Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Boxing Day
Monday was Boxing Day.
Boxing Day is not really part of American culture. According to my (expatriate-American) friend Mick, Boxing Day is primarily known and celebrated in "Commonwealth countries (those which used to be part of the British Empire.)"
Of course, I thought the USA used to be part of the British Empire. But if you begin to research Boxing Day for yourself, you will quickly find yourself buried under a mountain of puzzlements, conundrums, and dilemmas of just this sort.
If you are nagged by a sense that you would be happier if you knew even less than you know now about Boxing Day, just do a little reading on the topic. Here's a resource to get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_day
It's like having electroconvulsive therapy. The more you read, the less you know.
Or ask a friend about it, and you'll experience a similar result. Just try it... you'll see.
A couple of days ago, I watched The Man Who Wasn't There. This was perhaps my third or fourth viewing of this fine Coen Brothers film set in a small, Northern California town in the 1950s.
One character in the story is a big-city lawyer from Sacramento who has the idea to use the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a defense in a murder case. This is probably not the lawyer you'd want if you were in a jam. It's unlikely he would try this Heisenberg strategy if his own ass was on the line, but he'd take your money to try the experiment on your behalf-- if he doesn't know you too well, if he doesn't really care what happens to you, if he considers your case probably lost anyway, and if you're in some backwater town where fewer people will see the headlines when you get the chair...
Anyway, this lawyer's watered-down misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was this: The more you look at something, the less you know about it.
I don't think that's quite what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says, and in my experience, this isn't really true as a rule.
But it is true in some exceptional cases. One is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle itself. Another is Boxing Day.
Boxing Day is not really part of American culture. According to my (expatriate-American) friend Mick, Boxing Day is primarily known and celebrated in "Commonwealth countries (those which used to be part of the British Empire.)"
Of course, I thought the USA used to be part of the British Empire. But if you begin to research Boxing Day for yourself, you will quickly find yourself buried under a mountain of puzzlements, conundrums, and dilemmas of just this sort.
If you are nagged by a sense that you would be happier if you knew even less than you know now about Boxing Day, just do a little reading on the topic. Here's a resource to get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_day
It's like having electroconvulsive therapy. The more you read, the less you know.
Or ask a friend about it, and you'll experience a similar result. Just try it... you'll see.
A couple of days ago, I watched The Man Who Wasn't There. This was perhaps my third or fourth viewing of this fine Coen Brothers film set in a small, Northern California town in the 1950s.
One character in the story is a big-city lawyer from Sacramento who has the idea to use the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a defense in a murder case. This is probably not the lawyer you'd want if you were in a jam. It's unlikely he would try this Heisenberg strategy if his own ass was on the line, but he'd take your money to try the experiment on your behalf-- if he doesn't know you too well, if he doesn't really care what happens to you, if he considers your case probably lost anyway, and if you're in some backwater town where fewer people will see the headlines when you get the chair...
Anyway, this lawyer's watered-down misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was this: The more you look at something, the less you know about it.
I don't think that's quite what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says, and in my experience, this isn't really true as a rule.
But it is true in some exceptional cases. One is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle itself. Another is Boxing Day.
