Roll Over, Einstein
Dear Todd,
I love the airplane mystery idea. Almost as much as I hate that song about
the girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch. Those guys need to be a great
deal cuter to get away with such horrible lyric writing.
And a last comment on Christie Brinkley. I once read a beauty book by her in
which she confessed that her biggest beauty secret was water: drink it, bathe
in it, use it to moisturize midday. It's just that simple. But she apparently
forgot to add, "And get some better-looking parents."
Boy oh boy, are the papers ever full of Thanksgiving space-killer features
today. They could certainly print the same ones verbatim every year, but
instead they assign some poor beleaguered writer to dress them up by adding a
few expressions from rap records. Of course, my favorite Thanksgiving media
tradition is the one they air on all the TV newscasts the day after
Thanksgiving. It is called "The Busiest Shopping Day of the Year" and is the
one where they send lifestyle reporters to the local malls to coerce
unsuspecting randomly selected shoppers into speaking the exact same seasonal
cliches that the people came up with the last time they did the report. They
could definitely run this same report verbatim year after year were it not for
the slight difference in haircuts from decade to decade. Of course, now with
all the sophisticated computer graphics and so forth, maybe they will finally
be able to produce one that can run in perpetuity.
I am not sure why I feel so driven to read through this multi-part article
the L.A. Times is running on string theory. I hope it's not just because
I think physicist Brian Greene is a babe. OK. That is the reason. But shallow
motives aside, here is what I picked up today. As you may recall from my
incisive analysis yesterday, the string theorists have gone ahead and thrown
out that old saw, that antiquated, horse-and-buggy-era concept of space and
time. But , before you start going all nostalgic on me, you will be happy
to know that they have replaced it with the infinitely hipper and more
contemporary 11-dimensional strings. Yes, I realize it is a little hard to warm
up to at first. But I think we're all going to get to like it better as--oops,
I was going to say as time goes by but now that we've eliminated time--as we
get to know the strings on a more personal basis. Which is all well and good.
There's only just so many times that can eat in the same restaurant, so to
speak. Space and time have had more than their share of the spotlight. Move
over and let a new kid have a chance. But I wonder if the scientists behind
this important philosophical shift have really considered all the consequences
of their actions. Because, as the article points out, if there is no clear
difference between now and the instant after now , then "how can
we say if the gunshot caused the death or if the death caused the gunshot?" And
you thought lawyers were incomprehensible morally compromised bullshit artists
in love with the sound of their own voices before . Just imagine being
selected to sit on the jury that has to listen to Johnny Cochran appeal the
O.J. case on the grounds of factual inconsistencies due to string theory. Oh
brother.
And speaking of gunshots, let's move right on to the rage-filled portion of
today's letter: Apparently they held "Take a Kid Pheasant Hunting Day"
yesterday in Chester, N.J. The New York Times has a lovely photo of two
sweet little grad-school-age boys smiling as they hold up an assortment of
lifeless corpses. At last, a state government steps in to help provide a
much-needed opportunity for the few kids whose parents don't have guns hidden
anywhere in their homes to make firsthand contact with the pleasures of gun
violence. There really aren't enough opportunities for kids to come in to
contact with guns or to kill helpless creatures nowadays, especially during the
all-important elementary school years. So it's nice that the New Jersey
Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife was willing to co-sponsor the event with
the National Rifle Association. Their goal is "to shore up hunting's
popularity," says William Poole, the moron in charge (who I would love to make
the first target of my brand-new still-untested self-defense fighting
skills--particularly one I just learned that they call the Axe, which involves
bringing the heel of my foot right down between his eyes several times). Poole
is also quoted as saying, "The shooting sports are like any other endeavor.
Youth is our future." Yeah. Like any other endeavor where helpless animals are
placed at a disadvantage (in this case, they spin the pheasants first to make
them dizzy) in order to provide adorable little children with the joy of
inflicting pain and causing death. There really aren't enough other forms of
recreation and entertainment available to the kids today. Of course, I guess
I'm not taking into account the fact that it does give the kids a chance to
help out with the household expenses by bringing home enough of that family
dinner favorite, pheasant, to keep everyone in pheasant sandwiches for
days.
Now I need to go check my blood pressure. Talk to you tomorrow.
Love,
Merrill
