If I can’t find my keys, they could be on the counter, or in the kitchen table hiding under some junk mail. Or maybe I left them hanging on the door. Until I find them, I obviously can’t say which. It’s a bit like sealing a radioactive atom in a box and leaving it isolated: until I open the box I can’t say whether it decayed. Sounds familiar?
Many jokes, particularly puns and one-liners, rely on on setting up expectations, just to subvert them, on double meanings and ambiguity. Take this one:
I would tell you a chemistry joke, but I wouldn’t get any reaction.
AnThere’s a sealed box, inside the box is a cute cat and a device that can kill it as soon as a radioactive atom decays. Were we to open the box, would the cat be alive? And how is it doing while the box is still closed? In extreme synthesis, this is the idea of the famous “Schrödinger’s cat” experiment (thought experiment! no actual … Continue reading Cats and not
PhysicalLove 