There are many mysteries in life. When I was a kid, we used to wonder whether the refrigerator light went off when the door was closed. (Not much ever happened where I grew up). Then one day some of us were at the local movie house and they ran a “short” prior to the movie (there used to be a lot of shorts). In this case, there was a camera inside the refrigerator. When the door was shut a small door in the back of the refrigerator opened and a little man came out and turned the light off.
We were all happy to be enlightened and no longer wasted time thinking about the matter. In fact, until recently I have assumed that something similar occurs when socks are put in the laundry and disappear never to be seen again. Dryers have some large areas and I suspected, but was never able to prove, that there was a trapdoor that opened and something came out and snatched a sock. I will admit that I was never certain whether a wet or a dry sock was snatched. I have never expressed myself on the issue as The Blonde in the house said that I should keep such theories to myself.
I was not sure why I should keep my thought on the issue undercover. However, it appears that she was correct as one of my friends sent me a report done by a prestigious scientific firm – at least they said they were prestigious. In any case they did a very time consuming study involving thousands of homes. What they were able to prove beyond the smallest shadow of doubt was that dryer lint is 82.6 percent the remains of cremated socks. Modern science is really something. Now I have another subject not to bother thinking about anymore.
Sometimes, I do wonder about science. The news media has been bombarding us with information about driverless cars. Apparently they are zooming around with their little cores whirling – perhaps even in your own neighborhood. It is true that sometimes the little cores go awry as one driverless car took out a row of mail boxes in one community. Luckily, we do not have to worry about that in The Villages. However, driverless cars are one thing, but driverless bicycles? Yep, they have them now. I guess they are for people who just like to move slowly on the streets while scrolling through their smart phones. Certainly such bicycles cramp the exercise benefit of bicycles. On the other hand they might prevent some of those accidents on the “Tour de France” that appear on TV.
Then, how about drones? We were at a social where a very smart man showed off one of his drones. It was kind of a scary thing as it just hovered while looking at you with lights flashing! One almost expected a ray to come blasting out and destroy the table we were sitting around. I imagine that drones can be valuable. For example, if your neighbor’s dog has a tendency to come over your yard, you could put the drone on guard. Then when the dog wandered over to your lot line, a quick ray blast right in front of him would most likely herd him back the correct way.
On the other hand, if you had a stubborn dog, the blast holes in your yard might not look so good either. Well, I figure that modern science will solve that problem as well.
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
