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Unpopular Ideas

Ramblings and Digressions from out of left field, and beyond....

Name:
Location: Piedmont of Virginia, United States

All human history, and just about everything else as well, consists of a never-ending struggle against ignorance.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Waterspin

This morning something drew my attention to the water vanishing down the drainage hole of the utility sink. As it did so, it spun counter-clockwise. We are told that that is always the case in the Northern Hemisphere, because of the tilt of the Earth as it spins on its axis, or some such, while we have it on the very best authority that in the Southern Hemisphere, it revolves in the opposite direction, which must be clockwise.

If I ever went to New Zealand, I wonder if I would notice?

I think that would be the first thing I would check. But in the general flurry of events I would probably forget.

I wonder how things go directly on the Equator? There do we see cases of confused waters?

I also wonder if, whatever the location, whether the departing water ever decides to try whirling in the other direction, just for kicks?

I get crazy ideas like that from seeing how cats are so set in their ways. For instance I have wondered if, just one morning, they would not be there at the door, all six of them, with their minds totally focused on just one thing, breakfast. Not likely. In fact, probably never, in the absence of various cat catastrophes, like the presence of a pack of killer dogs.

I suppose that's one result of the evolution of the human brain -- the capacity now and then to do the unlikely and even the impossible and try spinning down drainage holes in the opposite direction.

Sometimes that's called being perverse, while on other occasions it's genius.