well, no one has ever proved the claim about the earth, but the exaggeration explains an easily verifiable mechanical principle by taking it all the way to the absurd.

a trimtab is already a proven fact!

...and a brilliant metaphor.

thanks bucky, and thanks metavision for a great diary!

i think we're all trying to turn the ship around, in our own ways.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty