Fucking Magnets

Insane Clown Posse is insane and so despite how much they enjoy the miracles1 of the natural world, the operational mechanics of magnets continue to elude them. But they’re not alone.

It’s easy to say that magnets emit a magnetic field, but when you get down to it, that statement that needs more explanation. What is a magnetic field, and more importantly why does it cause that repulsion and attraction. The strange truth about most things we take as a given is that there are scads of underlying assumptions we ignore because at some point it’s easier to just take it as a given.

That’s not to say there aren’t people out there who truly understand magnetism, but chances are you’re not one of them.

Feynman’s ‘explanation’ of magnetism via a chain of questions running down into more and more general and fundamental truths reminds me of this great bit by Louis CK:

Footnotes

  1. Miracle in this instance meaning things science has explained quite well, but are still ‘magical’ in the poetic sense. [↩]

OK, Not Nothing But The Truth

Yesterday, when I wrote about that Insane Clown Posse song, I said “you can’t deny that they’re right about this one.” Now, obviously that’s not right1. These guys, and this song, are wrong in many ways about many things. They have a line expressing anger about scientists lying to them about how magnets work2!

But despite their horrible music, and bizarre stances, they got it right that nature is pretty great. Law of averages, I guess.

Footnotes

  1. And the over-the-top title was little more than a lame reference to an awesome show. [↩]
  2. Really, I think the line is supposed to invoke some Creationist anger against the scientifically valid theory of Evolution, but if you didn’t know the members of Insane Clown Posse were devout Christians — and who could blame you for not knowing that based on their profuse profanity and bizarre clown make-up — it’s easy to just imagine them hearing a scientist describe the way magnets work and getting super pissed because they the explanation was lame and/or confusing. [↩]