the fourth dimension.

Everyone in my department is off to Chile or Southern California on a field trip while I am going to be here, reading papers during Rice's spring break. But if we could really stop time, this might be what it is like: a week of this empty campus and empty instruments (you mean there are actually time slots open last minute?), some time to think and wander while everyone else has hit pause. So let's discuss time:

H.G. Well's "The Time Machine":

'You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.'
`That is all right,' said the Psychologist.
`Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.'
`There I object,' said Filby. `Of course a solid body may exist. All real things--'
`So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?' 

`any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.'

Children's cartoon abandon all concepts of time and space; it is just ridiculous. And yet the kids accept it blindly; even I used to watch these without muttering "what!" every minute. Our idea of time and space get boxed-in definitions as we grow up and it becomes difficult to imagine that time is just another dimension.

Adventure Time, typical cartoon ignoring all laws of physics Picture

Go read "Slaughterhouse-Five" if you want to play around with the idea of time as another dimension which is just as easily pliable as the three spatial dimensions. Tralfamadorians view time as a page on an already-written book, where events exist at certain times in a continuum viewable at certain pages- or time (naturally they are fatalists).

A little plug here for the best recipe ever: peanut butter and jelly with brie. A friend made me try it at lunch one day and brie adds another dimension of chewy savoriness to the already delicious combo.

Heading out to a productive Saturday...

Also, it has been exactly a year since my gorgeous girlfriends and I headed to the Bahamas for a senior cruise vacation. Seeing a snapshot of me at time 2/25/2011 on 2/25/2012: what about me has changed since then?

Lo and my embarrassing karaoke moment- now all laughs.