The String Theorists

Every once in a while I like to see what madness the Stringers (those who adhere to String Theory) are up to. Today, at the book store I found them selling this mother called

The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Inner Dimensions

Yeah. Well I started to cringe when I opened the cover to find:

SPACE/TIME

Time, time
why does it vanish?
All manner of things
what infinite variety.
Three thousand rivers
all from one source.
Time, space
mind, matter, reciprocal.
Time, time
it never returns.
Space, space
how much can it hold?
In constant motion
always in flux.
Black holes lurking
mysteries afoot.
Space and time
one without bounds.
Infinite, infinite
the secrets of the universe.
Inexhaustible, lovely
in every detail.
Measure time, measure space
no one can do it.
Watched through a straw
what’s to be learned has no end.

Shing-Tung Yau
Beijing, 2002

Cringe, cringe, cringe. Scratching your nails against the chalkboard couldn't make me cringe more than that piece of idolatry.

What else did I find? Of course, the author shamelessly preaching the nihilistic religion of Geometry with oodles of sugar. He even compared Euclid's writings to the Sacred Books of religion like the Bible. And of course he doted on himself and his colleagues, in subtle and not so subtle manner.

BUT, but, but that is not what I was looking for. You see I have this 'hypothesis' and it goes something like this. All geometers, seemed to have lacked any sort of healthy relationship with women in their time of undergraduate studies, thus they become fascinated with perverted ideas like curves. They say I have to practice what they call Science, and so I have to collect evidence in support of my hypothesis and then have it peer reviewed to make sure there are valid correlations (never mind about causation). Someday I'm hoping my hypothesis will be sanctified into a theory.

And lo and behold I didn't have to go far and Yau delivered for me. I have evidence!

p. X

I still recall the thrill I felt during my first year of graduate school, when—as a twenty-year-old fresh off the boat, so to speak— I was struck by the notion that gravity and curvature could be regarded as one and the same, as I’d already become fascinated with curved surfaces during my undergraduate years in Hong Kong. Something about these shapes appealed to me on a visceral level. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Fascinated with curved surfaces . . . visceral . . . something about these shapes appealing . . .

Um yeah. Not only are those Stringers mad, they are degenerate.