[1156] A Psychological Tip

Guest poem sent in by Seema Ramanarayanan <wormatwork@>

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping

 	-- Piet Hein

I had the hardest time deciding which of the Piet Hein poems to send in to
this list :). They're all absolutely WONDERFUL. He calls his poems "Grooks"
and apparently he wrote em in several languages!  I had read this poem years
ago and went back looking for it when a friend of mine responded to my last
guest poem ("The instruction manual") complaining that I never send him a
poem that can make its point without being 300 words long.

Biography:
Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish poet and scientist with wide ranging
interests. Millions of his countrymen knew him as Kumbel, the pen name he
used for his poetry. He was a genius with many different sides. In addition
to discovering the Soma cube, he created a new geometrical form, the
"super-ellipse", which is something in between the rectangle and the
ellipse. The form also came in a 3D version and was then called "the super
egg" or "the super-ellipsoide".  As an artist and constructor, Piet Hein in
the 50's and 60's gave form to beautiful pieces of furniture, and he
contributed to make "Scandinavian design" become an international
conception. Internationally he always tried building a bridge between the
"hard" technical and natural sciences and the "soft" humanistic subjects.

Here's the link to the website I copied the biography from and it also has
his other poems. Enjoy!!!

http://www.ctaz.com/~dmn1/hein.htm

Seema

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1156.html
To subscribe, send a blank mail to <minstrels-subscribe@>.

From: "Alan Kornheiser" <akornhis@>

I have seen this suggestion credited to Einstein...and if Hein was in fact a
Danish scientist, the connection is not improbable. It is certainly good
advice.

Alan

_____________________
Alan S Kornheiser

"That thing you're doing...don't do that."