washball ttes

You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gun powder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.
Excerpt from a letter Albert Einstein wrote to Erwin Schrdinger in 1950

Moris and Rustle were sitting on top of the roof with Persil washballs attached to their foreheads. Moris' was green, Rustle's was purple. 'I bet I can leave mine on the longest,' Moris said. 'I bet you can, too. My head's starting to hurt. I feel like my brain is being sucked out.' 'Yes, the suction on these things is incredible.' For some reason there were a lot of washballs in the house lately. There were all kinds of washballs downstairs, not just of the Persil kind, but the Persil ones were the prettiest so Rustle had stolen two of those. 'Well one of them stole the last of our acid,' Rustle reasoned. 'We have every right to steal back. Washballs are just the beginning.' 'Who do you think it was? Kevin and Myfanwy? Just imagine those two on acid. That would be funny.' 'No it wouldn't. It would be terrifying.' 'William? What about William?' 'No way. He's much too boring. He wouldn't steal from us. Maybe it was the rats.' There were also a lot of rats around lately. The man next door was obsessed with them. He was wandering around in his garden at the moment, with some kind of device that made crackling noises. 'It's a Geiger counter,' Moris said, knowingly. 'I've seen one on The X Files.' 'Maybe the rats are radioactive.' 'Or maybe they're being abducted by aliens.' They both considered this for a while.

'Are we going to shave our heads, then? Look, I've stolen a load of Myfanwy's Bic razors.' 'Moris!' 'What? You stole washballs.' 'I did, but Myfanwy doesn't shave her legs with washballs!' 'Or her armpits. Or...' 'Stop!' 'Don't worry, no one's shaved anything with these, yet. Come on, let's shave our heads. I stole a can of Kevin's shaving foam, too.' 'All right. I'll do yours first. Have you brought some scissors?' 'Here.' 'What do you think they're doing downstairs?' Rustle said, as he hacked away at Moris' long hair. 'Your hair is full of dreads.' 'I know. I never comb it. Myfanwy and Kevin were in the bath again earlier.' 'That's disgusting. Were they giggling?' 'No, they were fighting about something. Myfanwy sounded really angry.' 'It's their sixteenth anniversary today, isn't it? I thought Kevin was cooking her some kind of romantic meal.' 'Yuck. Is that why they kept asking if we were going out? Have they really been together sixteen years?' 'Months.' 'What?' 'Sixteen months, Moris. Your hair is a nightmare. What's William doing?' 'Just the usual. He's locked himself in his room.' 'Is he listening to Portishead again?' 'Yeah, He was playing Glory Box over and over again really loud.' 'I feel sorry for him, living next door to the kitchen.' 'And right underneath the bathroom.' 'No one deserves that. What do you think William does?' 'He's a student.' 'We're all students, Moris. What do you think he's studying?' 'Something serious, like accounting, maybe.' 'We should talk to him sometime. I don't think I've ever spoken to him. Do you think he has any friends?' 'I think he's friends with the Rat Man. My head feels really light.' 'I've almost finished cutting now. There. Pass me the shaving foam.' 'Ooh, Rustle, it's cold! That feels weird! I think I like it.' 'My forehead feels really hot. How about yours?' 'Mine feels kind of horny.'

'What?' 'You know, like a unicorn's head.' 'Oh. That's all right then.' 'Rustle?' 'Yes, Moris.' 'Tell me about dark matter again.' 'No. But I'll tell you about Schrdinger's cat, if you like. Does this hurt?' Rustle was scraping at Moris' head with a Bic disposable razor. 'No, not really. What's Schrdinger's cat?' 'Say there's this cat...' 'What kind of cat?' 'An ordinary cat.' 'A ginger one?' 'Okay, say there's this ordinary, ginger cat, and you put it in a box.' 'What, like one of those boxes you put your cat in when you have to take it to the vets?' 'No, Moris. Listen. You put it in a sealed box, so you can't see it.' 'No cat would tolerate being put into a box like that. It'd rip you to pieces when you tried getting it in.' 'You're missing the point.' 'I suppose you could wrap it in a towel first, or push it in backwards or something.' 'Right. Anyway, the cat's in this sealed box. Does it still exist?' 'What, the cat? Of course it still exists.' 'But you can't see it.' 'You can hear it, though. It'd be going off it's head by now, like Myfanwy. Ouch!' 'Oops. Sorry, I've cut you a bit. You can't hear it either, because the box is completely soundproof.' 'That's some box.' 'Yes, it is. And if you can't see or hear the cat, how do you know if it's alive or dead?' 'How do you know if it's even in the box?' 'What did you just say?' 'I said, how do you know if it's even in the box? It might have left and gone to, I don't know, the library or somewhere.' 'People underestimate you, you know, Moris, they really do. You actually are quite intelligent.' 'Thanks, Rustle.' 'But why would a cat go to the library?'

'People underestimate cats, too. Where would you go, Rustle, if someone put you in a box?' 'I'd go to Canada and be a Mountie.' 'No you wouldn't. You'd go to Canada to seduce a Mountie.' 'Okay, where would you go?' 'I'd go to Twin Peaks.' 'Twin Peaks isn't real.' 'Neither is Due South.' 'I want to be Benton Fraser's Alaskan Malamute.' 'Diefenbaker. I want to be Dale Cooper's mynah bird.' 'Waldo. Waldo gets shot, Moris.' 'Oh yeah.' 'I've finished. Your head's as smooth as a Persil washball. It's a washball tte! Let's have a look. Ha ha ha, you look like an alien!' 'Hey Rustle, we should go somewhere together, from our box, I mean.' 'Let's go to outer space. I'll play my guitar to the aliens.' 'Yeah! I could play the triangle or the tambourine or castanets or something.' 'That's settled then. I'm going to take this washball off now.' 'No don't. Leave it on while I shave your head, Rustle. It'll distract you from the razor burn.' 'Okay, Moris. Be gentle with me, please.' * Myfanwy and Kevin were lying in bed with their backs to each other. 'I can't believe you didn't wash your hands after you chopped up the chilli,' Myfanwy spat out. 'I said I'm sorry,' whined Kevin. 'My groin is on fire!' 'You should see the size of my...' 'Shut up, Kevin. I don't care about you or your penis. You ruined our anniversary.' 'I'm sorry. You're not going to tell those two upstairs, are you?' 'God forbid! We'll never hear the end of it.' Neither of them spoke for a while. 'What are they doing up there anyway?' Kevin asked eventually. 'They're probably up on the roof again, dropping spliffs.' 'People don't drop spliffs, Myfanwy. They drop acid.' 'Oh you think you know everything, just because you're doing a PhD!' 'Sorry.'

'I'm sick of you Kevin. I'm sick of the way you walk like a chicken. I'm sick of the way all you ever talk about is your pointless thesis about Victorian prostitutes.' 'But...' 'You care more about Victorian prostitutes than you care about me. You wouldn't even notice if I was sleeping with the entire faculty of veterinary medicine!' 'You're not, are you?' 'I'm going to, from tomorrow. I've decided. I'm going to sleep with the lot of them! Even the virologists!' Myfanwy leapt out of bed, and threw on her lime green cardigan with the big collar over her luminous pink pyjamas. She grovelled around on the floor for her big tortoiseshell spectacles. 'Where are you going, Myfanwy?' 'I'm going upstairs to have it out with those idiots about my razors. I know it was them. I'm sick of those two as well. They are a complete waste of space. I'm going to refuse to pick up notes for them at college anymore. They never read them, anyway. And after that I'm going downstairs to tell William to turn off his wretched Portaloo.' 'Portishead.' 'Shut up, Kevin. I don't care. God damn it, I'm going to tell William to do something about all the crap that he leaves lying around in the kitchen as well. And tomorrow morning, I'm going to phone the council about the rats.' 'The Rat Man won't like it. He says he's got them under control.' 'I don't care!' Myfanwy stormed out of the room. She slammed the door and stomped up the stairs. Kevin groaned and reached across weakly to the bedside table for some more aloe vera. * William had become a genius ever since he dropped the last of Moris and Rustle's acid. By day he was still a media student, but by night he was a quantum physicist. During his trip, he had a religious experience involving trees, troughs and washballs. The trees and the troughs were beyond even his understanding, but after he came down he devoted himself to washballs and the space-time continuum. He read the works of Einsteinn and Schrdinger, more to confirm what he had already seen than to learn anything new. He ruffled his hair, donned a pair of round glasses, a lab coat and a bow tie, and infiltrated the faculty of science. The physicists there were too wrapped up in their particle

accelerators and leptons and whatnot to notice him walking out with a Geiger counter plus a small canister of Fluorine-18. William didn't have any friends except for the man who lived next door. The man next door didn't have any friends apart from William, and he had asked William to look after his two pet rats for him while he went to Poland for a rat-fanciers convension. In his friend's absence, William lured one of the rats with a Malteaser into one of his radioactive washballs. He blinked, and during that split second the rat disappeared. William lured the second rat into a different washball. This time he sneezed, and when he opened his eyes the second rat had also disappeared. On his return, the man next door was distraught when William explained everything, but only until they deduced from the Geiger counter readings that seemingly both of the rats were alive and well under the house. This was confirmed by the establishment within months of a thriving, free love, and transiently radioactive rat commune beneath the floorboards. The trouble with rats, William hypothesized, was that they didn't have enough imagination. That was why they were only projected as far as under the house. What he needed was test subjects with broader horizons, test subjects who were perhaps even verging on psychotic. He immediately thought of his housemates; not the sex maniacs on the first floor they had even less imagination than the rats but the ones on the top floor who were on a planet all of their own. There was something childlike and whimsical about them in the way they were completely detached from reality. They've probably dropped too much acid, William thought. They could wind up anywhere. So William started leaving multicoloured radioactive washballs lying around in the kitchen, and, just as he predicted, before long Moris and Rustle started taking the bait. William watched them through a peephole he drilled in his bedroom wall. They built washball castles. They juggled with them. They put them on the floor and watched Myfanwy and Kevin trip over them. And then finally, one night, it happened. 'Look, Rustle, look! You can stick them to things!' 'It's stuck to Kevin's aubergine!' 'Oh shit, they're coming. I'm taking it off. Oh my God, the aubergine collapsed!' 'Quick, hide it!' 'Hide what?' 'The aubergine!' 'Right. I'll stick it down my jumper. Come on, let's go upstairs. We're going to shave our heads, remember? You promised.'

'Okay. I'm taking a couple of washballs.' 'Yeah, we could stick them to our heads!' 'Yeah!' William rubbed his hands in glee. He picked up his walkie-talkie to mobilize the Rat Man and the Geiger counter. * 'Kevin! Kevin!' 'What is it, Myfanwy?' 'They've disappeared!' 'Who?' 'Moris and Rustle!' 'Oh my God. Have they fallen off the roof?' 'I don't know! There's just their hair and two washballs up there! And an aubergine! They definitely took my razors. They took your shaving foam, too.' 'Not my shaving foam! That was from Waitrose,' Kevin groaned. He pulled himself back together. 'I'm going to call an ambulance right away.' 'We'd better find out where they've gone first! Oh my God, I knew no good would come out of living with those two! Oh my God oh my God oh my God...' 'Get a hold of yourself, Myfanwy,' Kevin said, taking the opportunity to be manly. 'Oh shut up, Kevin! You're pathetic!' At that moment there was banging at the front door. Myfanwy and Kevin ran onto the landing and saw William and the Rat Man embracing and jumping up and down in the hall. 'They've gone, William, they've gone! I turned my back for a moment and pffffft, they disappeared into thin air! I can't pick up a Geiger reading anywhere!' 'They're definitely not under the house?' 'I'm certain of it! It's only my rats down there. We did it!' 'What have they done? Why are all the people we live with such debutants?' Myfanwy screamed. 'I think you mean deviants.' 'Shut up shut up shut up!' 'I'm calling the police,' Kevin sighed, and waddled down the stairs. * Outside, the moon was full. The rats scurried around under the house, unsettled by uneartly laughter and a shambolic rendition of Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'.