I'm not a mathematician, but I've been hanging around with some of them long enough to know how the game is played. - Brian Hayes

Compared with the elegant inventions of the theorists, nature's code seemed a bit of a kludge.

The absence of a golden rule for mattress flipping is a disappointment, but it does not pertend the demise of civilization. We can adapt; we can learn to live with it.

It's all done with gears. Also pinions, snails, arbors; pawls and ratchets; and cam followers; cables, levers, bell cranks, and pivots.