“In a wonderful scene in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, detective Sherlock Holmes chides his companion, Dr. Watson, for explaining to him that the earth revolves around the sun, which Holmes previously did not know. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it,” Holmes declared to the astonished Watson, a lifelong man of science. “But the Solar System!” protested Watson. “What the deuce is it to me?” said Holmes. “You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

Smartcuts by Shane Snow