Mark Twain on Science

[Skyhawk]

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, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

- Life on the Mississippi

[coriolis]

A million years ago next November, huh?

Mark Twain was good.

[abajan]

A million years ago next November, huh?

Mark Twain was good.

My thoughts exactly.

I have read 2 of his works: 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' - both of which I thoroughly enjoyed as a boy.

Speaking under correction, I believe his pen name was what riverboat captains used to shout when they stuck a long measuring stick into the water and it was 2 fathoms to the river bed.