Modern Problems

Today’s news reported that Pope Benedict XVI suffered a broken wrist in a fall at his summer palace. Add to this the picture of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wearing a sling to support her broken elbow and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sottomayor on crutches after she broke her ankle in a fall, and a disturbing pattern emerges.

Gravity anomalies—little patches of disturbed gravitational fields have been popping up all over the Earth. Normally these attract no attention; after all, who notices fish floating up out of the water in mid-Pacific or the fact that Mt. Everest has shrunk by a full two inches in the last 5 years? Gravity, a real but little understood universal phenomenon, is under assault. The culprit?—Global warming. As the surface of the planet heats, it becomes less dense relative to the underlying crust. This difference in densities is expressed by localized increases or decreases in micro gravitational fields. The field switches off in small foot-square areas. If a person is unlucky enough to step on that area, the effect is similar to stepping on a banana peel. The corollary, as explained by Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of Conservation of Energy, is localized areas of hyper-gravity—someone stepping there weighs over 800 pounds for a fraction of a second. Injuries to upper extremities come from zero gravity patches, those to ankles and legs from hyper gravity anomalies.

This is not a new phenomenon—Albert Einstein postulated gravity fluctuations in his Addendum to Special Relativity, published in 1924. Einstein nearly won the Nobel Prize for this, but lost to Max Plank in the swimsuit completion. Human history has been changed for better or worse as a direct result of gravity shifts. One thousand years ago, during what is known as the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year era of global warming, Europe was saved from conquest when Genghis Kahn died after falling from his horse. This snippet, glossed over by most historians, belies the fact that Genghis was an expert horseman, literally born to the saddle. Falling off one’s horse, even while drunk, was considered by the Mongol hordes to be something of a gross faux pas. If one considers a gravity surge, which caused Genghis to suddenly weigh 600 pounds, making his poor mount collapse, the whole historical mystery comes into focus. Another example, that of the Mary Celeste, an American sailing ship found abandoned and sailing by itself across the Atlantic in 1894, can be explained by its sailing through a zero gravity area, causing the crew to float off the deck and into the water. The disappearances of Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Lost Colony have similar explanations.

How do we combat this seemingly inexorable menace? The obvious solution is to end global warming and stabilize the earth’s surface temperature relative to the underlying crust. Failing that, a multi-trillion dollar effort should be initiated by NATO to warm the crust with microwave ovens in order to bring it back into relative balance with the surface. As neither plan is likely, I propose a temporary fix—cats. Cats are well known to have mysterious effects on gravity, and are thought by some observers to possess rudimentary control over their own gravitational fields. Consider: a falling cat always lands on its feet. Long thought to be due to quick reflexes and loose skin, recent experiments using high speed video have demonstrated that a falling cat can cancel out or reduce its immediate gravity field, allowing time to twist into landing position. Consider also the sleeping cat phenomenon. Anyone trying to pick up a sleeping cat will remark “Geeze, this cat weighs a ton.” This is truer than once thought. A sleeping cat concentrates the local micro-gravity field to become several pounds heavier, thus keeping it in safely in place—a useful evolutionary trait for an animal who, in the wild, habitually sleeps on tree branches. Cats’ legendary sense of balance is nothing more than gravity field manipulation.

Obviously, the solution for persons of high societal rank, such as Popes and Supreme Court judges, is to emulate the Prophet Mohamed who always had a cat with him. According to legend, he once cut off the sleeve of a favorite robe so as not to disturb a sleeping cat. This was not entirely due to affection--when one considers that the cat temporarily weighed 150 pounds and Mohamed had a bad back from his early years as a camel driver, the real explanation leaps to mind. My modest proposal is that rather than carrying yappy rat-dogs as do some celebutants, world leaders should be accompanied by official cats. The cats could be carried in decorous accessories, lending statesmen a certain air of gravitas.