Date: Sun, 07 Apr 1996 23:17:05 -1000
From: Steve Wright <sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Subject: chicken.html


I found the following at http://www.duke.edu/~tjb/chicken.html

Thought it might cast new light on a question which has long plagued this list . . .

Steve
______________________________

> Why did the chicken cross the road?
> 
> Plato: for the greater good
> 
> Marx: it was historically inevitable
> 
> Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
> 
> Epicurus: For fun.
> 
> Emerson: It did not cross the road; it transcended it.
> 
> Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
> 
> Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
> 
> Heisenberg: Because we calculated its velocity, we could not be sure
> which side of the street it was on anymore.
> 
> Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a
> chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road,
> but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
> with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
> princely chicken's dominion maintained.
> 
> Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered
> within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each
> interpretation is equally valid as the author's intent can never be
> discerned, because structuralism is dead.
> 
> de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find
> out
> 
> Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the
> establishment would let it take.
> 
> Douglas Adams: 42
> 
> Nietzche: To indulge in the act of crossing itself, regardless of
> whether it reaches the other side
> 
> Skinner: Because the influences which have pervaded its sensorium
> from birth have caused it to tend to cross roads, even while
> believing that it does so if its free will.
> 
> Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated
> that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture,
> and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurances into being.
> 
> Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
> chicken found it necessary to cross the road
> 
> Wittgenstein: The possiblity of 'crossing' was encoded into the
> objects 'chicken' and 'road', and circumstances came into being
> which caused the actualization of this potential occurance
> 
> Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road, or the road crossed
> the chicken, depends on your frame of reference.
> 
> Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
> 
> Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most
> astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic,
> unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such a
> herculean achievement formerly relegated to human pedestrians is
> truly a remarkable occurance
> 
> Dali: the fish
> 
> Darwin: It was the next logical step after coming down from the
> trees
> 
> Hume: Out of custom and habit.
> 
> Pyrrho the skeptic: What road?
> 
> Thoreau: To live deliberately... and suck all the marrow out of
> life.
> 
> * Visit Tom Land again.





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