Finding a Needle in a Haystack

I came to think about various ways of finding a needle in a haystack – and I mean an actual needle in an actual haystack. I’m not speaking metaphorically or talking about searching arrays or anything like that. Just imagine a huge pile of hay and somewhere in there there’s a needle that you – for whatever reason – absolutely must find.

Well, I came up with a couple of ways…

  1. Start digging through the pile with your hands and hope that the needle will prick you.
  2. Wreck a couple of bass speakers and use the magnets to go through the pile.
  3. Burn down the stack and use the speaker magnets mentioned in 2 to go over the ashes.
  4. Ask someone to have sex in the haystack (don’t tell them about the needle) and count on Murphey’s Law doing a satisfactory job.

I’m sure there’s a lot of great analogies in these approaches and you’re very welcome to use them, they’re GPL’ed.

About Anders K. Madsen

Creator and administrator of Lillesvin Networks. Bachelor of Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics at the University of Aarhus, web developer, Ruby programmer, author of phpCF and amateur musician. Catch me on mail: madsen@lillesvin.net, Twitter: @lillesvin, or Google Talk: lillesvin@gmail.com, if you want to get in touch.
This entry was posted in Life, The World. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Finding a Needle in a Haystack

  1. stffi says:

    If i don’t find the needle, the needle will have to find me.

  2. Anja says:

    What about simplifically just let your body drop down in the haystack with the ass first – and figure out if the needle finds you or you find the needle? *giggle*

    Or is it rather a question about if the ASS finds the needle or the needle finds the ass? ;-D

  3. Tess says:

    Magnets’ a great idea, but what do you do if your needle is made of bone – which, I believe, they were made of in the “good old days”?
    Think a little about that! :)

  4. Madsen says:

    Anja >>
    I think your suggestion kinda falls under no. 4 – Murphey’s Law. ;)

    Tess >>
    Hmm, I was hoping to find a needle preferably from this century (or the previous one), but a bone one… I guess you could let a dog loose on the pile and wait quietly till you hear choking sounds from the dog. :-p But then the task just becomees finding a needle in a dog… Not much easier I’m afraid.
    Or perhaps invent some kind of bone magnet… :-p

  5. Anja says:

    Murphey’s law will always remain… will always be the biggest truth of the 21th Century… I don’t dare think of the day to come when M’s law isn’t guilty anylonger :-D

    What about writing about downloading the human conscience to a computer now we are discussing the new terabyte-computers? ;-) Possibly a bone needle will fit in the cabinet – I don’t think a magnet would be explicitly appropriate in this case *LOL*

  6. Bjarke Sørensen says:

    A part of Murphy’s law includes that if you are trying to prove it, you will fail.

    So don’t try to work with it either.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>