How can power cords make a difference?

Doug will be pleased to know that JHunter did apologise, thank you JH. I understand why scientists get so excercised about attacks on their understanding of the physical world: at the trade schools like M.I.T and CalTech, they don't get any philosophy or literature to broaden their understanding of reality. Newton and Descartes called themselves "natural philosophers", an appelation more in line with attempting to find the causes of observed effects. The natural philosophers had a better grasp of their limitations.
Today, "scientists" are trained to "believe" in "physical laws". If you can measure it, it's true.
Textbooks discuss things like the "discovery" of the electron but no one's seen an electron, only the tracks they leave. But electron theory explains those tracks and so there is science until Schrodinger, Planck and Heisenberg come along and stumble across "quanta" which behave differently. So they invent quantum mechanics that explains that behavior within the confines of existing electron theory. The math works,the observable phenomena conform to the math and once again we have "science". What we don't have is fact, only theory.
Now theory is a wonderful thing. Electron, or Quantum Theory is really good at predicting things that can't be seen or otherwise verified. But Theory by it's very nature is open-ended and that's why it's valuable. When theory becomes a belief system, that's when things get messy and natural philosophers become techies. Or as I like to call them, acolytes.
Now, while us Audiogoners were slinging electrons at each other, 2 Israeli teenagers, a 4 month old Palestinian and lot's of others were killed over a belief system. That's cause for anger. Kinda puts power cords in perspective, yes?
It also makes you wonder what this discussion would be like if we are all in a room instead of safely ensconced behind our keyboards?
I do heavy, physical work all day. Anybody wanna fight?

Thank you for your comments Albert. You are quite correct. My friend was sceptical, and his bandmate had no idea at all about wire. His feeling was that there were no gains to be made via something like this. Now, both are not only believers, but unwilling to give up these gains. My friend has been opening his eyes to our hobby(and how to merge it into pro audio) to the point where he may just join me at the Hifi show in New York City this weekend. I call that a metamorphosis. I only wish the nonbelievers or "flatlanders"(I told you that they are anything but objective to me) would open their ears and minds to the differences brought about by wire(and analog, and electronics, and tubes...). Perhaps all they need to do is to go out and listen.

Doug - I don't have any fancy line cords. I will try the following experiment. I do have a 100 foot very ordinary extention cord. I have heard people report that even changing a 6 ft cord to a 3 ft cord made a difference. So, I will run my system thru 100 ft of cheap cord and see what happens.

I suspect that if I hear a difference people here will belive me. If I don't hear a difference people will assume that my system is bad or my hearing is bad or that after 6 ft of cheap line cord it can't get any worse.

Which brings up a question. Just how low does the distorion of ones system have to be before it becomes possible to hear the additional problems caused by cheap line cords.

And, science is what makes the marvelous equipment we have possible. Scientists and engineers understand and design amplifiers, preamps, digital and analogy recording and play back technology. Non-scientists make line cords and speaker wire and can't explain how even they work.

I disagree Steve. I think science followed audio design. The true pioneers in audio designer are DIY not text books! Audio has grown because kids built systems with Heath kit and the like, then tried other components, no science there, not in a 9 year old soldering with his dad!

Stevemj: I don't beleive that measured distortion has a lot to do with hearing the differences (in my setup anyway). I use a 300B tube SET amp which must rate rather high on the distortion scale and almost every piece of cable that I have tried has a different sonic signature. I have tried many commercial 12 gage and 14 gage extension cords (as you are about to do) in my setup and they all suck by adding a harshness to the sound (a 50 footer actually made the images smaller and the sound stage had less height. If you have used the cords as I do (outside with power tools) be sure and clean the contacts well (mine were filthy).