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W H R U IT COAST PRODUCTIONS-PO BOX l i t t CMNON BtXCH OR TWO • 503~436~Z7JS
Civilization Begins At Home
Henry James
F o a m W o m e n , R a in W o m en
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The foam women are billowy, rolling, tumbling,
white and dirty white and yellowish and dun,
scudding, heaving, flying, broken. They
lie at the longest reach of the waves,
rounded and curded, shaking and
trembling, shivering hips and
quivering buttocks, tom by the stiff,
piercing wind, dispersed to nothing,
gone. The long wave breaks again
and they lie white and dirty white,
yellow-ish and dun, billowing,
trembling under the wind, flying,
gone, till the long wave breaks again.
The rain women are very tall, their
heads are in the clouds. Their gait is
the pace of the storm-wind, swift and
stately. They are tall presences of
water and light walking the long
sands against the darkness of the
forest. They move northward,
upward to the hills. They enter the
clefts of the hills unresisting,
unresisted, light into darkness, mist
into forest, rain into earth.
Copyright © 1991 by Ursula K. Le Guin;
first appeared in Searoads; reprinted by
permission of the author and the author's
agent, Virginia Kidd.
CORRECTED FOR PACIFIC BEACH TIDES
b irth d ay isn't a national h o liday? I'm
serio u s about this.
If w e have a P resident's D ay (lum ping the
b irth d ay s o f tw o political icons into a
national celeb ratio n o f shopping), if w e
h o n o r Dr. M artin L uther K ing (no, not nearly
e n o u g h ), w hy is it w e d on't set aside a three
day w eek en d to think about the paten t clerk
w ho gave us fo u r dim ensional space/tim e?
T ak in g nothing aw ay from W ashington,
L incoln, and K ing, this is com plete nonsense.
Y es, they perfo rm ed w onderful w orks. Y es,
they deserve to be perm anently im planted
in the cultural oversoul. N o, they did not
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pencil.
T he theory o f relativity is actually tw o
theories, the special and general. T he
special theory applied M ax Planck's
qu an tu m hypothesis (the unsettling p ro o f
that the universe is d iscontinuous) to the
photo- electric effect (m etal bom barded
w ith light em its electrons o f certain
freq u en cies) to show that m atter and energy
are com plem entary states related by a
sim ple equation: e=m c2. M uch has been
m ade o f this equation, and rightly so. It
sh o w s that energy and m ass are
in terch an g eab le states. In o th er term s, that
the sp irit and the flesh are one. A t its best,
p h y sics becom es philosophy. E instein was
p h y sics at its best. In another tim e, he
w o u ld have been a w izard.
As w onderful as all this w as, a sem inal
m o m en t in the history o f h um an thought, it
is if anything eclipsed by the general theory
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o f relativity.
G eneral relativity is o u r m o d em theory o f
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d isco v er, by pure reason, that gravity is a
fu n ctio n o f the geom etry o f creation. An
idea o f this m agnitude last o ccu rred three
h u n d red years ago. L isten fo r a m om ent to
w h at this m an did w ith n othing m ore than a
B efore I die, I hope som eone som ew here
an sw ers me this. W hy is it A lbert E instein's
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p rin cip le o f relativity, the logic underlying
the special and general theories, that
E in stein d eserv es m ost to be rem em bered.
It is the notion that all m otion, w hich is to
say all o b serv ed reality, is relative. H ow
fast you ap p ear to be going in one direction
d ep en d s on how fast I am going in another;
the o n ly co n stan t that rem ains is the
v elo city o f light. Space/tim e becom es the
relatio n sh ip betw een the observor and the
ob serv ed . If the observor is rem oved, the
eq u atio n (and w ith it all o f creation) no
lo n g er exists. W ith N ew ton, w e are cogs in
the clockw ork. W ith Einstein, we are the
u n iv erse looking at itself.
W hich brings us to the final question:
W hen the universe looks at itself all at once
w h at d o es it see? W hat is the shape o f
sp ace/tim e? H ere's w here things get alm ost
sp ooky. E instein believed the universe is
spherical. T he case rem ains unproven but
stro n g ev id en ce suggests he w as right. The
relatio n sh ip betw een the circum ference and
the d iam eter o f a circle is pi: 3.14.
C o in cid en ce being w hat it is, Einstein's
birthday is M arch 14th: 3/14.
For the record, 116 this year. H appy
b irthday, A lbert. In a saner w orld, w e'd
have tim e to celebrate.
gravity. In the N ew tonian w orld (the
u n iv erse before E instein), g ravity w as the
m ysterious (if not O ccult) attraction o f m ass
for m ass; a force acting betw een tw o bodies.
E instein show ed this to be a
m isunderstanding. Instead ot a force
betw een bodies, gravity is the cu rvature o f
space/tim e. It is a property o f the geom etry
o f the universe, the shape o f creation.
O w ing to the beauty and sim plicity o f this
idea, and to its experim ental verification,
physicists now suspect that all o f the forces
o f nature will be seen to rise from the rules
o f som e geom etry. O nce again, E instein, 26
at the time, figured this ou t w ith a pencil.
A nd still there is m ore. It is for his
BASEBALL
"W hen the going gets w eird,
the w eird turn pro."
H. S. T hom pson
H e's B ack!!! M r. B aseball
returns to T he Edge, page 15.
UPPER Ltrr EDGE MARCH W?5
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