Buttered Side (1841, 1857); Gods send nuts (1860); Oxford Quotations

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:13 AM -0500 2/5/05, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>BUTTERED SIDE
>...
>Oxford has this proverb from 1867. It's like Murphy's  law--with two choices,
>the worst outcome will result. Bread always falls  on the buttered side.
>...
>...
>(NEWSPAPERARHIVE)
>...
>Tuesday, November 23, 1841 _Norwalk,_
>(http://www.newspaperarchive.com/Search.aspx?Search=city:norwalk+buttered+side+AND)
>_Ohio_
>(http://www.newspaperarchive.com/Search.aspx?Search=state:ohio+buttered+side+AND)
>   _Huron Reflector _
>(http://www.newspaperarchive.com/Viewer.aspx?img=wUP6BEk4rpmKID/6NLMW2vynnkNBVZv8E8crKPO4KeOd5XSGz6G6XQ==)
>
>...
>...not fall upon the And  always on the BUTTERED SIDE. My misfortunes are
>many.....so  nicely with die but- ter of greasy SIDE into the dirt of despon-
>and leave..
>..
>...

...and given that "a cat always lands on its feet", we derive a
paradox I've come across in various forms...let me check...yup, here
it is in one version, which has the advantage of the fact that the
query is posted from our neighboring town of Cheshire CT.

L
====================

http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/19990914.html
Dear Yahoo!:
Why does buttered bread always land butter-side down? And why do cats
always land on their feet? What would happen if you buttered the back
of a cat and dropped it out of a window?
Gilly
Chesire, Connecticut
Dear Gilly:
Funny you should ask. This question seems to be making the rounds. We
found the answer by doing a slightly advanced search, typing "+toast
+cat" into Alta Vista's search engine. On one web page we learned
that this query is the basis for a grand prize-winning solution to
the elusive puzzle of perpetual motion.

The project description speaks for itself:

"When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast
is dropped it always lands buttered side down. It was proposed to
strap giant slabs of hot buttered toast to the back of a hundred
tethered cats; the two opposing forces will cause the cats to hover,
spinning inches above the ground. Using the giant buttered toast/cat
array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago."