Chaos Theory and Potato Chip Decisions By Yurivich Gruskenvald

Greetings lovers of science! It has been a few months since I've written for the Reality Syndicate. I believe the last time I had an article here when I gave Dave the Wombat his follow-up exam.

Recently I've been back at the Community College of Backwater, Michigan getting my correspondence degree in Chaos Theory. You see, animal psychology with an emphasis in wombats is a good career, but should wombats go extinct over night, I would need something to fall back on. I chose chaos theory.

What is chaos theory you ask? Well, let me show you! I've prepared a little experiment using a local wimp I found on the street who was on his way to the grocery store. He wanted to buy some potato chips for his LAN (Local Area Network, a computer geek thing) party that evening. Using the fundamental equations and proofs of modern chaos theory, I devised the fate of the world based on this guy's decision. I call it:

Choice #1 : Ruffled Potato Chips What would happen if Norman chose Ruffled Potato Chips over Regular?

• Norman chooses Ruffles, pays for them and leaves.
• On the way out, Norman bumps into an arsonist in the parking lot who gets very angry and decides to start burning things again.
• At his party that evening, Norman's fellow nerds complain that he got Ruffles instead of regular.
• Norman and the nerds fight, Norman throws the nerds out of the house.
• The nerds set fire to Norman's house the following evening. The fire goes wildly out of control since the local fire department was fast asleep since they spent all day fighting another fire that was caused by the arsonist Norman bumped into earlier.
• The entire city of Backwater, Michigan burns down and the fire spreads and engulfs the entire country.
• The German town of Langenwart passes a controversial modification to the local leash law concerning dogs and other pets.
• The fire continues down through central America and into South America.
• The smoke from the dual-continent fires black out the sky, and desperate European scientists begin to plan a gravity machine to bring the Earth closer to the sun and subsequently allow more sunlight to peek through the layer of smoke.
• The janitor in the lab spills his coffee on the plans for the machine but tells no one for fear of an embarrassing pay cut.
• The machine is built improperly.
• The gravity machine aims at the moon even though it's computer navigation system says it's aiming at the sun. The moon is pulled down to the Earth's surface and the planet is destroyed. The view from space is really cool and a bunch of aliens that were about to conquer the planet and enslave the human race are entertained for about three minutes.

Choice #2 : Regular Potato Chips What would happen if Norman chose Regular Potato Chips over Ruffled?

• Norman chooses Regular, pays for them, and leaves.
• On the way out, since it took him longer to pay, he runs smack into a bag boy who wasn't watching where he was going.
• In the parking lot, Norman does not run into the arsonist.
• That night, at the party, Norman's fellow geeks congratulate him on his excellent choice of snack foods.
• All of the nerds eat themselves silly until they begin having paranoid fantasies of superior alien conquistadors invading Earth.
• The nerds set out to build a machine to create a force field around the planet to protect from alien predators.
• The nerds draw up plans for their machine to create a force field around the planet to protect from alien predators.
• The nerds build their machine to create a force field around the planet to protect from alien predators.
• The nerds activate their machine to create a force field around the planet to protect from alien predators.
• The machine malfunctions and blasts everything that wasn't nailed down off the face of the planet, including most of the water in the oceans.
• Taco Bell raises the price of a Chalupa to $1.57.
• The moon is hit by this shock wave of stuff from the surface of the planet and is swept away with it, leaving the Earth barren, dry, and alone. Most of the planets population is taken in the blast, and those who happened to be underground or strapped to their beds and their beds nailed to the ground (or holding on to something really tight) eventually die of starvation.

Conclusion:

Well, it looks like the world would have been destroyed either way. When having to decide whether I wanted to be crushed under the weight of the Moon, be blasted out into space, or withstand the blast but then starve to death, I decided the fourth option:

Have dinner with my Grandmother!

Yes, I told Norman to just get some Doritos and my calculations show that the world should be okay (plus my Grandmother will invite me over for some scrumptious pot pie in three days!) That is, just so long as Vanilla Ice doesn't win a Grammy next year. The results would be galactically devastating!

-Yurivich Gruskenvald, Animal Psychologist, Wombat Expert, Chaos Theorist