The Physics of Flashlights
About two years ago, I had grown tired of having to spend half an hour to find my flashlight. I was in Target, and passed by the section that had flashlights for sale. I picked up 4. 2 small ones for the house, and 2 big ones for our cars. Thus bring our total to 5 flashlights.I then promptly lost the original one, then quickly lost the 2 house flashlights, brought the one in from my car and lost that one, leaving us with one flashlight. Again. And it usually takes about 20 minutes to find it as it may or may not be in our space-time.
So I have two working theories.
Theory A: The Pot O' Gold Theory.
This theory is based on the assumption that somewhere in our house is a secret compartment that useful objects can escape to, and once there cannot leave of their own accord. I expect to find several socks, 18 small foam soccer balls (cat toys), 2 wrenches, a hammer, Elvis and Atlantis.
Theory B: There Can Be Only One.
The other idea is that there can be only one flashlight, so they periodically meet in a parking garage with samurai swords and cut off each others heads.
I will now delete the inevitable post in this thread along the lines of "Great blog, keep it up, and hey, check out my site on laundry detergent!"
posted by wrmblnwrck @ 8:27 PM
5 Comments:
WAHAHAHAHA! You got spam.
I giggle at the thought of samurai-sword-wielding flashlights with heads. Good one.
I appreciate your perspective and your strange and wonderful way of looking at things. You might enjoy my 327 words on various subjects from time to time:
327words.blogspot.com
cheers,
letang
Well, only one of them can have a head in the end.
There can definitely be only one. There is another rule you should be aware of:
None or one million. Applies to pens and lighters.
This rule states that there are millions of pens and lighters all over your house, in junk drawers, laying around, etc., until you need to light a candle or write an important phone number down. Then, magically, they have all disappeared. So what do you do? You go out and buy pens and lighters to stock up your house--the "millions" equation again. Next time you wanna light that candle--no chance of finding that bunny lighter.
This also reminds me of one of my favorite Terry Pratchett concepts, as well. Your idea about the pot-o-gold theory? He has the same ideas with libraries--that they distort space-time and this phenomena is known as "L-space."
"Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full sized human to enter.
The relevant equation is Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which Everywhere is also Everywhere Else.
All libraries are connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the strong space-time distortions found in any large collection of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact - because it amounts to time travel.
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: (1) Silence; (2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown, and (3) the nature of causality must not be interfered with."
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