yeah, that fascinates me too. there are even some actual theorems, like brewer's cap theorem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/w

yeah, that fascinates me too. there are even some actual theorems, like brewer's cap theorem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem] and arrow's voting paradox [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrows_impossibility_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrows_impossibility_theorem], that take the "pick any two" form.