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but conceptual re-framing wrote the Declaration of Independence. Nor are we averse to large scale machine powered movement of piles. If you have the tools and resources at your disposal, a back-hoe, for example, it would be silly not to explore its utility. But bare in mind that pile migration is not about efficiency. Moving ten piles per hour has the same aggregate effect as moving one. No, our major concern is not the tools that are used, just so long as the migration is done without monetary exchange. Accepting money for redistribution of a pile is the antithesis of this book.
Piles can take numerous forms. One of the most attractive attributes of the pile is its unpredictability. One never knows what direction a pile will pursue, or what item will cause an avalanche within the pile. In this section we will detail the various classifications of piles. The piles included in this section are simply an outline of a few of the most predominant piles that exist in our society. There obviously exists piles of indefinable radiance and magnitude that valiantly defy classification. large scale / small scale Size is one of the most subjective attributes we encounter while interacting with exterior intelligences. For this reason, we will simply use this sub-section to outline the terms “large” and “small” as they pertain to the language in this book. Again, these are merely our perceptions of scale and should not be taken as granite arbiters of size in the galaxy that exists outside this book. |
The most effective tool for objectively gauging size has proven to be the human body. This anthropocentric outlook may be unfair to neutrons and Neptunes, but they'll get over it. Size has many dimensions, at least three, so to judge a pile by mere height would be ill-advised. Additionally, while pile units are always an important consideration, we will abstain from dealing with them in this sub-section (see instead Homogeneous / Non-Homogeneous section). Here, we will focus only upon the overall volume of the pile.
A large-scale pile, as defined by us, is any pile that exceeds 3 feet (1 meter) in any of its dimensions. Dimensions that we are concerned with include width, height and depth. Due to the circular tendencies of pile bases, the width is usually in accordance with the depth. At the same time, the unordered nature of piles usually dictates a direct relationship between height and width – as the height increases the base width must also increase. However, the reverse is not necessarily true. A pile may grow in width, while the height remains unaltered.
A small-scale pile, then, is any pile that restricts all of its dimensions to 3 feet or less. We have refrained from using a precise volume or surface area to define what constitutes a large or small pile because of common peculiarities in measurement. While a pile with a volume of 27 feet^3 or less may have all of its dimensions restricted to less that 3 feet, a pile with an 8 foot depth, 1 foot height and 1 foot width will have a volume of only 8 feet^3, it will still prove to be unmanageably large by anthropocentric standards.
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