Sale con la 5ta. de Crónica. Se atrasó el canillita. Sale mañana. Mientras tanto, Feynman acerca de la compresión de un texto
There was a sociologist who had written a paper for us all to read — something he had written ahead of time. I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it! I figured it was because I hadn’t read any of the books on that list. I had this uneasy feeling of “I’m not adequate,” until finally I said to myself, ”I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.” So I stopped –at random– and read the next sentence very carefully. I can’t remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: “The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.” Then I went over the next sentence, and I realized that I could translate that one also. Then it became a kind of empty business: “Sometimes people read; sometimes people listen to the radio,” and so on, but written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, and when I finally deciphered it, there was nothing to it.