ASK DR. BOLI.

Dear Dr. Boli: I have on many occasions been forced to vigorously defend against hostile skeptics, my long held belief that at the end of every rainbow is a creel full of trout. Are you aware of any scientific evidence to refute this? —Sincerely, Clay Potts.

Dear Sir: The ends of rainbows have not been explored much of late, though several famous expeditions were mounted in the nineteenth century. The prominent Victorian spectrologist Hugo Pennybetter, whose success as a student of all things related to the rainbow is all the more remarkable because he was completely colorblind, explored a number of rainbows in South America in the winter (or, below the equator, summer) of 1877-1878. He was able to reach the ends of four rainbows, a record never equaled by any other explorer. At the end of the first he found a pot of gold, but only inferior 10-karat stuff that failed even to pay the expenses of the expedition. At the end of the second he found a unicorn, a gryphon, a chimera, a cockatrice, a sphinx, and a duck. At the end of the third he found a platter (not a creel) of trout, but (surprisingly enough) speckled trout, not rainbow trout. It is not known what he found at the end of the fourth, since, having found it, he refused to come back.

Comments

  1. Clay Potts says:

    Thank you good, Doctor. As I suspected, the scientific evidence is quite inconclusive, nor does it sufficiently refute my assertion. Whereas, a pot of 10-karat gold could never be expected to cover the cost of a scientific expedition of this magnitude and scope, it certainly would be sufficient currency exchange for a creel of trout, whereas, mythical creatures are not known to have an appetite for fish, this only eliminates the duck, and it can surely be assumed that a creel of trout would not last very long in the presence of the four remaining creatures discovered at the end of the second rainbow, whereas, granted, a platter of trout in itself is insufficient evidence they originated in creel, common sense naturally tells that a creel is a much more suitable mode of transporting fish from creek to table, than a shallow platter of flopping trout, much less to the end of a rainbow, whereas, we are unlikely to ever know, by his refusal to return, what Mr. Pennybetter did find at the end of the fourth rainbow, all we can truly conclude from his expedition is, however well intentioned, the good fellow proved in three instances that he has a habitual penchant for being late, and it is to his creditors, we must assume, to whom Mr. Pennybetter is refusing to return.

  2. C. Simon says:

    Dr. Boli,

    I am admiring the “Gluton Free” labels on these shelves. How is it that one may eat food, yet without ingesting the glutons (as they have been separated from the food) he does not commit gluttony? Yours, Nearsighted in Whole Foods Market.

  3. Reinewrin Heisinger-Schroedenberg says:

    The apparently paradoxical, and so-called “mythical” productions at the ends of rainbows cited above are only so if we are looking so to speak through the lens of classical physics. In fact, the rainbow phenomenon is actually a quantum effect, upon which realization we see that there is in fact a finite non-zero probability for any production. One may consult http://faculty.virginia.edu/quantum/PhysRevLett_101_130501.pdf and http://www.cems.uvm.edu/~tlakoba/AppliedUGMath/rainbow_glory_review.pdf for details; the first article shows (Fig. 3) a form of trout creel. I well remember as a graduate student delightful picnics where the delicious meal was provided by the application of quantum theory, although I am unclear now as whether Erwin Schrodinger’s state vector evolution of Werni Heisenberg’s operator evolution method was employed.

  4. Clay Potts says:

    My good sir, it is precisely the second source you cite, from which my assertion originated, and which later formed the buttress of my defense of theory, more precisely, Section 5, detailing Nussenzweig’s, Complex Angler Momentum Theory, although, I note, I reviewed an earlier edition and I now observe your revised edition contains a spelling correction in the title of the earlier printing which I must confess, with some embarrassment, completely changes the meaning and context of the theory as I originally understood it to read.

  5. Rnwrn. Hs-Sh. says:

    Pace St. Thomas More, your tangled thoughts in regard to the cited paper, and mine also concerning which theoretical treatment was employed to cater those old faculty picnics, is to be expected as *entanglement* is intrinsic to the subject, c.f. http://phys.lsu.edu/~jdowling/talks/UCSD07.pdf, especially slide 2; or the work of this scholar http://www.phys.virginia.edu/People/personal.asp?UID=op6n .

  6. Clay Potts says:

    Again, Dear Sir, you have cited irrefutable sources (in my humble opinion) which only vindicate my original assertion. You are quite right, Slide 2 of the first citation is especially relevant, however, I have spent several moments reviewing Slide 18, and I think you will agree, this slide is by far the best illustration of my complex thought processes employed in the development of my theory.

  7. Rw. H-S says:

    By Synchrony ! That appearance of slide 18 is clearly a case of the observer (yourself, Good Sir) causing a collapse of the quantum wave function (a phenomenon typically referencing the feline). You have found, or rather caused to be found, Pennybetter. Scanning Tunneling Miscroscopic examination of the apparently continuous black expanse reveals the missing Angler completely entangled in his fishing line, the result of a too vigorous and Complex Nussenzweig Angular casting manoeuver.

  8. Clay Potts says:

    Right honorable sir, I have enjoyed our exchanges; you have been very astute in your own observations and you may have just unwittingly provided explanation for another observation I have been making over the course of our correspondence. Forgive my forwardness, however, I cannot help but notice your moniker has also been suffering a gradual collapse of sorts, as to have reached a dangerously critical point, as to risk, by our continued exhanges, a complete quantum evaporation.

  9. a soupcon of trout says:

    A most insightful observation, Sir … Nature abhoring an unfilled quantum state, I detect I am replacing Pennybetter in the dynamic void … echo answereth not ..

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