twin city sidewalks: *** Sidewalk Weekend! **

Sidewalk Rating: Suspicious

That which is energetically advantageous is that which will sooner or later happen. In one sense a structure is a device which exits in order to delay some event which is energetically favored. It is energetically advantageous, for instance, for a weight to fall to the ground, for strain energy to be released -- and so on. Sooner or later the weight will fall to the ground and the strain energy will be released; but is is the business of a structure to delay such events for a season, for a lifetime or for thousands of years. All structures will be broken or destroyed in the end -- just as all people will die in the end. It is the purpose of medicine and engineering to postpone these occurrences for a decent interval. The question is: what is to be regarded as a 'decent interval'?

[James Edward Gordon.]