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If I need a friend I just give a wriggle,
Split right down the middle.
And when I look there's two of me,
Both as handsome as can be.
--from "A Very Cellular Song," by the Incredible String Band
Division takes a whole and splits it into parts, and those parts are necessarily smaller than the whole, increasingly smaller the larger the number of divisions ... unless, as with cellular mitosis, the divided parts grow, so that the two halves each become as big as the original whole was. If those two both divide and give us four that grow as big as the original, and then if the same happens at eight and sixteen and on and on, then pretty soon we've got a lot, maybe too much, a big mass, a big mess. We could end up like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, flooded out by too many animated broomsticks lugging too many buckets of water, a cancer of servant broomsticks.
...These thoughts brought to you courtesy of glancing down at a newspaper and seeing this headline:
(In this case it's a transitive "divide" that's meant, not an intransitive one, but I was taken with the notion of a budget just mitosising away, burgeoning out of committee, expanding beyond the district--who knows what happens next.)
Split right down the middle.
And when I look there's two of me,
Both as handsome as can be.
--from "A Very Cellular Song," by the Incredible String Band
Division takes a whole and splits it into parts, and those parts are necessarily smaller than the whole, increasingly smaller the larger the number of divisions ... unless, as with cellular mitosis, the divided parts grow, so that the two halves each become as big as the original whole was. If those two both divide and give us four that grow as big as the original, and then if the same happens at eight and sixteen and on and on, then pretty soon we've got a lot, maybe too much, a big mass, a big mess. We could end up like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, flooded out by too many animated broomsticks lugging too many buckets of water, a cancer of servant broomsticks.
...These thoughts brought to you courtesy of glancing down at a newspaper and seeing this headline:
(In this case it's a transitive "divide" that's meant, not an intransitive one, but I was taken with the notion of a budget just mitosising away, burgeoning out of committee, expanding beyond the district--who knows what happens next.)
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