Hat Shrapnel

The Sole Reason for the Internet is Back!

Physics will steal your soul and make you cry.

I have been absent for nearly two months and I make no apologies for abandoning HatShrapnel in the meantime except to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t leave me, HatShrapnelites.  I’ll never do it again for at least two months or until I feel tired.”

Now an explanation: for the past two months or so I have locked myself in my apartment studying physics preparing for my Physics Graduate Records Examination, the most evil exam ever perpetrated by mankind.  (Rumor has it that the exam was written by a supervillain that lost his mind after looking into The Abyss.)  I locked myself away from television and radio (not hard since I own neither) and all forms of normal people fun while I studied physics for hours every day, which I contend is its own fun. Physics twenty-four hours a day and six days a week (I’m not a machine) can have an adverse effect, however.  After awhile it pervades every thought, interjects itself into every simple task.

Passing by a window in my apartment and noticing a cold draft, I resolved to stuff a towel or something at the base to stop the incoming cold.  In the two seconds it took from the beginning of my consideration to the end I thought, in order, “I’ll just stuff a towel in there.  What has a higher insulation rating than a towel?  Insulation rating just measures a rate of loss, there’s no way to stop it entirely so no matter what I use, the cold will get in eventually anyway - it’s the second law of thermodynamics.  Come to think of it, the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the energy density will slowly smooth out over the age of the universe, dooming all life and order to a freezing, lonely death as the eons march on so nothing anyone ever does will matter in the end.  And I don’t know where I have a towel handy.”

But worry not, HatShrapnelers, physics isn’t all depression and bleak prophesy.  There’s also the constant confusion about the real world.  I received a voice mail the other day from an old research professor with whom I have not worked for ten months asking if I had calibrated the electron streams like I was supposed to last night and to give him a call back.  Now that I think about it, a normal person’s response might be to assume the professor had accidentally called the wrong number from his contact list.  My response involved immediately checking the year on my calendar to ensure that I had not unknowingly traveled back in time one year to when I was working on the electron streams.  The possibility that the call was a mistake didn’t occur to me until ten minutes later as I was pondering how I could connect to a military satellite to check it’s internal date.

Anyway,  HatShrapnelonians, the message is that I’m back and will no longer ignore HatShrapnel for months on end.  Now I can return to the regular routine of ignoring HatShrapnel on a weekly basis.