Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 02, 2017

It’s Steve Jobs’s way of haunting you from the great beyond.

aren’t there some little trinket that you wrap your unused ear buds around? could that even work for Rat?

Hence Bluetooth….

I prevent my garden hose from getting tangled by fastening the two ends together when I’m not using it. Too bad headphone cords don’t work that way.

These devices are sentient, and they wish to torture us hapless humans.

@SHERLOCK WATSON…I do believe the accepted method is to never take them off. I mean the headphones not the garden hose.

A pair of scissors will fix that. Snip, snip and now your earbuds are wireless.

Christmas lights, anyone?

No way to uninstall the tangle app!

Maybe he should call Peter Venkman.

It’s the Tangle Fairy. Quick little sucker.

I figure that as long as they’re going to get tangled up anyway, why bother trying to prevent it? I just toss them in the drawer.

It’s SCIENCE!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/06/18/scientific-explanation-earphones-always-tangled/

Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string.

“It is well known that a jostled string tends to become knotted; yet the factors governing the “spontaneous” formation of various knots are unclear. We performed experiments in which a string was tumbled inside a box and found that complex knots often form within seconds. We used mathematical knot theory to analyze the knots.

Above a critical string length, the probability P of knotting at first increased sharply with length but then saturated below 100%. This behavior differs from that of mathematical self-avoiding random walks, where P has been proven to approach 100%.

Finite agitation time and jamming of the string due to its stiffness result in lower probability, but P approaches 100% with long, flexible strings. We analyzed the knots by calculating their Jones polynomials via computer analysis of digital photos of the string.

Entanglement is a precursor to life. It’s how complex chains of amino acids are formed.

Douglas Adams used to complain about his box of “Dongly Bits”, all the cords and attachments that came with his electronic goodies…

My Android earphone cords have never gotten tangled.

This may be because I can’t stand using earphones, and never took off the tie-wraps in the first place, or even took them out of their little box. I assume I still have them somewhere, but if they can find a way to tangle themselves under those conditions, they’re welcome to do so.

The same goes for earbuds, Rat

Never have been able to figure out how the vacuum cleaner cord manages to tie itself into knots.

joefearsnothing and Lyman Elliott

Yeah, you’re right.

What possible use could there be for attempting to understand how and why a string of something might get tangled up and coiled around?

Just FYI…

RNA is a single string with ‘knobs’, DNA is a ladder shape.

https://www.diffen.com/difference/DNA_vs_RNA

I’m good at untangling earphones. All it takes is a bit of patience and skilled fingers.

xxx

Give up, you are fighting a fundamental force of nature, found in both classical physics and Quantum Mechanics: Entanglement & String Theory. Otherwise known as “Shit Happens.”

Hey Rat, spring for a pair of AirPods.

Save your sanity, Rat! Go wireless….

There is a method of coiling that works for anything flexible; microphone cables, garden hoses, extension cords, headphone leads… It leaves you with a smooth coil, with no tension or tendency to unwind, and doesn’t need to be fastened or held together. In it just sits there, ready for use.

It’s a bit too hard to explain verbally without a diagram, but I’m sure you can find it on YouTube or if you know anyone who does recording or live sound, they should know it.

Rapunzel headphones!!

Get air pods