Thursday, September 05, 2002

I got a toy over

I got a toy over the holidays that brought me much gratification - geek gratification, the deep personal joy that the overly-cerebral get from logic games and encyclopedias.  It’s a Galileo thermometer, so colorful and scientific and practical… the little globes bobble and float around, refracting light and casting lovely shades on the countertop… but the thing I loved about it most was that it was a slave to physics, that it would always do what it was supposed to do, no moving parts that could break (unless I dropped it), nothing to come off track or off line.  It was a perfect little machine, designed to reflect the conditions surrounding it reflexively.  So now it’s wrong.  All the time.  I’m sweltering and the tube says “68 degrees.” I wake up and stagger to the darkness of the kitchen, my breath clouding in the frigid predawn air, my feet nearly freezing to the linoleum, and it says “84 degrees.” It’s laughing at me.  How can this happen?  Everything is sealed!  It’s not like I care what temperature it is, I just liked that it worked, cleanly and neatly, governed by the same physical laws that make the world work, that keep the moon in the sky, and now it’s gone haywire.  Does this mean I don’t have to obey the laws of physics either?  Because if that’s true there are a few things I’d really like to accomplish…