Garbage Disposal

So, I came back from class today and was extremely ecstatic to find out that the garbage disposal is now fully operable. Ever since I've been here, the thing has not worked. And since I enjoy washing my dishes by hand, apparently, I was extraordinarily upset to see that it was not working. Whoever you are, out there in maintenance world, thank you and gig 'em.

At any rate, I'm sure none of you realize that I have morbid fascination with violence and gore. So here is my doffed hat to that noble enterprise.



But Jon, why are you showing me this picture of a wound you received almost one year ago? Well, that's an excellent question mystery reader man. I'm posting it because I'm all sorts of excited about playing intramural sports here with some of the guys from the physics department. And this photo represents my most recent and extreme intramural injury to date. At Wabash College, we play for keeps, and that's why Princeton Review ranks the school in the top ten in the category of "Every one plays intramurals."

At any rate, my mathematical methods professor is really great. The class starts at 9 am every Tuesday and Thursday and is nearly two hours in length, but, and here's the rub, the professor is British. The accent is well worth the extended class period and should keep me keenly awake and interested until the novelty wears off after the second class period. He's a great lecturer and that class should go smoothly.

And now, to really tie this whole sports injury, intramural, and mathematical methods excitement all together, the professor of the math methods course is a string theorist. You may note that on the floor in the picture there is indeed an article ("The String Theory Landscape") that was photocopied out of a physics magazine. So...you may be wondering what exactly is string theory. I'm glad you asked you sneaky sonofabitch. String theory is, in terms of the search for a grand unified theory, "the only game in town." If you know anything about the differences between Newtonian gravity and general relativity, you're well on your way to beginning to have a grasp of what exactly is going on in the world of string theory. Essentially, general relativity, by treating mass as energy, implies that there is curvature in the gravitation field (which acts like an electromagnetic field, in that there is some known potential from which you can derive all the equations of motion). The gravitation field here though differs from an electromagnetic field in that this field does not act on itself. In electromagnetism, the photon propagates the field, but itself does not carry charge, and as a result is not itself a source of electromagnetic fields. In general relativity though, gravity is generated by matter and energy. Gravity itself has energy, and as a result, can also generate a field of gravity. Thus, there is curvature in space and time. Now, when you make the approximation for non-relativistic velocity, the field is too weak to cause the significant "back-reaction" that would cause a noticeable curvature in space and time. So, gravity again is linear and can be explained adequately by the usual second-order, linear differential equations as seen in Newtonian gravity.

So, string theory is got at by refining the approximation, as it were. By adding orders and making the equations increasingly less-linear, string theorists can make calculations for what should occur at increasingly high energies and mass. So, that's why we hear of 11-spatial dimensions and whatnot. This, of course, is all nice and good but cannot be tested for a long time. I say it sounds like a lot phooey, but I'm sure the research is of some value.

Alright, I'm not really this annoyingly upbeat