Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Being terrible at math but still feeling the power of relativity
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 12/04/2022 - 6:46pm
One dazzling Tahoe day not long ago, my gaze fell upon a buttermilk sky, and suddenly, unexpectedly, I perceived time and space mutually, as one. I conjoined with those perfect balls of cotton and my body shook with awe. Wow!
My first thought was, “I’m going to take another run at Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”
Non-Euclidean geometry hit me in a blank place while I was in college, and I could not get my head around Einstein’s formula, E=mc2 to save my soul, but now at least I know what Einstein’s space-time continuum feels like.
Einstein postulated that space and time are not absolute, but relative.
Put another way, space and time are not independent but intimately intertwined in a four-dimensional continuum. So, yes, now I can feel it. We are all connected to that buttermilk sky, conjoined commonly in distance and time.
It was a pleasant sensation to feel the oneness of it all. Truth be known, I’ve never felt quite so good in my long life. I wanted to shout-out to Einstein, “Hey, Al, I don’t understand your formula, but I FEEL the relativity, and now armed with your Cosmological Constant, well, I’m going to find out what positive force it can be on human discourse and healing.”
My first experiment in applying Cosmological Constant came when a party from China arrived at my home for An Evening with Mark Twain, or Maka Tuen as they called him. As I welcomed them, I turned on my Cosmological Constant Clock to connect space and time and we were bonded.
We instantly recognized each other as kin. I realized that this was some powerful stuff I was experimenting with, and that I needed to capture lightning in a bottle so to speak, and get it out to various world leaders. Yes, I believe applications of Einstein’s Cosmological Constant could possibly save our vulnerable world.
My other ongoing experiment involves the power of Cosmological Constant in healing. The good doctors at the VA have been most effective in slowing an advance of skin cancer that I managed to acquire during my summers of lifeguarding.
Yet now, and I don’t know how, I can feel the healing power inherent in embodying Einstein’s Cosmological Constant. I shall report my findings to Scientific American. On the other hand, if you don’t hear from me, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
A funny thing happened at the Reno-Tahoe airport recently while I was wearing a mask. The nice lady checking my boarding pass asked if I would pull my mask down, and when I did, she sighed and said in a friendly way, “Oh, I know you…”
I felt a warm glow as I was sure she had recognized me as Mark Twain, but no, she said with certainty in her voice, “You’re Albert Einstein!”
Perhaps I have a second career waiting, though I suspect it might be a little late for such a venture, besides, I’m terrible at math.
Go here to listen to this and other McAvoy Layne columns.
— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
