On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 09:27:48PM +0000, Folderol
wrote:
We've had stone soup a few times over on the
Kara-Moon forum. The trick
is knowing when to remove the stone. Too soon and the soup is thin and
doesn't develop any real flavour. Too late and it becomes thick and
lifeless.
I learned about stone soup years ago, when
learning Portuguese in evening class, in a
text we had to study. The story went as
follows:
A beggar arrives at a farm, and asks for some
water to make soup. He's given the water, makes
a fire a starts boiling a stone. The farmer and
his family are looking at the scene in disbelief.
When the water is boiling, the beggar asks:
"maybe you've got also a tomato or so ?"
He's given a tomato.
...
And some other vegatables ?
...
And some mushrooms ?
...
And maybe some piece of meat or chicken ?
...
And some salt, pepper and 'alecrim' (rosemary) ?
...
So he ends up with quite a good soup.
The Stone Soup story is kind of the philosophy of the developers of
Fractint, a very old, powerful and still thriving fractal graphics
program ...