¶ Barrel (3)
Index Entry
“each other. Therefore, they hold themselves in position. They can’t slip off the sphere. Everything is held as a beautiful harness on the omnitriangulated. . . Great circles are the shortest distance around spheres and they are intertriangulated so they’re in the most comfortable position they could possibly get into. Now let me take a blowtorch and I burn out one of those wooden corks, and nothing happens. It doesn’t collapse as did the wooden barrel. Why? Because it leaves an opening there all right, but it is a triangular opening and a triangular opening is a stable opening. If I burn out four of these adjacent to each other and make a larger triangle it is still a triangle and it continually frames the opening with a great circle. Hence, she will not collapse. In fact I burn out very large amounts without the thing collapsing. This suddenly gives me a fantastic realization of the fundamentals. This is really the fundamental of compound curvature. . . this three-wayness of finiteness crossing itself up and it all being most economical. Great circles are then the most economical distance between points on spheres, as against the expression that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.”
