The Right & the Wrong Way

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This blogpost is NOT for prudes...they have been warned!

I have to say this because there has been a complaint that there are 'dirty' and 'vulgar' jokes in my booklet: 'Woolgathering' (meant for a girl child)!

I am tickled pink!

This morning the Hall Curtain's middle hole at its top slipped out of its metal hook in the pelmet. I was holding the hook and trying in vain to pass the Curtain into it. After five sweaty minutes I realized that I should do the other way round; and the thing was done in a second!

First afternoon in my First Year Physics Lab at my Univ in 1958: The experiment allotted to me (we were singletons with no 'partners') was Borda's Pendulum.

A massive metal sphere with a pin stuck to its bottom and hanging from the ceiling by a long metal wire. It was all supposed to be about Moment of Inertia. There was a telescope clamped to a rod. Its height is adjustable, it can be tilted right and left and up and down, and could be 'focused' in and out. Too many 'degrees of freedom'.

After 10 minutes of failing to get the pin's magnified image into the eyepiece, I sought help from the 'Attendant' who came up, did it for me in a second so I could see the damn thing as clear as my face in the morning mirror, knocked the entire thing off its adjustment, and asked me to do it by myself.

I tried unsuccessfully for four days, got penalized, but didn't seek further help. At the end of those four days I became an expert in all labs where things are to be focused and got into the field of view: practically every experiment in every Physics Lab.

At the end of 4 years I stood First in the Labs.

The trick is NOT to try and see through the instrument in the first place. Knock the instrument off its alignment, see the thing with the naked eye, fix your eye, and THEN bring the instrument between you and the thing you want to see, and adjust the screws.

VR told me a short story by some famous French writer whose name I forget:

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This girl complained to the Judge that she was screwed against her will, but not 'raped'; yet she wanted the guy to be punished for beguiling her.

The Judge said it can't be done.

He volunteered with a Demo. He would hold a needle in his hand and let the girl try and push a thread into its eye. In public.

Whenever the girl tried and neared, the Judge would push his hand slightly away.

After a few failed trials the girl knew what went wrong.

She then held the Judge's hand softly, crooned in her sweet voice: "Lovely Needle, Darling Needle, Beautiful Needle" and so on and so forth as the whole Court and the Judge fell laughing.

And the thread was in the needle before they recovered!
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