[T]he chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it...
- Jonathan Swift to Alexander Pope, September 29, 1725
My current training cohort is in the end game, working on their capstone projects more than being forced to listen my harangues. In between our sessions, I've also gotten to work with another cohort that's just ramping up, giving them all the whys and wherefores of data networks.
That's been my bread and butter for, like...one score and 300 moons now. I love learning and teaching about new things, but I consider networking to be kinda like comfort food.
When discussing interoperability between disparate systems (Layer 6 in the OSI Reference Model), I always bring up the Big Endian and Little Endian Problem (tl;dr: essentially should one read bit streams from right to left, or left to right). Endianism is famously derived from early adventures in Gulliver's Travels, which brings us to this post.
In his book, Swift describes the kingdoms of Lilliput and Blefuscu thus:
Which two mighty powers have, as I was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six and thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion.
It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present Majesty's grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.
The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire.
It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments.
During the course of these troubles, the Emperors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran).
This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text: for the words are these; That all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end: and which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man's conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine.
Yeah, there's just a bit of pointed satire. While primarily about 18th-century British society, it could just as easily apply to our 21st-century political climate in the Colonies. For starters, which does Dr Oz's conscience think is the convenient end?
But right now the most vexing issue is whether if enough chicken ova eggsist in my fridge for me to do some deviling...