With apologies to Galileo...

[ollypenrice]

Sagredo, Salviati and Simplicio are enjoying a coffee in a bar in the shade of the Vatican City. Now very old, they are discussing the greatest inventions they have seen in their four hundred year lives...

Sagredo:  Friends, things come and go but it has to be the wheel. Perfect functionality and the exquisite mathematical symmetry of the circle...

Salviati:  Until recently I'd have agreed with you, but the universe is written in the language of mathematics and the microchip computer can out calculate any man who has ever lived. It's the computer.

Simplicio: Gentlemen, no. There is something far more miraculous than either. It's the thermos flask.

Sagredo:   

Salviati: 

Simplicio:  No listen, you're missing the point. If you put something hot in a thermos flask it stays hot. But if you put something cold in there it stays cold. See?

Salviati:   See what? What is there to see? Where's the miracle?

Simplio:   The miracle is obvious; How does it know what to do???

Olly

[Knight of Clear Skies]

To my lasting shame, when the subject of thermos flasks came up on this forum I couldn't resist advising buying one with both hot and cold settings.

[acey]

Sagredo: We cannot discuss the laws of thermodynamics since they will not be formulated until long after our original author's death (our own selves being immortal only because fictional); but observe that to remain in the same state forever requires no knowledge, this being the condition of an object left to move in a line through space without interference. Rather, if the contents of a thermos flask were to change suddenly and capriciously, without apparent cause, it would imply them to have a will of their own. Like a shopping trolley, for instance.

[ollypenrice]

Sagredo: We cannot discuss the laws of thermodynamics since they will not be formulated until long after our original author's death (our own selves being immortal only because fictional); but observe that to remain in the same state forever requires no knowledge, this being the condition of an object left to move in a line through space without interference. Rather, if the contents of a thermos flask were to change suddenly and capriciously, without apparent cause, it would imply them to have a will of their own. Like a shopping trolley, for instance.

Heh heh, but I'm not sure how fictional they were. The Pope certainly saw something of himself in Simplicio, hence all that unpleasant business that followed...

Olly