15 lines
839 B
Plaintext
15 lines
839 B
Plaintext
like nailing jelly to a tree
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adj. Used to describe a task thought to be impossible, esp. one in which the
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difficulty arises from poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the
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problem domain. Trying to display the prettiest arrangement of nodes and
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arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing jelly to a tree, because
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nobody's sure what prettiest means algorithmically. Hacker use of this term
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may recall mainstream slang originated early in the 20th century by
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President Theodore Roosevelt. There is a legend that, weary of inconclusive
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talks with Colombia over the right to dig a canal through its then-province
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Panama, he remarked, Negotiating with those pirates is like trying to nail
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currant jelly to the wall. Roosevelt's government subsequently encouraged
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the anti-Colombian insurgency that created the nation of Panama.
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