Dune Details

Fresh Bilge writes , about Frank Herbert's Dune, one of my very favorite books, combining as it does all of life's key issues:

money, sex, power and landscape.

One passage is particularly striking. It's about "details" and the importance of being meticulous.

A splashing sounded on her left. She looked down...saw the watermasters emptying their load into the pool through a flowmeter. The meter was a round gray eye above the pool's rim. She saw its glowing pointer move as the water flowed through it, saw the pointer stop at thirty-three liters, seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms.

Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water's passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.

No surface tension. It could stand as an anthem for us all.