Crackpot Ideas

posted by Brian Houston (dag) 1 decade 6 years 9 months ago • 822 views
My grandfather was an old country lawyer from Oklahoma. During the day he spent a lot of time at the courthouse with clients. But in the evenings and weekends he was a crackpot scientist. He had lots of ideas that he was continuously trying out on me. He was a Christian and a member of the free-masons - so many of his ideas were a mix of science and religion.

He had an idea that the parting of the Red Sea was caused by a close pass-by of Mars that that made a gravitational pull on the waters, somehow splitting the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites. That was one of his ideas.

I seem to have inherited the genes- because when I'm doing the dishes or riding the train to work- I get these ideas that kind of roll around in my brain.

Here's one I had today:

Shoelaces are coated with a slightly slippery plastic sealant to make them come undone, even if you double-knot them. This is so you will step on them, wearing them out- having to purchase new ones. It's a conspiracy.

Here's a bigger one. Doesn't it seem kind of ridiculous that huge brachiosauruses the size of sky-scrapers walked the earth, and now we have no mammalian analog or even evolutionary remnants of these super-giant reptiles? My idea is that a body that size would be impossible today on earth. Now I'm no paleontologist,- but I play one on the VideoSift - and I think that it's too much weight and meat to be supported:



So, I think that gravity was less back in Jurassic times. Why? Because 1,000 tons of space dust falls on the earth every year. I've had too much wine to do the math - but I have done the math at other times - and believe me, that's a lot of dust since Jurassic times.

Now. I'm going to bed. I've run out of wine.

9 Comments

blankfist says...

>> ^Tofumar:
Hey! I'm from Oklahoma, Dag! I had no idea you had roots there, even if they are from way back when.

Translation? He basically said you're old.

Your question isn't as crackpot as you think. Well, the shoelace one is pretty crackpot, but not the "Why are dinosaurs so big" question. It seems someone else had the same question as you. I like the possible explanation of more oxygen in the atmosphere back then than there is now. That's an interesting theory.

choggie says...

Inspired post.
Crackpot ideas come from many a bottle. Take Gurdjieff's thick-ass tome, "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson" The prologue describes the setting in which he penned this epic-he had a nice little spot in the corner of a wine cellar. His bev of choice was Armagnac,(brandy) a French region and the oldest to distill-some cardinal back in the 12th century, had this extolation about this spirit's, many virtues...
"It makes disappear redness and burning of the eyes, and stops them from tearing; it cures hepatitis, sober consumption adhering. It cures gout, cankers and fistula by ingestion, restores the paralysed member by massage and heals wounds of the skin by application. It enlivens the spirit, partaken in moderation, recalls the past to memory, renders men joyous, preserves youth and retards senility. And when retained in the mouth, it loosens the tongue and emboldens the wit, if someone timid from time to time himself permits."-(wiki)

I like this new wino dag. Now yer an Okie, will wonders never cease?
-Brian d'Houston

You have China to thank for those cheap-ass slippery shoelaces, and everyone knows dinosaurs were hollow.

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