Explaining to a Blind Person
JOKE OF THE WEEK, 3 Apr 2017
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
Someone asked Albert Einstein at a party: “Oh, you are Albert Einstein, could you please explain me your relativity theory in three or four sentences?”
Einstein thought for a while and then he said, “I am very sorry, it is not really possible to explain relativity theory so quickly, but I will at least try to explain you why not.
Once I went for a walk with a blind man on a warm summer afternoon. After a while we came to a restaurant and sat down at a table. I asked him, ‘Would you like a glass of milk?’ ‘I know what a glass is,’ the blind man said, ‘but what is milk?’ ‘Milk is a white fluid,’ I replied. ‘Aha, I know what a fluid is,’ he said, ‘but what is white?’ ‘White is the color of swans,’ I explained to him. ‘I know what a color is, but what are swans?’ ‘Swans are big birds with a crooked neck.’ ‘Oh, birds,’ the man exclaimed, ‘I have heard of birds.
And what is crooked?’ I took his arm, stretched it and said, ‘This is straight,’ then I bent it and said, ‘and this is crooked.’ The man’s face turned into a happy smile and he said, ‘Now I finally know what milk is.'”
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Apr 2017.
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Yeah… “connecting the dots” can lead us down all kinds of crooked corridors. Best to be humble when trying to explain something as complex as the Theory of Relativity… or as “simple” as what milk is… or why people keep making the same mistakes over and over with all kinds of humorous or tragic results…. Alas–this is the way too much of this world operates now!