A Change of Plan - Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things - page 85

“ Steel is too expensive. How about iron? ”
“ Are you crazy? Iron will rust! ”
“ I told you we should have used a triangle. ”
“ Make the outside steel, but the inside brick. ”
“Good! This is good! Keep them coming. We're thinking outside the box. Anyone else?”
Bruto asked.
“Why not a circle, like the lighthouse on Abstract Island?” Laurie suggested. She thought
about it for a minute, then wrote out a pair of little poems.
BRICK-CIRCLE :
Lay a brick,
turn right one degree,
move forward,
repeat three hundred sixty times.
TOWER-CIRCLE ( how-high? ):
Make a BRICK-CIRCLE ,
repeat how-high? times.
“See? You make a circle of bricks, then put a circle on top of that, all the way to the top!”
Laurie explained.
“Ha ha ha, cute idea, girlie! But that can't possibly work,” Bruto replied.
“Why not?” Laurie asked.
“It's too small!” Bruto said. “How do you expect to make a great big tower out of a teeny
little plan like this?”
“I don't know,” Laurie said. It seemed sensible to her, but maybe they knew something she
didn't. They were professionals, after all. “I . . . I think it will work.”
“Hmph,” Bruto hmphed. “Even if it were big enough, it has a major flaw.”
“What flaw?”
“Our first plan was a hollow square, and it fell down,” Bruto said. “The second plan was a
hollow square, twice as big, and it also fell down. Your plan is a hollow circle.”
“I don't understand. Shouldn't a circle be stronger?”