Cats and jelly-bread
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Monday, October 6, 2008
EVERYBODY KNOWS about Murphy’s Law, which states that if anything can go wrong, it will. There are dozens of spinoffs and correlaries to fit different situations.
Did you ever realize, for instance, that automotive finishes attract shopping carts magnetically? The more recent the model-year, the greater the magnetic pull. Apparently the attraction begins to leak out in a year or two, like a dying flashlight battery. In a matter of 10 years or so, there’s virtually no attraction left.
There’s a scientific journal called The Journal of Irreproducible Results. It’s devoted entirely to subjects like the above. Many of the articles are generated by actual scientific experiments which went wrong, ruining the project. A classic example, of course, is that of Alexander Fleming of London. In 1928, Fleming saw that colonies of bacteria in his laboratory had been ruined by contamination with green mold. Most of us would have pitched out the whole experiment. He was clever enough, however, to realize the importance of his observation. The mold was killing the bacteria and he had just discovered penicillin.
Usually, such oddball happenstances do not lead to such lofty results, though. At this time of year there is usually a flurry of reports of gardeners who found a potato shaped like the state of Florida or a tomato that looks like Rush Limbaugh. Of course, most tomatoes do.
I once saw a TV segment about a lady who had a collection of potato chips that look like something else. Flowers, animals, trees, a rocking chair — she had an edge on any other potato chip collector, however, since she was an inspector on the line at a potato chip factory. Of one thing, I’m certain. She has no teenagers at home.
Speaking of kids reminds me of a rather bizarre contest that was carried out for readers of the scientific magazine, Omni. it was strictly for fun and involved a lot of nonsensical “irreproducible results.” One of the suggestions that proved a winner dealt with the tendency of a buttered slice of bread to land buttered side down when dropped.
Since that virtually always happens and a dropped cat always lands on its feet, let’s combine those two basic forces. Tie a slice of bread, butter side up, to the back of a cat, suggested their reader, and drop it. The opposing forces will counteract each other and the unit will hover indefinitely in mid-air. The suggestion was made that this principle of levitation could be harnessed to operate hover-craft.
Now, let’s get serious. The Omni reader who came up with that idea is a rank amateur, dealing with rudimentary ideas. Anyone who has raised five kids, as we have, knows that there are other variables at work here. Jelly, or better still, peanut butter and jelly would be ever so much more effective than mere butter. Then it’s also true that the bread will ALMOST always land spread-side down. It’s not infallible. There’s another variant at work. The odds of jelly-side down vary directly with the cost of the carpet.
But, the idea does, after all, have merit. I can visualize a transportation system based on this theory. Hover-craft could travel over a roadway of carpet of varying cost, depending on which areas were found to be in need of greater levitation.
Platoons of cats with jelly-bread strapped on their backs would be rotated in shifts of a few hours each. Compartments under each car would be filled with these hover-cats. They would work for a few hours and then have their little harnesses removed to rest and eat until their next shift.
This finds useful homes for all the stray cats now being euthanized in pounds. It provides jobs, not only for those who will work in the — uh — cat-house, but those who grow the fruit to make the jelly —
Hey, maybe economic recovery is in sight!
See you down the road.