Move the Light

There is an old story, told in India and elsewhere, about a woman searching anxiously under a streetlamp. A passer-by stops to help, “what have you lost?” he asks, “my key,” she says and he joins the search. After a few minutes around the pool of light, he asks the obvious question, “are you sure this is where you dropped it?” “No,” she replies, “I dropped it over there.” “Then why...