No Two Snowflakes Are Alike

 

No Two Snowflakes Are Alike

A lone scientist long ago declared that no two snowflakes were alike.  For decades, that phrase was repeated until everyone assumed it was true.  That scientist hadn’t gone out in the snow to collect specimens.  He hadn’t looked at flakes under a microscope to check for matches.  He just based his assertion on probability.

Other scientists challenged his theory.  They began collecting and analyzing snowflakes, seeking the truth.  To fund their research, they applied for government grants.  The Congressional Appropriations Committee approved the spending, as long as the money went to their home districts. 

The scientists and legislators hired thousands of people across the country to collect snowflakes.  The snowflakes they collected melted before they could be studied, so the government spent millions developing and manufacturing small specialized coolers to preserve and transport snowflakes, even though cheap beer coolers worked just as well.  The government bought and distributed millions of microscopes, even though every scientist in the country already had plenty of microscopes and didn’t need any more.  The FBI snowflake hotline received countless tips and sent agents all over the country investigating them.  After two years, no two identical snowflakes had been found.  Congress had to enact tax increases to pay for the snowflake deficit.   

An election was approaching, so the president declared the snowflake crisis a national emergency.  If government scientists failed to find two identical snowflakes, millions of jobs would be lost, and so would the election.  The president appointed a snowflake czar.  Congress created a bipartisan snowflake committee.  News outlets spent so much time on snowflakes that they had to drop sports and traffic. 

A ten-year-old girl collected two identical snowflakes using a Dollar Store magnifying glass and a Styrofoam cooler.  Her mother called the FBI’s snowflake hotline and reported it.  The FBI immediately dispatched an armed snowflake recovery team to the little girl’s home.    

The next day, the top news story was an announcement by the Secretary of Snowflakes that the government had obtained two identical snowflakes.  The second story was an amber alert for a missing ten-year-old girl.