ORIGINAL QUERY:
Date: Tuesday, 1 April 2003
From: Kim Williams <kwilliams@kimwilliamsbooks.com
Editor in Chief, Nexus Network Journal

To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the architect, the glass is not big enough.

After receiving so many wonderful abstracts for our consideration for the
Nexus 2004 conference, I'd like to add to that list:

To the NNJ reader, the glass will be the subject of his (or her) next presentation at Nexus.

Would anyone like to add to the list?

Send an e-mail to respond to this query

NNJ READERS' RESPONSES:
From: John Howe <jhowe@pres-net.com>

To the mathematician the glass is of his or her own construction.

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From: Brant Matthew Tate <brantmtate@earthlink.net>

To the mathematician, the glass is [(pi)*r(2)*l] while the water is [(pi)*r(2)*l]/2, where r=inner radius of glass & l=inner height of glass.

To the architecture historian, the glass is not yet of interest. Once the water evaporates however....

To the engineer, the glass is over-sized for optimal containment efficiency.

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From: Addieg Robert <AddiegR@Urbahn.com>

To the Quality Assurance-Quality Control Director, the glass shown on the drawings doesn't agree with the glass shown in the specs (and believe me I see this every day)

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From: Jørgen Holten Jensenius <jorgen@jensenius.no>

To the building historian the glass was made of parchment, glimmer or linen, anything but glass!

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From: John Ochsendorf <wvjohn@yahoo.com>

To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be!

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From: Matthew Landrus <matthew.landrus@wolfson.oxford.ac.uk>

To the mathematician, the glass is .

To the architecture historian, the glass is minimalist

To the engineer, the glass is tubular

To the web designer, <P>the<B>glass</B>is<IMG SRC="images_number1/Optimist-01.gif" WIDTH="169" HEIGHT="28" ALIGN="MIDDLE"
BORDER="0" NATURALSIZEFLAG="3">.</P>

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From: Gyorgy Darvas <h492dar@helka.iif.hu>

To the physicist 99,999 per cent of the mass in the glass is made of wine, and only 0,001 per cent of the mass is the air.

(I'll drink to that).

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From: Susi Knight <sfknight@tin.it>

To the dreamer...what glass?.

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From: Tomás García Salgado <tgsalgado@hotmail.com>

To the perspectivist, the glass is vanishing.

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From: Dag Nilsen <dag.nilsen@ark.ntnu.no>

To the engineer, I believe the glass is superfluous - you get the same result quicker and cheaper by drinking from the bottle.

I recall having read somewhere a rather precise observation on the distinction between architects and engineers - Alan Holgate, I think it was, engineer partner of Ove Arup, after having struggled with the Sydney opera house: If an engineer finds out that there is a surplus in the construction budget, he will happily run to the client and tell him - if an architect discovers the same, he doesn't bother with the client, but immediately starts thinking about how to spend the money on design improvements.

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From: Bruno Santos <bruno.asantos@mail.pt>

To the glass, everything contains and is contained.

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From: Frans Cerulus <frans@itf.fys.kuleuven.ac.be>

The mathematician: The glass was filled from Klein's bottle.
The architecture historian: the glass is iridescently opaque.
The engineer: we need a spare glass

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From: Pietro Totaro <pietro.totaro@fastwebnet.it>

To the mathematician, the glass is a manifold.
To the architecture historian, the glass is a good companion of his work, if filled with a good wine.
To the engineer, the glass is an article to put on the market.

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From: Vera W. de Spinadel <vspinade@fibertel.com.ar>

To the mathematician, a glass is topologically equivalent to a surface with a hole.

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From: Aleksandra Slahova <aleksa@dau.lv>

To the mathematician, the glass is virtual reality.
To the architecture historian, the glass is a guide to action.
To the engineer, the glass is a capacity.

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From: Nurten Aksugur <nurten.aksugur@emu.edu.tr>

To the architectural educator, the glass is bottomless and can never be filled.

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From: Gert Sperling <Gert.Sperling@t-online.de>

To the theologian, the glass is a mirror of himself.

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From: Emanuel Jannasch <ejannasch@hfx.eastlink.ca>

The Nexus reader, assuming a perfectly cylindrical glass, might observe that the ratio of the height of the glass to the height of the water is as an octave.

Copyright ©2003 Kim Williams Books