If Schrodinger’s cat could read he’d feel right at home with this week’s tabloids.Quantum superposition and tabloid supposition seem interchangeable in the way that this week’s tabloid tales might be alive with truth or dead wrong, at one and the same time.

The long-lost Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has been “Found In Cambodian Jungle!” screams the front page of the National Enquirer, which offers a satellite image of the plane’s wreckage. At the same time, the blurry and indistinct photo appears to show some sort of unidentified objects amid trees, which could equally be the remnants of abandoned housing, or the wreckage of any number of drug-runners’ planes that may have crashed, or planes shot down amid Cambodian hostilities during the Vietnam War.

As a discerning tabloid reader, Schrodinger’s cat might conclude that the wreckage of MH370 had been found after four years, and that its wreckage had also not been found. Schrodinger’s feline might find the same paradox with the Enquirer story that actor Kevin Spacey has been “hiding from the law” for the past year to avoid being hit by any further allegations of sexual harassment or assault – as if Spacey's absence from the public eye would stop police from filing criminal charges or prevent any alleged victims from filing a civil suit.

The fact is that for the past year paparazzi have failed to photograph Spacey, which in the tabloid world means he’s “been in hiding.” But wait! “The Enquirer has found him!” crows the tabloid. Read the rest

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