Introns: A Fable

At one point in early 2011, a brand new island is discovered off the coast of Scotland, quite by accident. It is called Lumberia. The Royal Geography Bureau sends out a team in a boat. The team consists of an ethologist and a preacher. As they row out to the island, each of them surveys the island's inhabitants through a pair of powerful binoculars.

"The Lumberians are powerfully built, wearing flannel shirts, carrying hatchets, and living in robust wooden houses," says the preacher. "They all look very much alike."

"I agree," says the ethologist. "They look quite like Scotsmen. I think they are descended from Scotsmen."

"Nonsense!" says the preacher. "Scotsmen come in all shapes and sizes. The Lumberians look very similar to each other. They were clearly created by God to make lumber on the island. See how they are perfectly suited to logging, protecting themselves against the cold with their sensible flannel clothing. Obviously that didn't come about by chance! They are so similar to each other because, when God created the first Lumberian, He got it right, and decided not to fix what wasn't broken."

"I'm not saying the Lumberians are descended from all Scotsmen equally," says the ethologist. "Their geographic isolation would restrict their genetic diversity. They are merely descended from a few ... perhaps a single clan. I can't say for sure -"

"Ha!" shouts the preacher. "You admit you don't know!"

"True," says the ethologist. "But I may later. Right now I think that they may be descended from the McCheznicks of a wooded village on the Scottish coast near here. They look like McCheznicks, wear the same clothing, and excel at the traditional McCheznick trade of cutting timber. When the clan landed on the island, they thrived here for the same reasons they thrived in their similar home environment."

The preacher shakes his head. "You deny all the beauty of God's work with your preposterous theory of someone teleporting from the mainland to this island!"

"Actually, I think they used a boat, or several," says the ethologist, pulling at the oars.

"Ah ha! You just assumed a boat."

"Until we reach the island, this will all be necessarily hypothetical. There may have been a few strong swimmers, or a land bridge that has sunken out of sight. But assuming a boat is less a leap of faith than assuming a god."

At this point, each of them asserts his vehement belief that the burden of proof lies with the other. Each of them makes a few references to Okham's Razor. The argument continues until they reach the island.

After making landfall and greeting the inhabitants, each of the visitors sticks with his Theory of Lumberian Origins, despite the revelation that all the inhabitants of the island are named McCheznick.

A Grand Palace for the Lightning Bugs

Lightning bugs flatter me

They regard each of my branches as a grand palace

Just today I overheard one of them saying a single branch had 

one hundred thirty-seven prime places to perch

(and over four hundred mediocre places)

His abdomen flashed blue-white, which is hardly surprising

Though of course he was doing it just for me

Because all lightning bugs are silly, and think I am here just for them.

Today a man saw lightning bugs superimposed 

on a cloudy horizon decorated with lightning

That’s right, just regular old lightning

He was a short man, not more than three meters tall

(though Grandpa told me a man that size can do fiercesome things 

with a bow-saw)

Yet the sky performed its background to the lightning bugs' dance

And he thought it was there just for him.

The lightning bugs never fly so high as when they want to reach my tops

(you can call them turrets, if you want, and imagine them made of stone)

They never fly as high as an airplane

   looking down on me, thinking I’m short and forgetting me quickly

Nor do the squirrels, or the crows, or the pleasanter birds

No matter how many friends perch in my branches, it is no burden to bear

For a palace

of a few cubic meters

of softwood.

If Magic Worked Like Insurance Underwriting

Zartok's mage sense reminded him of a task. To supply his staff with wool, he would need a sheep. He had left the project with his assistant, a move which seemed logical at the time but which left troubling thoughts as he tried to study. He stood up from his desk, donned his robe, left the candles burning, and headed down the winding stone staircase.

He entered the laboratory in the subbasement of his manse. Assistant Mage Klipthak sat on the floor with his grimoire open and an overturned vial next to him. A group of distracted sheep wandered about, sniffing various magic paraphernalia.

“Klipthak, didn’t I tell you to turn a single cow into a sheep?”

“Why yes, Senior Technical Mage, sir, but I did!" the lad blinked. "At least, I started with a single cow?”

“Oh, no no no, Klipthak. Don’t tell me you didn’t follow my exact instructions, down to each subitem? Verbatim?!” Zartok stroked his long white beard and furrowed his great brows. He couldn’t blast his assistant for this sort of error but wished he could.

Klipthak was apprehensive but not exactly contrite. “Well, Senior Technical, I followed them almost exactly -“.

“ENOUGH!” came the roared answer. Zartok paused for effect. Klipthak cowered behind his grimoire, waiting for the lightning bolts. Instead, his master continued. “Recite your spell in its entirety, with all the hand motions. Pray be exact.”

After three minutes of timid but exact recounting, Zartok sighed. “I see what you’ve done, boy. An easy mistake to make, but easily avoided if you had followed orders. First, when you referred to the target animal as four-legged creature, the universe thought you wanted four sheep. You don’t need to specify number of legs for a within-phylum transformation spell. So now we have four sheep.”

Klipthak mistook the pause for a chance to speak. “So we’ll eat mutton," he offered.

“SILENCE! We eat no mutton! You know how you added permancy to that spell, so your sheep wouldn’t change back to a cow at sundown?” Klipthak nodded. “Well, you added it to the spell’s object level. Permanency is a meta-level item if you only want the spell’s effects to be permanent. On the object level, it makes the object permanent. We shall never eat mutton because … you … have … made … me … FOUR ... IMMORTAL ... SHEEP!”

Klipthak turned pale and began to cry.