free translation from an italian novel...
scientists having been researching about rivers behaviour....... yes - fiction.
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It is just shocking, it takes three times more than what is needed, and just by means of this trick of bending over and over again. And not only this or that river, but literally all rivers, as if it was a compelling behaviour, a sort of law by which all rivers have to abide, which is unbelievable, i know, but this is what they found out and scientifically proved after studying every single river on earth. They found out that they are not crazy, it is just in their nature, because they are rivers, which they have to wander all the time, and even in a precise and exact manner, so exact that all of them, and I mean all of them, they run three times more than they would need to - actually, to be precise, three times point fourteen, really, the reknowned greek pi, I could not believe it myself, but apparently that is really the case. You have to take their distance from the sea, multiply it by greek pi and there you go, you have the actual distance they run. And this is, I thought, so bloody cool, because, I thought, if you have a pattern for rivers, then you definitely must have one for us ! I mean, the least you can expect is that for us it is more or less the same way, and that all this wandering here and there, as if we were mad, or, even worse, lost, in fact is our way to go straight ahead, in a scientifically exact, and somehow prearranged, manner although it rather looks like a prearranged sequence of mistakes, or changes of mind, but only apparently because in fact it is just our way to go where we have to go, which uniquely ours, our nature, so to speak, what did I want to say ? that story about the rivers, yes, it is a story which is comforting if you will, so much so that I decided to believe in it..
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