This was quite a few years ago (late 90s probably). I was laying network cable along a row of cubicles (like I said, the 90s) and it was slow going as we had to carefully work it past any and all obstacles. One of those, in a corner office, was a pair of file cabinets. So I flip the cable over the cabinets and am pulling it through the other end, and it's stuck. So I feel around back to see what's got it caught, but after several attempts I can't quite get my hand far enough. Fine, I decide, I'll pull the cable back out on the near side.
The cable comes back, stuck to an old glue trap... with a mouldering mouse right next to the cable, just inches from where I'd stopped and given up. I could see the black patches of rotting skin where the fur had fallen off. I didn't actually touch the mouse, but I kept imagining that I'd gone ahead and felt just another inch or two further and felt that fuzzy-- BLEEGHGHHGHG I still get this chill up my spine just thinking about how close I came.
Not the worst way to learn that lesson, though. I was much more circumspect when I was laying cable after that.
The cable comes back, stuck to an old glue trap... with a mouldering mouse right next to the cable, just inches from where I'd stopped and given up. I could see the black patches of rotting skin where the fur had fallen off. I didn't actually touch the mouse, but I kept imagining that I'd gone ahead and felt just another inch or two further and felt that fuzzy-- BLEEGHGHHGHG I still get this chill up my spine just thinking about how close I came.
Not the worst way to learn that lesson, though. I was much more circumspect when I was laying cable after that.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
