        understood. From there to stepping-back, visualization, is a
        steep curve, and the depletion of even more combustibles. The
        reader tenses slightly, considers a reply; the symbolic is off
        and running - and in reality, between writing and reading
        there's hardly a gap, everything consuming calories, mind and
        body in slow burn. One can of course invert this process, noting
        that body exists only to convert food, part and parcel of the
        world around us, into the symbolic - that eventually, everything
        will be text and letter on one end, decay on the other.

        Not enough to keep body and soul alive, a kind of response or
        euphoria, carrying, considering, the consequences.



        >>>>
        >>>>
        >>>> what
        **** Command 'what' not recognized.
        >>>>
        >>>>
        >>>> why
        **** Command 'why' not recognized.
        >>>>
        >>>>


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