Double

Monday, 24 May 1999
A shopping cart floats in the moat. It just sticks out of the water, like the tip of an iceberg. The supermarket won't come after the cart. The shopping carts stock planning department probably wrote it off already. They have some more in stock. Some redundancy is better than a missing customer.

A coot Coot (.../coots.html) has feathered a nest on top of it, with all kinds of garbage as construction material like milkshake cups and hamburger boxes. Obviously the coot couldn't care less about an extra cup or two. It looks sponsored by the fast food restaurant across the road. Soon, the baby chicks will crawl out of the nest, sliding down the garbage mountain into the water. Only a few of the hatchlings will survive. The coot anticipates with some redundant offspring.

The human body has quite some redundancy too. Two eyes, two kidneys, two lungs, two hands, two ears, two brain hemispheres. Most 'spare' parts are not really needed, just handy. It's possible to have one eyed stereo vision by moving the head back and forth a bit. One handed persons cope well, although everything slows down and gets a bit awkward. Having just one kidney or one lung won't stop you from leading a nice life. It is a mystery to me why we have just one mouth and one stomach.

Web sites too have some double functionality. This page for example has three links to the SUMit homepage, and six to last week's Nut. All this double functionality does not really catch attention. The brain filters most redundancy.

A lot of redundancy passes unnoticed. Optical illusions Graphical oriented readers will click on images and ignore the text links. Text clickers will overlook the pictures. Larger exceptions do catch attention, like the double Line link at the bottom of this page.

But be cautious. The eye gets easily tricked (.../opt_e.htm). You'll probably overlook the double the at least once, even though you got a warning.

Till the
the next week!
Nut