My wife Sharon has a busy schedule so when her friend Linda wanted to go shopping in Portland Sharon had to say no. 

    "The trip will only take four hours," Linda insisted.  But Sharon said she would have to miss it.  Linda still wasn’t satisfied.  She wanted to know if Sharon was going to miss the whole trip or just part of it.  While Sharon and I were trying to figure out how you could miss part of a trip to Portland, Linda explained:

    "This trip is four hours long," Linda said.  "So if you’re going to miss it, it will take you four hours.  You can’t miss a four hour trip in two hours. You could miss a two hour trip in two hours, but not a four hour trip.  If you try to miss a four hour trip in two hours, you end up doing part of the trip.  So unless you have four hours to spare, you don’t have time to miss this trip."

    Well, Sharon went to Portland.  And me?  I went to lie on the couch with a sick headache.

    If Linda’s theory is right it could be more important than relativity, evolution and supply-side economics all rolled into one.  Besides her theory can be tested without traveling at the speed of light, watching monkeys reproduce, or wrecking our entire national economy.  But would her theory work in the real world of time, space and mass?

    Space:  Suppose you get a new sports coat but you don’t have enough "space" in your closet.  Physics tells us:  1)  sports coats take up the same amount of space whether or not they are in your closet;  b)  sports coats don’t get smaller hanging in the closet (although my pants always seem to); and  4)  people don’t wear sports coats as much as they used to. 

    Helpful though this may be, we still have that closet space problem to deal with.

    Faced with this problem most people will simply go out and buy bigger closets.  But armed with Linda’s theory, now you can just go on happily cramming sports coats into your closets until the cows come home.

    Here’s how it works.  In physics–and in your better science fiction movies–when you cram enough stuff into a small place you get what's know as a black hole.  The same principle holds true for closets.  If you cram enough stuff like sports coats, umbrellas, pianos and entire star systems into your closet, it will become black hole.  Once that happens, you'll never have to worry about your sports coats again. 

    Mass:  To scientists "mass" is another word for "weight."  Weight is caused by unburned calories from a piece of cream pie.  Even though we turn down that third or fourth or fifth piece of cream pie, many of us continue gaining weight.  Linda’s theory explains why. 

    There are just as many calories in a piece of pie whether or not you eat it.   But to lose weight you have to burn calories.  Since you can’t burn calories you don’t eat, every time turn down a piece of pie those calories just hang around causing weight gain. 

    Here's a simple test.  Take ten people on a diets and weigh them.  Chances are they'll be overweight.  Then weigh ten people who are underweight.  Chances are they aren't on diets, proving once and for all that diets cause weight gain. 

    Time:  Time is a magazine which is a lot like a newspaper.  Newspapers have editors who try to fill limited space with the best available articles.  They also try to leave bad articles out of the paper to make more room for good ones.  Linda’s theory proves that this doesn’t work.  Bad articles takes up just as much space whether or not they are in the newspaper.  So intelligent editors now just go ahead and run those bad articles. 

    The next time you find yourself wondering how a bad articles (like this one) got in your favorite newspaper remember Linda’s theory.  It’s all her fault.