Tuesday, February 21, 2006

A wobble in the world


The classic
Originally uploaded by Pip.

Did I dream it or was there a play about somebody who placed lots of speak your weight machines at the north pole in the hope that they would attract lots of ships with their promises of substantial weight loss, and then the world goes into this wobble, and no longer spins evenly on its axis, and the seas pile up, and people on bikes going down hills go into a Kevin Kegan speed wobble, and the drums inside washing machine all become unevenly loaded, and the centrifugal force is such that the machines break loose from their attachments to the wall an bounce around the room like a bucking bronco. And lets not talk about gyroscopes guiding fighter planes, and spinning tops, and whirling dervishes, and protons in a cyclotron, and pity the poor man on the motor bike on the wall of death.

We just take it for granted that the world will spin on it's axis, and day will follow night, and as the earth circles in its orbit we will have one season after another. It is all so perfect.

Yes they say that at times in the past the globe has flipped and the north pole has become the south pole.

I read on the web... If you listen to Hopi Indian Legends at one time the poles flipped all hell broke lose, ocean waves as tall as mountains came crashing over the land, mountains plunged into the sea and the entire earth spun around aimlessly, froze over and even flipped over twice.

But we really don't need weight speaking machines to do the job for us. For on the radio I heard that the glaciers of Greenland are melting at twice the normal speed, and the sea level is estimated to rise by 7 meters.

Just imaging all of that mass disappearing from the north pole. It is enough to send the world into a speed wobble. As if God had unevenly packed his spin dryer.

Wouldn't it be just fine if the north and south pole ended up at the equator. That would really confuse all those birds that navigate by magnetic fields, and it might save us from the bird flu pandemic.

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