The First Theory

Well, I’ve been blogging for only a week and I’ve already missed a deadline (although it was a self-imposed deadline). I guess when I say I will post on Wednesday, I meant Wednesday-ish.

Anyway, I thought I would share with you the Astolfi Theory that started it all. It turns out that I started this quite some time ago - April 1987. That’s sort of the reason I’m late. The file was in a format that I could not open using any of the modern programs. I had to go back to a very old word processor to get the file open. More about this in a later Theory.

Without further ado, here it is, out of the vaults, dusted off and decoded for your enjoyment.

The Astolfi Theory - 4-3-87

Understanding the Universe - Part 1

Entropy. Some days I wake up and curse entropy. What is it? Although scientists can give you a definition that you need an advanced degree to understand, suffice it to say that it is the tendency of all things to proceed from a state of order to a state of disorder. You know, a pile of dirt in the yard eventually gets more and more spread out, hot water and cold water mix to make warm water, the threads in my socks slowly turn into tiny fuzz-balls until my toes and heels can see daylight. In a nutshell, science has once again told us what I have suspected for years -- namely that the universe is falling apart.

Lest you poo-poo this as insignificant, just consider all the things in life attributable to this law. Yes, law. The science community considers entropy to be of such profound impact, that they have included it in the rulebook of nature as the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Why do you suppose your car needs annual tune-ups, or your clothes get dirty, or the house need painting, or .....Need I go on? In fact, with the exception of other people, nearly all of life's annoyances can be blamed on entropy.

Just when you think you've got one section of the dam shored up, another part starts to crumble. Why do we bother? I don't know. Maybe it's hopeless optimism, or maybe it's stupidity, or maybe it's our human urge to try to beat the system. Hah! I've got news for you. You may be able to win the lottery once every 10.5 million times you play, but there's just no beating entropy. Whoever made up that law didn't leave any loopholes. Except ... what about dust bunnies. Oh yes, I know this subject has been covered ad-nausiam by analysts much better qualified than myself. But, just the same, the fact that they do seem to grow, thereby going from disorder to order is a little unsettling.

Let's leave that for the moment, however, and consider a universe where in fact that was the case. Let's say that instead of entropy, things did go from disorder to order. It might be kind of nice. Instead of having to paint the house every 5-10 years, the color got richer with age. I could live with that. But is this the wonderful thing it appears to be? Consider further. What would happen to the paint on your house given 50 years or so. If indeed it is getting more organized, then the paint would grow. You know, the small atmospheric impurities of our world would settle out on the appropriate houses. But after a while, it would get too thick. So there you have it, Instead of painting your house every 5 years you'd have to scrape it to get rid of the extra paint. In fact We'd all just trade one set of chores for another. Think about it. Removing extra pieces of metal from your car, ripping up roads that just seem to grow, it boggles the mind. In fact the rift between the living and the nonliving would at least appear to shrink a little.

Well, maybe it's not so bad the way it is. At least I'm used to it. And it is entropy that allows me to cook and keep warm. So ... I guess entropy is my friend ... at least until the next thing breaks. But still, it might be nice to reach under the couch every few months and pull out a new pair of socks, courtesy of the dust bunnies.