Moving or Shifting?
by patndoris on Jul.15, 2008,under Musings, Science?
And shift….and move…and shift…and move. No it’s not some new aerobics routine I assure you. (The closest I get to that is exercising my fingers on the keyboard.) It’s all about the little things in life and how the smallest change can seem so unsettling (at least to me).
Follow up:
On my recent plane ride to Dallas, continuing on to Las Vegas, I was dismayed on both legs of the trip when we were advised to be careful removing our luggage from the overhead bins as “items may have moved during take-off and landing". Moved? What?! Did they just get up and move by themselves? I don’t know about you, but moved, to me, implies they did it on their own.
On the trip back, (again both legs of it) the more familiar (and somehow comforting) warning “items may have shifted during take-off and landing” was conveyed. Now, I fully understand, and have confirmed with my handy dandy online dictionary, the meaning of moved and shifted are indeed one and the same. But, for some reason, I perceive shifted as being an action caused by something as opposed to something moving on it’s own.
I’m thinking perhaps when you fly east to west your luggage moves and when you fly west to east it shifts. Could it really be so simple? I mean, maybe no one realized this until 2008! Maybe they did in depth studies with hidden cameras and caught the little buggers moving around on their own! …Or…maybe not… I’m pretty sure I could make a convoluted but compelling argument for my distinction based on the “A body at rest will remain at rest and a body in motion will continue in motion at a constant speed in a straight line unless acted upon by some outside force"(also known as Newton’s First Law) but I think you’d get bored with my diagrams and hyperbolas and angles and vertices. Although, if I work hard enough at it I could at least confuse you to the point where you’d agree with me yes?
I find it interesting the small connotations we/I associate with certain words. But in my defense, my traveling companion was also astonished at the change. And even more interesting is how the small changes in a common phrase seem to scream out as being wrong. I don’t know about you, but my luggage shifts it doesn’t move.
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