Monday, March 24, 2014

The Principles of Theory: Popcorn

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!



Text:
The essence of any argument is a kernel of truth.  This "kernel of truth,” of course, can be quite useful. In and of itself, however, it has no palpable existence. I read some interesting research by Jeff Rosenthal out at Berkeley. He discovered that human beings are made out of 70% water. This finding, as you know, set the scientific world on its ear. Even more disturbing, however, was his further discovery that 99% of this water is in fact air and that 20% of this air is in fact nothing, just a whorling black hole.  And, if that weren't enough, the other 30% of our bodies are made up of hot, vaporous steam. 
What we are finding is that the human body (and perhaps other types of matter) is made up of absolutely nothing. These discoveries may cause you to panic and eat a lot of heavy, dense food such as pizza and eliminate things like rice cakes and water, which are actually made up of close to 100% air. But that "kernel" you speak of does contain something elemental that is of use to us. A kernel of corn, when spun around in the hot, desert-like environment of a popcorn "popper," will soon spontaneously blossom into a fluffy, cloud-like flower known to movie goers as "popcorn." Pour some thick, golden butter and sprinkle some granular granules of iodized salt, and you have a pop-ular snack that just about everyone enjoys.

No comments: