"Christmas Miracle" Stuns Scientific World

Scientists the world over were stunned today by the discovery of my Christmas lights, still neatly wound on their holder as they were when I put them away last January. The finding calls into question several key assumptions underpinning modern physics, especially those having to do with increasing disorder in the universe and conservation of energy. Experts in topology, the branch of mathematics having to with untangling electrical cords, have examined the photos of the orderly Christmas lights and have been unable to find any evidence of fakery or clever Photoshop work. A spokesman for the Gordian Society put it this way:

We were unable to find any evidence of fakery or clever Photoshop work. However, at least one of the strings of lights was threaded on backwards, with the female electrical receptacle being removed first, forcing the user to unroll the towards the outlet instead of away. This incredibly likely piece of dunderheadedness, typically performed on the first string put away, tends to confirm that what we are seeing here are genuinely stored Christmas lights.

However, many physicists were not so sanguine about the so-called Christmas mirable:

We are not so sanguine about the so-called Christmas miracle as those topology weenies. Frankly, everybody's in such a rush to throw out those annoying conservation and parity laws that nobody's stopping to consider alternative explanations. For instance, what if the guy bought new lights at an after-Christmas sale because he threw away the hopelessly tangled old ones, but then forgot? Doesn't that seem more plausible than claiming that the last five hundreds years of physics was simply mathematical obfuscation by nerds so that they could get funding to build giant doughnuts in the ground? Not that anyone's claiming that of course, but come on. I mean, come on. If I assume that Christmas lights remain untangled when not being observed, I can show that clothes dryers swallow either complete pairs socks or no socks at all. And that's just dumb.

Other parties are even less sanguine than that. A group backed by the powerful Christmas light and lawn ornament lobby has dismissed the entire story as a fabrication:

We dismiss this entire story as a fabrication. You expect anyone to believe that Steve, Steve the guy who wrote, what, four blog entries in the last six months, Steve whose dead Toyota has been parked in the driveway for a year, Steve who's been "almost finished" building that Mission bed for three years, you expect anyone to believe that this guy put away his Christmas lights in January?

The group is seeking the assistance of Steve's neighbours in coming up with evidence that the Christmas lights were probably put away in June, though they may have been unplugged as early as March. They have also launched an inquiry into where in the house the lights were stored, to see if they were positioned such that they would be observed regularly. Either of these conditions would greatly diminish the impact of the finding. Other groups, critical of the awkwardly structured run-on sentence in the preceding quote block, are investigating to see if the disordering of the lights was somehow influenced by other odd islands of order in Steve's generally disorderly household, for instance the gas cans in the shed which are clearly labelled "Two-Stroke Premix" and "Plain Gas" and the shop drawer which holds only drill bits and drill accessories, reducing the local incidence of lost chuck keys to zero. Investigators are also troubled by the fact that far more orange than blue or red lights were burned out, though they admit this may be a question of sample size rather than the death knell for modern physics.

Untangled Christmas lights, with face of big-headed sad clown appearing in the patterns in the concrete to the lower left

Posted by Steve at December 18, 2003 05:43 PM