I quite enjoy researching things like eponymous laws and keeping up to new ones - legitimate laws of science and Physics like Boyle's law relating to volume and pressure... and, perhaps slightly-less-legitimate... or at least less empirical... ones like Murphy's and Finagle's.
Being an observer of the universe in general and civilisation in particular, I've found that those like the latter two are pretty much where I live. So my own eponymous law shouldn't be as difficult as you'd think.
A couple things happened in 1986.
Well, okay - an awful lot actually happened, especially to the US Space Shuttle Program, but for purposes of this discussion, I'm only interested in a couple minor little pebbles clinking at the top of what may have become.... well. Perhaps you'll see.
For starters 1986 marked the closure of my first - and last - year in the Canadian Forces. It's also the year that Canada announced the phasing out of the dollar bill in favour of the Loonie.
I was working in a training co-ordination shop on base at CFB Chilliwack at the time. We took a lot of 35mm photographs and, subsequently had a lot of empty 35mm film cases lying around. I noted at some point that the inner diameter of the case was just a bit larger than a quarter.
I hated change jingling in my pockets. And found it was hard on the pockets, to boot. So I started carrying loose change in a film case. Nicely prepared me for the release of the Canadian 1 Dollar coin - the Loonie - the next year as they too fit neatly in my film case. Suddenly I could have 6 or 7 dollars not jingling in my pocket.
Ten years - and three or four film cases - later, the Canadian Mint scraps the 2 dollar bill in favour of a coin - dubbed the Toonie. And they fit too.
But then came the turn of the millennium, and a cascading disaster to hit my little change bucket.
Digital Cameras.
That's right - the technology that killed Eastman Kodak had a direct impact on how I would manage my loose change in the future. I collected only the couple film cases I could scrounge and held on to weather the gathering storm.
Then I went to work in Oilfield completions. Fun Job. Dispatching heavy equipment and crews all across northern and central Alberta in all weather conditions into isolated little oil leases with as little as four hours notice. Handling explosives and radioactive sources for the completions. Attached to a cell phone for 14 straight days, and then off for six.
One of the more amusing aspects of the job was that I carried a license to handle explosives, and a radiation exposure badge.
The badge was a conversation starter on those occasions when I would be escorting a damaged child to the local x-ray technician; they carry them too. You're only allowed so much exposure in that tightly-regulated nuclear industry, and the badges monitor your risk.
The explosives handling license was akin to a get-through-airport-security-free card. After a week of handling shots and primer cord, loading them into completion tools, and then going home and working on my laptop - it's handy to have that card when you take a trip. I forgot it once on a flight out here after such a week.
They didn't swab my Macbook that time. Probably a good thing.
One of the common explosives we used in setting down-hole plugs was called a BP-3. It's the primary ignition explosive in a Baker setting tool. They're crumbly, slow-burning, and slightly green. Some clever person a long time ago noticed that they bear a passing resemblance to the scat of wild turkeys.
Turkey Turd has since become the industry term for it.
The best thing about them for me was they shipped in a little round plastic case - a little wider, and a little shorter than a 35mm film case. So I grabbed an empty one, Had my change in it ever since.
The other day I noticed some residue crusting the inside edge - and took pause for a moment as I considered exactly what was causing the green you see in the picture.
It's copper oxide. So something in the case is being turned green by the pennies.
I've been carrying this thing for 7 years. Nothing else has ever been in it.
Except for a low grade explosive.
Which means I've been passing currency with explosive residue on it.
I don't recall ever having this thing with me on an airplane... now that I think about it.
But I must have. Like... to Cuba. And Mexico.
And a couple places in the U.S.
What's the threshold for the sniffers at airports?
How many people have been bewildered by presence of explosives detected on their person in the last 7 years?
Oops.
Net0gre's Observation of the Ripple Effect:
Unforeseen consequences are - at minimum - directly proportional to the usefulness of a given clever idea.
