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Ambivalent Booster?


Razors Edge

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It's a Cubs game and they're not going anywhere this year!

I will say, when I lived in Chicago while going to IIT in the 70's, our dormitory was 4 blocks from Comiskey Park (White Sox) but it was often more fun to ride the L across town to Wrigley Field (Cubs) because the short foul zones made you feel like you were right on top of the action.  The ivy covered outfield was also unique!

But you could sit in the bleachers at Comiskey Park for 75 cents with a student ID, beer was a reasonable $1.50 and most of us out-of-state people in the IIT dorms were from American League cities.  So we'd go when the Orioles were in town and everybody could root against me, go when the Red Sox were in town and root against Weird Willie, etc.

Willie was a Physics Ph.D. grad student.  He'd walk down the grad. dorm hallways holding both hands in front of his face and turning his fingers in different angles. I finally got the nerve to ask him what he was doing and he replied, "I'm trying to see four physical dimensions."

We are mentally wired to see three dimensions, but mathematics says there could be more physical dimensions.

I'm a society that only saw two dimensions and couldn't comprehend up and down.  They would only have to build a bank line, not a bank wall to protect the money.  But we, knowing that third dimension, can step over the line and rob the bank.  The two-dimensionites will see us disappear outside, reappear inside, then vanish and reappear outside.

To get something from what we see as a ceiling where we just reach up and get it, the two-dimensionites have to walk across the floor, walk up the wall, wall along the ceiling, then grab it.

So if there is a 4th physical dimension, it would have amazing properties.

When I left IIT, I paid Willie at visit and asked about the four dimensions.  He said, "I think I've almost got it."

I used to tell my chemistry and physics students the Weird Willie story when they were losing focus and I needed to give them something to refresh and recharge their brains.

I'd lie and tell them that Willie disappeared soon after, never to be seen again.  Maybe he made it to Mars and didn't know how to get back.  If his skeleton or mummy is found there far into the future, it's going to amaze people.  That woke the kids up.

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