Colored Bubbles and Knowing What to Do

Have you seen this article: The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles?

I'll wait a while for you to read it. Would you like a cup of tea?

It really is an amazing story of determination and ingenuity. Tim Kehoe wanted colored bubbles, not an easy technical task. Ultimately, Ram Sabnis, a dye chemist, gave him colored bubbles. All it required of Sabnis, of course, was for him to invent a new dye chemistry. That's all.

Hmmm.....I need a flux capacitor. You know, so I can travel back in time.


The flux capacitor is what makes time travel possible. It requires 1.21 jigawatts of electricity to operate.

I'd borrow shares on October 23, 1929 to short sell the next few days. The world would be my shrimp; I, its Forrest Gump, raking it all in by the nets full. Bwahahaha! Any unemployed physicists out there willing to join me on the high seas of temporal adventure for fun and profit?

Of course there is quite a difference in using the existing rules of nature to do something extraordinary versus violating the laws of nature to do something opprobrious. The latter effort is just wrong...on both accounts.

But an insight came across my mind as I read the article: given enough time, money, and intelligence, we can do anything we want to do! Our universe is plastic, submitting to our minds and malleable in our hands to accomplish that which we desire. If we want colored bubbles, we can have them.

I immediately thought of my friend, visiting scholar, and great American, George P. Burdell, a man known for his time, money, and intelligence. I called him and hurriedly conveyed my new found insight. I waited with pregnant expectation for his approval. There was a long pause.

"Yes, that sounds true enough. But the real wisdom, it seems, is in knowing what to do."