From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 14:13:18 MST
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
>
> At 12:50 PM 4/4/03 +0100, Steve Davies wrote:
>
> >Personally the question I want answering is what happens
> >to all of those socks that vanish from washing machines and why
> is it only
> >ever one half of of a pair that vanishes?
>
> I'm surprised that so careful a thinker as Steve should still
> cling to this
> common delusion. Careful study has shown that the *number* of socks is
> always *conserved*. It is only the chirality that fluctuates. The best
> current working model is that the rotation of swirling water
> causes a local
> sock transition through a curled spatial dimension or brane, yielding
> right-left transposition. This is an ordinary example of the far grander
> chirality dynamics at the Big bang, during which more antimatter switched
> to normal matter than vice versa, thus accounting for the presence of all
> of us and our socks. Some counter this explanation by reference to the
> distinctive color and markings of certain singleton socks. These skeptics
> seem unaware of the role played by the color charge of quarks and gluons.
No, no, no...you don't need a complex physics theory when simple biology
will do to explain two common household problems: socks are the larval form
of coathangers.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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