Elegant Solutions

To solve this problem, NASA hired Anderson
Consulting. It took Anderson Consulting ten years and $12,000,000 (yep, that's
12 million dollars) to come up with a
solution. But, by Jesus, they got the job done! They devised a pen which worked
at zero gravity, upside down, under water, on practically any surface (including
crystal) and, in temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 degrees
centigrade.

When the Russians started their space program,
they had this same "useless pen" problem. Did they spend ten years and
$12,000,000 to get an answer to this dilemma? No. The Russians came up with what
I call an "Elegant Solution"... they solved it by...

Using A 5¢ Pencil!

Speaking of interesting facts, I use a hardback
copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of
the English Language which has over 300,000 entries plus 2,000 maps,
illustrations and specialized supplements. It takes up an enormous amount of
space on a bookshelf and is so heavy, it could be used as an emergency anchor if
I had it with me whenever I am using one of my boats. (I don't care who you are;
I bet my dictionary is bigger than yours.) In any case, this monstrosity of a
book has six different definitions of the word "elegant". The one I
think best describes an "Elegant Solution" is... a solution which is
gracefully concise and simple and admirably succinct.

Another example of an "Elegant
Solution": Years ago, in another lifetime, I worked in the credit
department of Standard Oil of Ohio. It's cold in Ohio in the wintertime and
Standard Oil sells a lot of heating oil. The way you would get it from them was,
to first fill out a credit application and, if the application was approved,
your heating oil would be delivered to you every week or every month as needed.

Standard Oil soon discovered they were spending
more money for the credit reports than they were losing to deadbeats who didn't
pay their heating oil bills. The solution? They continued to require people to
fill out credit applications but, credit reports were never ordered. It's true
Standard Oil had to eat a little money from deadbeats who didn't pay for their
bills but, it was only a tiny percentage of the money they would have had to pay
to get credit reports for all the applicants.