Theey’rrre baaack!!
I just sent something to the printer, walked over to the printer to get it, picked it up, stapled it together, walked back to my desk – and it was gone!!
Someone or something had laid it on a filing cabinet that wasn’t even on the way from the printer to my desk! So whatever it is that’s doing this, there’s a nest of them around here and they’re very active! I just hope they don’t steal my keybo
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham
My father was so obsessed with the missing sock phenomenon, he safety-pinned each pair together before he put them in the laundry!
Personally, I believe that socks are the larval stage of coat hangers; they metmorphose, migrate to my closet ever increasing numbers, then entangle themselves in a bizarre mating ritual.
To make more socks, I suppose…
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
Coldfire - I was reading down this thread before I got to your entry and all I could think about was that same TZ episode. That is one of my favorite pieces of science fiction ever.
“What I wonder is why people are so afraid of everybody coming up with their own reality on their own terms.” - Jerry Garcia
Little known fact: The staple food of jeans is socks.
Dirty Devil:
Watchamean Science Fiction ?? It’s the cold hard truth !!
quickly swings around towards the hallway
Was that a blue guy with my carkeys ???
Coldfire 
“You know how complex women are”
Are all of you people SURE this was a Twilight Zone episode? I’ve never seen it, but I remember hearing about it as an Amazing Stories episode.
Plus, the colour episodes of the Twilight Zone were very few.
Naw, I’ve got the one explanation that works. I’ve noticed that no one has addressed the fact that commas reappear in other places, in other posts. This can’t be explained by a black hole. No, dimensional portals are where it’s at. At random interludes of posting, under certain conditions, perhaps when two posts are submitted at the same time, a portal opens up, carrying commas (which, as everyone knows, are very loosly rooted in space), and transports them from one post to another. It’s the only way!
This may also work for the sock phenomenom. Ever notice how you sometimes end up with socks that you’ve never seen before? That’s interdimensional travel, baby.
I’ve always believed in a quantum theory of haberdashery. Now, classical mechanics would say that the dryer lint comes equally from all the clothes, and that the clothes all lose a small amount of mass. The quantum theory says that the sock is a fundamental unit of hosiery. As soon as enough lint has built up in the trap, poof one sock disappears.
no, unca cece said there are only 4 dimensions & that anything else is the fevered imagination of lame sf writers…so it must be the sock monster (pratchett said it & I believe it…no, wrong bulletin board!).
Re the story, it sounds like a Stephen King one, where the world keeps getting remade, but thye fell through a crack in the previous one which was being eaten up by the langoliers (& they would get you in the real world if you didn’t work hard enough)(actually blue men are in another pratchett story - it’s a pratchett conspiracy…runs screaming from the post…)
It is a conspiracy. “They” have control of the factories that build the washing machines and dryers. “They” make these machines eat one sock. You then spend your time thinking about lost socks insead of realizing that “They” are taking over the world!
(don’t tell them I told you)
Another wierd thing. Do you ever throw in the single socks with the wash. The washer or dryer NEVER eats the other one. They only take a sock that has a mate.
It was from The New Twilight Zone, which ran on CBS from 1985 to '87, and all the episodes were in color. The episode in question starred Adam Arkin who later went on to Chicago Hope.
Ten years ago I had fourteen butter knives, and now I’m down to six. I mean, where can a butter knife go? I eat in the kitchen. It’s two steps from the flatware drawer to the table to the dishwasher.
I would like to hear a nice, tidy theory to explain this butter knife shortage.
Butter knives are baby knives, when they grew up, their parents sent them to knife college to get a trade (I hear one of yours is going to become a fish knife!). They’ll come home again if they need to get their washing done, but otherwise, that’s the last you’ve seen of them. If you listen very hard, late at night, by the knife draw, you can hear their poor mother sobbing…never visits…cuts me to the quick that does…
All of you have it wrong…
After a really weird dream in which I talked to Schroedinger 's cat (see http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/~ardlouis/dissipative/Schrcat.html) through a walky-talky, I’ve come to the following conclusion:
Due to Quantum Uncertainty’s heretofore undescribed macroatomic effects, every single action that occurs causes a parallel universe to split off at every decision point in the universe - every time something happens, a universe is created where it didn’t happen, or where something else happened instead.
The result is that we spend every second of our lives in a different universe, and there are jillions of copies of us in those other universes. The stream of consciousness up to the point of the split is unbroken.
Because of, you guessed it, that Uncertainty Principal again, our stuff doesn’t always make it into the universe that contains the copy of us that we perceive to be ourselves - or sometimes it does, but at a later date.
But, then again, I’ve probably been watching too much bad TV.
All of you have it wrong…
After a really weird dream in which I talked to Schroedinger 's cat (see http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/~ardlouis/dissipative/Schrcat.html) through a walky-talky, I’ve come to the following conclusion:
Due to Quantum Uncertainty’s heretofore undescribed macroatomic effects, every single action that occurs causes a parallel universe to split off at every decision point in the universe - every time something happens, a universe is created where it didn’t happen, or where something else happened instead.
The result is that we spend every second of our lives in a different universe, and there are jillions of copies of us in those other universes. The stream of consciousness up to the point of the split is unbroken.
Because of, you guessed it, that Uncertainty Principal again, our stuff doesn’t always make it into the universe that contains the copy of us that we perceive to be ourselves - or sometimes it does, but at a later date.
But, then again, I’ve probably been watching too much bad TV.
Just as an aside, John Barnes posited something like that in FINITY. He suggested, though, the the quantum events invovled in telecommunications were causing us to jump realities. As more people use telecommunications, the number and distance of the jumps goes up.
Something to think about next time you call home and the person who answers isn’t your spouse.
KC
You fools! Don’t you know that you’ve bought into the greatest global conspiracy ever? The “missing” sock never actually makes it to the washer/dryer! It was devoured by the laundry basket as payment for the transportation!
Classic misdirection. The Illuminati would be proud… except they’re victims as well.
On the missing sock dryer phenemonon. It’s a sacrifice to the athiest God, The IPU (Invisible Pink Unicorn. Don’t believe me? How DARE you denounce my God?
Actually, Christmas ornament hangers (the little metal ones) are likely the embryonic or perhaps juvenile form of coat hangers - they’re already pre-tangled in the box, in practice/play imitation of said adulthood rituals, and just as annoying to seperate.
The higher the intelligence, the more the necessity of play… 
Dude, you rule.
Only I don’t think it disappears. Remember, you can’t just make things ‘disappear’. I believe that it is used to make wire hangers.
Try this litte experiment:
You must first weigh all of your socks and underwear to the nearest tenth of a gram.
Weigh two wire hangers and place them in an otherwise empty closet.
For a period of two years, do not open the closet door.
At the end of the experiment, you will open the closet door and find a tangled mass of wire hangers. You should also find that the missing mass of the socks equals approx the weight of your new wire hanger collection.
I think the process is not reversable.