\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

… just not one of mine …<\/p>\n

… but it certainly and easily could have been one!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The following is a quote from a book I just finished (and recommended earlier<\/a>: this is how chapter 21 starts in “The Black Hole War<\/a>” by the renowned theoretical (theoradical!) physicist Leonard Susskind<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I post it here, because this is a perfect<\/strong> example of the type of conversations my wife and I sometimes have.<\/p>\n

One morning, when I went down to breakfast, my wife Anne, remarked that my T-shirt was on backwards; the V shape woven into the fabric was in the back. Later in the day, when I came home from a jog, she laughed and said: “Now it’s inside out.” That set me to thinking: how many ways are there to wear a T-shirt? Anne mockingly said, “That’s the sort of stupid thing you physicists are always thinking about.” Just to prove my superior cleverness, I quickly declared that there are 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. You can stick your head through any of 4 holes. That leaves 3 holes for your torso. Having picked a neck hole and a torso hole, that leaves 2 possibilities for your left arm. Once you decide where your left arm goes, there is only one choice for your\u00c2\u00a0 right arm. So that means 4 x 3 x 2 = 12 ways to choose from. But then you can turn the shirt inside out, giving another 12, so I proudly announced that I had solved the problem: 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. Anne was not impressed. She replied, “No, there are 25 ways. You forgot one.” Puzzled I asked, “What did I miss?” With a look that would freeze hell, she said, “You can roll it in a ball and shove it …” You get the idea ^{1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n}

^{1<\/sup>. Since writing this, Anne has discovered at least 10 more ways to wear a T-shirt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n}

Sometimes … you just can’t win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0 … just not one of mine … … but it certainly and easily could have been one! The following is a quote from a book I just finished (and recommended earlier: this is how chapter 21 starts in “The Black Hole War” by the renowned theoretical (theoradical!) physicist Leonard Susskind). I post it here, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,33,13,31,9,22,37,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-diary","category-funny","category-math","category-pointless-remarks","category-random-remarks","category-science","category-spousal-conversations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}