According to my interpretation of quantum mechanics, dishes left overnight in the kitchen sink are both clean and dirty — a paradox of quantum superposition — until the dishes are observed the next morning by the wife who stumbles into the kitchen looking for a cup of coffee.
SHE: Hey, it was YOUR turn to do the dishes last night. What’s up?
HE: Funny thing: I was reading about Schrödinger and his cats when I dozed off, and had a dream that every cat in the neighborhood was scratching and yowling at our front door looking to be fed. When I opened the door, they were all staring at me with hunger in their eyes. And then I woke up, and here we are.
The same thing holds true for cat litter boxes. They are both used and unused until you smell something horrendous coming from the hallway. The older cats know the rules, but that younger one? Well, it’s obvious he’s gotten too big for his britches and thinks the whole “clean up your own mess before it starts smelling like a backed-up toilet” thing doesn’t apply to him.
SHE: Hey, it was YOUR turn to change the litter box last night. What’s up?
HE: That’s weird. I don’t think my schnozzola is working at full capacity. I haven’t smelled a thing in months. I think I could walk up to that cat box, put my nose right…OH MY. Now I smell it. Out it goes!
It’s all relative, really. What smells like garlic to one, might smell like dirty feet to another. What smells like rain to your grandfather might smell like wet dog to your grandmother. What smells like exploration to me, might smell like “Dang it, now I’m going to have to find a new place to hide the Christmas presents” to her. Neither is right nor wrong, we’re just viewing reality from different corners of our own personal universes.
(Although, I hope we can agree that if someone offers to sell you 50,000 shares of vintage Machu-Picchu Bank & Trust stocks, promising they will double in value in three weeks as long as you put $10,000 in unmarked bills in a brown paper bag in the trashcan next to the baseball field tonight before midnight — well, that might sound a bit iffy.)
It all reminds me of poor Gus. Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae. Former Texas Ranger played by Robert Duvall in the hit miniseries “Lonesome Dove” which was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name written in 1985 by Larry McMurtry.
Poor Gus died because he was too prideful to have his leg amputated; thought he would be a burden. You and I, on the other hand, might have made a different choice, like living out our lives with bionic legs and being as happy as organic clams about it. But not poor Gus.
SHE: Oh please. What does Gus have to do with anything you’ve been talking about?
HE: It’s “poor” Gus. He let his vanity and pride end his life like black holes crashing into each other at the far reaches of the universe.
SHE: Oh, no you don’t, mister. You can’t just change the subject in the middle of a…
If two black holes collide a billion light years away in interstellar space, and no one is around to see it happen, does the collision still make a gravitational wave? And if it does, when it gets to our shores, would the wave be too mushy for any respectable surfer to even give it a go? Discuss.
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