Geeks in the Forest = Pondering the Equations of Life

October 5, 2010 by libertatemamo 18 Comments

 The outside temperature has dropped to the 40’s (4°C), it’s drizzling a bone-chilling cold and we’re deep, deep into the TN forest. It’s moments like this that make you wonder what happens when 2 geeks in their expedition-weight Patagonia underwear spend several days holed-up in a large tin-can in the wilderness. Well, there’s many ways of keeping warm, of course…copious quantities of hot chocolate and mulled wine, woolen hats and good ‘ol-fashioned ehrmmm physical activity. But no matter how much we pretend to be normal the geekiness, after a certain number of hours, naturally comes forth. It’s the Natural Law of Techies-In-The-Wild and leads to a lot of interesting conversation about life, the universe and everything inside it. So, for today’s post I thought I’d share a few of our newly-arrived-at conclusions.

Where T = temperature (in celsius), and K is an environmental factor related to proximity of cold-running mountain streams and number of squirrels in the area. As you can imagine K, in general, gets larger the more “out there” and “up there” we go. So in a hot, city climate doggie energy (DE) goes to zero, whereas in a chilly remote mountain area, with a nice selection of small fast-twitch critters our dog will go “banana’s” with energy, mathematically speaking.

Where T = temp (in celsius)
Cat stickiness  (CS) is a technical term, of course, denoting how close to your body kitty “sticks” throughout the day. On the coldest days (lowest T), the cat is like super-glue and will elongate several miraculous cat-body-lengths over your body in order to attain the highest surface area of attachment. As you can see from the equation, at T>40°C (104°F), cat stickiness goes negative (i.e cat disappears) whereas at T=0 (freezing) cat stickiness is essentially infinite. Our experience has proved out both these facts.

Where D1 = distance to your neighbour, D2 = distance into the wilderness, CS = cat stickiness, DE = doggie energy and W1,W2 are weighting factors. So, basically the more we get out there, the happier we are, and the fact that CS and DE are in the equation just goes to show we like to have our fur babies around us. The weighting factors niftily allow you to adjust the equation to your own preferences.

This really says it all. Life is the sum of everything that happens to you, or rather, with a little mathematical generalization and a few simplification steps, life (and so by extension life happiness) is the sum of your experiences.

It’s amazing in retrospect to think that Einstein and Newton failed to derive these simple life laws, but it just goes to show what 2 geeks with a lot of time of their hands can come up with. So, go out there, get a sticky cat, take advantage of that crazy doggie energy and experience life to its fullest. After all, we’ve proved it makes you happy.

Q.E.D. (Quad Erat Demonstrandum)

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