Einstein's Goldfish...

... that's right, Einstein's goldfish - he's my little star of the week. And what a week it's been in the jewel of the north; never a dull moment.

At the top end of town, 'The Play That Goes Wrong'  has been wooing audiences at the Opera House, inducing near-calamitous fits of laughter nightly at the accident-prone antics of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society ; while at the bottom end of town, the farce that is 'The Club That Goes Wrong' has been bemusing long-suffering fans of Blackpool FC because of the latest near-calamitous antics of the House of Oyston...at which we no longer know whether to laugh or cry. Actually both reactions seem appropriate in equal measure - though anger and frustration outweigh them in the end.

Why is Einstein's goldfish a star? Because with many a plucky flick of fin and swish of tail, he continues to evade the marauding clutches of Schrodinger's cat (of course).


 

There is a definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results..." that is frequently attributed to Albert Einstein. Almost certainly he didn't say it at all. (Ditto Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and other prominent quipsters of renown. It's origin probably lies in a novel by the mystery-writer Rita Mae Brown.)

 

One compelling reason that Einstein wouldn't have said it is that he was far too intelligent. If anything, he would probably have said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result" in the spirit of Herakleitos 2,500 years earlier who stated: "you could not step twice into the same river". Why? Because all is flux or change in space-time; put more simply: no two moments are the same no matter how similar they appear to be.

 

It is that thought principally which keeps Einstein's goldfish happy as he swims interminably round the universe of his little glass bowl; that and his musing about quantum super-positioning... and his confidence that he has the wherewithal to keep evading the claws and jaws of the shadowy cat.

 

To today's brief burst of contradictory poetics, then:

Poxymorons
Long story short,
Round World Square
A great little gang
Rented to repair
Multiplying divisions
In the disparate whole
Sets up a chant
Like a heathen prayer,
Muttering: "Nothing is real,
Nothing is real."
Of course,
But a pyrrhic victory
For the weak force.

Thanks for reading. Keep swimming against the tide, S ;-)