[geeks] [Fwd: [SubG] Fw: Massachusetts Institute of TimeCube]

[geeks at sunhelp.org]

Until I read this I had never actually laughed out loud at an email (the
thread on uuencoding farts came very close). I wish I had been in that
lecture hall.

James Fogg, Network Engineer
Vicinity Corporation - New Hampshire
(603) 442-1751

~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: s at avoidant.org [mailto:s at avoidant.org]
~ Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 6:41 AM
~ To: geeks
~ Subject: [geeks] [Fwd: [SubG] Fw: Massachusetts Institute of TimeCube]
~ 
~ 
~ After our duscussion here way back when, I thought some might 
~ appreciate
~ this. Unfortunately I couldn't get there, but someone did, and here's
~ what he had to say...
~ 
~ 
~ ---sambo
~ 
~ 
~ 
~ So, as some of you might know, Gene Ray (of TimeCube fame) 
~ was part of a
~ panel discussion at MIT yesterday, during which he discussed, 
~ well, the
~ TimeCube.
~ 
~ (Chris, i assume you attended and just refrained from trying to
~ enlighten us because we are all educated stupid.)
~ 
~ At any rate, i have obtained a set of lecture notes from this 
~ momentous
~ event. Please prepare your poison-filled minds to receive Gene.
~ 
~ -johnnnnnnnnnn
~ 
~ ------------
~ 
~ egregious lecture notes, 30 Jan 2002.
~ 
~ The lecture is set to start at 3:00.  I show up about ten 
~ minutes early,
~ and the lecture hall is already filling up.  The front row has three
~ video cameras, one looking more professional than the other two since
~ he's wearing big headphones.
~ 
~ In the front of the lecture hall are six seats, from left to right:
~ - Chris Said, Johns Hopkins
~ - Eric Downes, MIT
~ - YOUR GOD
~ - Gene Ray
~ - Victor Brar, MIT
~ - Chris Gorman, Harvard
~ 
~ The "YOUR GOD" seat was covered with some sort of drapes.  The meaning
~ of YOUR GOD or whoever he is was supposedly revealed on the website. I
~ didn't ask.  No one ever sat there.
~ 
~ Gene Ray looks like a kind old man.  He had on a white golf 
~ shirt with a
~ logo of "TIMECUBE.COM" and "MIT 2002" emblazoned on it, and a white
~ baseball cap done up the same way.  I didn't see anyone else wearing
~ that.
~ 
~ The other panelists were all students.  Eric Downes is a scary looking
~ guy with a blonde mop of hair and a bushy beard.  Chris Gorman was on
~ the end, and acted like he had Downs syndrome, although he looked
~ normal.  Just about any time he opened his mouth, a chorus of "Harvard
~ SUCKS!" would rise up from the crowd.
~ 
~ By the time the seminar actually started, the lecture hall of several
~ hundred seats was just about full.  When the moderator starts the
~ lecture a huge roar of applause goes up.  As each panel member is
~ introduced (including the students and the empty chair) a similar huge
~ cheer erupts from the crowd.  Someone tosses a paper airplane, and the
~ crowd gives an ovation.  Ah, we are easily pleased.
~ 
~ Two people in the audience have posterboard signs: one says
~ 
~                                 GENE RAY
~ 			            4
~                                 PRESIDENT
~ 		   
~ 		   and the other says
~ 		   
~ 	                         CUBISM
~                                    not
~                                  FASCISM
~ 
~ Another has assembled a "color cube" to complement the Timecube. I'll
~ get back to him later.
~ 
~ The first part of the seminar has Gene talking about the Timecube.  He
~ starts out by asking "How many people here have open minds?" 
~ Sure, I see
~ where he's going with this.  I raise my hand, as do most 
~ other people. 
~ Then he says "well, open minds can be filled with garbage!" We all
~ cheer.
~ 
~ He starts going on about the self being part of the village and 1/2 of
~ one's life is going into mating and .... well, I tried to write down
~ notes, and then I gave up and just tried to write down random words he
~ said, but I gave up on that, too:
~ 
~ You know the mumbly guy on King of the Hill?  Boomhauer?  
~ Well, imagine
~ he was reading straight from www.timecube.com.  That's what 
~ it was like
~ listening to Gene Ray talk.  For fifteen incredible minutes he kept on
~ talking and talking about things that I've glimpsed at on the Timecube
~ website.  It was very impressive.  This must be what those southern
~ congressman who would filibuster must've been like.  It sounded like a
~ train of consciousness, but he kept on using different examples, only
~ repeating the "timecube has 4 corners" aspect.
~ 
~ After this, the moderator stops him, and we proceed into the next
~ segment: panel Q&A.  Each of the four people on the panel 
~ with Gene get
~ to ask him four questions.
~ 
~ Chris is first.  He has a problem with a grandparent/parent/self/child
~ nature of people.  Some people know their great-grandparents; some
~ people have no children, some have multiple children.  Gene 
~ says "well,
~ there are variations..." "So--it averages out to 4?" Chris suggests. 
~ "Yes" Gene confirms and immediately everyone applauds.  A repeating
~ cheer of "Gene! Gene! Gene! Gene!" starts up and lasts for about 20
~ seconds.
~ 
~ He asks about the places in nature where 3 occurs, and brings up the
~ example of 3 primary colors.  Gene, as he will do often during the
~ seminar, answers a different question, and explains how the 
~ color sphere
~ has a top pole and a bottom pole, and when you look at it from one
~ direction it goes clockwise and from the other direction it goes
~ counterclockwise and as they turn against each other there are four
~ corners around which they blah blah blah. You can probably 
~ get the rest
~ of this argument from the website.
~ 
~ He asks Gene to explain why God is word masturbation.  It eventually
~ comes up that because God is unique, there isn't a grandparent/
~ parent/self/son lineage.  So God does not fit in the family.  God is
~ male, and, so, being male with himself is "a queer 
~ perspective." He then
~ quotes Revelations 21:16, which talks of the city that lies foursquare
~ and has jasper walls.
~ 
~ He asks about Gene claiming to have applied Timecube to the Unified
~ Field Theory.  He congratulates Gene on having discovered by accident
~ something that scientists have been chasing for decades, but 
~ asks him to
~ explain -why- Timecube fulfills it.  It's simple, says Gene: 
~ the Unified
~ Field Theory would change all of physics, and it involves four
~ fundamental forces, and Timecube changes all of physics and has four
~ corners (of course, he took three minutes to explain this part), so
~ therefore they are the same thing. (Of course!)
~ 
~ Next person is Eric Downes, and he asks about people being made of
~ different numbers of parts.  Humans are a pyramid, with 2 arms and 2
~ legs I guess, and each of those has 4 main digits on it, for 
~ a total of
~ 16.  Of course, (and this, I swear, is a direct quote) "you 
~ don't say 16
~ because that would demean the value of 4." That got another 
~ wild hoot of
~ approval from the lecture hall.
~ 
~ The rest of his quesitons (about cube-word vs. cubeless-words 
~ and a new
~ co-ordinate system) result in mostly incoherent answers.
~ 
~ Victor Brar asks the next question.  Gene says that "-1 x -1 = +1" is
~ stupid and evil, so Victor asks him to explain some more.  
~ Gene goes off
~ of his previous explanation about the North pole and the 
~ South pole and
~ various races, and explains like this:
~ 
~ "1 x 1 = 1 makes sense, because that's like saying that a 
~ North American
~ times a North American equals a North American.  But saying 
~ -1 x -1 = 1
~ is like saying a South American times a South American equals a North
~ American." "Okay, Gene, . . . so, -1 x -1 should equal what?" "A South
~ American!" I stopped writing notes here for about five 
~ minutes I was so
~ busy laughing.
~ 
~ Oh, the reason that we can't divide a day into 100 days, but 
~ only four?
~ After your divide a pie plate into four pieces, you can't 
~ divide it any
~ further.  Any further divisions must happen in one of the four
~ quardants. It's so obvious.  Now don't you feel silly?
~ 
~ He also rambled something about the USS Liberty.  Didn't quite follow
~ this as well as I was able to grasp everything else.
~ 
~ The next student was Chris Gorman, from Harvard, whom I affectionately
~ referred to as "retard-boy" but I think that was just an act. 
~  It turns
~ out he was questioning Gene Ray for about an hour before the lecture
~ began.
~ 
~ Chris opens out by saying "thank you everyone for coming to 
~ day 3 of Sea
~ Monkey Week.  I hope you all brought your Sea Monkey bags." He
~ eventually gets to his first question, "it's about Dungeons and
~ Dragons."
~ 
~ "A magic users hit die, as we all know, is a d4, or a 
~ pyramid. However,
~ the priests, that is, the druids and clerics, use a d8.  But it is the
~ rogues and thieves and bards who use a six-sided die, THE CUBE!" I
~ didn't really sense a question in here, but Gene still was able to
~ respond.  "I'll give a simple answer: (points at Chris) he's wrong."
~ Wild applause.
~ 
~ Chris's second question is "Can I ask you another question?" to which
~ Gene says "no" again eliciting wild applause.
~ 
~ We now enter the next phase of the session: $1000 if you can disprove
~ Timecube, with Gene as the judge.  You will be shocked to 
~ learn that no
~ one succeeded.
~ 
~ The best case was put forward by Tom (?) who had assembled the Color
~ Cube: a 4 by 4 by 4 array of cubes held together with black 
~ sticks, with
~ one corner being all white, the opposite being all black, and 
~ the three
~ dimensions repesnting different amounts of each of the primary colors
~ (or was it pigments?).  They attempted to co-opt the Timecube theory
~ into their own, but unfortunately, they were dealing with 
~ Gene Ray, who
~ simply co-opted theirs right back.
~ 
~ Another good case was put forth by someone who used the fact that the
~ Timecube is ineffable as a proof of its unprovability.  However, Eric
~ correctly pointed out that Godel's incompleteness theorem applies, and
~ that even if you could prove that the Timecube is unprovable, 
~ that would
~ not count as a disproof.
~ 
~ It was during this discussion that the contestant reminded 
~ Gene that "no
~ human can understand the Timecube" and Gene responded without 
~ missing a
~ beat "Yeah.  I'm not human." Gene later hedged on this 
~ remark, claiming
~ that a human is 4 parts, grandparent, parent, self, and son, and he
~ could only exist in 1 corner at a time, so he was, and I 
~ quote, "1/4 of
~ a human."
~ 
~ There was a $100 prize for the best student who could come up with a
~ proof of Timecube.  Five students offered various theories, some
~ revolvoing around the magick of the number 4, some about the universal
~ applicability of the golden mean (when he asked how many people in the
~ room had seen "Pi" about 3/4 raised their hands--unfortunately an
~ imprompty pi recital did not commence).  When the moderator asked Gene
~ which student had given the best proof, Gene said "I don't wanna get
~ into this" and let the audnience vote by applause.
~ 
~ There was a $500 prize for the best professor-offered proof. 
~ Amazingly,
~ no professor was in the room.  (There were a few post-docs, but they
~ were just yelled at for being out of the office and told to 
~ get back to
~ work.) Some students suggested going to fetch a professor, and Noam
~ Chomsky was thought of several times, but no action occurred.  Gene
~ talked about how academica stifles the Timecube because it would undo
~ all that they have done.  He predicts that if any professor from MIT
~ were to say that the Timecube is accurate he would be fired.  
~ Y'know, I
~ think he might be right.
~ 
~ Then a general Q&A started with the audience.  This was the real fun.
~ 
~ While describing how he gets shut out of academia, Gene said "I was
~ thrown off all the scientific boards on the Internet." He made a
~ reference to Revelations 16:21 (when I think he meant 21:16 
~ again), and
~ started rambling about how people use the law to shut down 
~ discussion of
~ Timecube, and how a university told him "We'll put you in jail if you
~ send us another fax."
~ 
~ Following up on Gene's discussion of the four races in the 
~ four corners
~ of the Timecube (white, black, asian, indian) a black guy asked how he
~ could explain black Republicans, the black Spice Girl, or 
~ Bill Clinton.
~ 
~ One person asked "What is 6 times 9?" Not one to be trapped 
~ into proving
~ which base he was in, Gene responded after a moment of thought: "It's
~ man-made math."
~ 
~ Someone asked the question a lot of us must have been 
~ wondering: "How do
~ you finance your research?" Gene beamed proudly and proclaimed "credit
~ cards!"
~ 
~ "Timecube is not a theory.  It's a principle."
~ 
~ How Timecube could have prevented the September 11 attacks?  "If they
~ would stay in their corners they wouldn't be able to bomb anything."
~ 
~ "It's against the law to kill Christians but it's not immoral."
~ 
~ Someone brought up the blurb on his website about the book he was
~ writing. When she asked "what's your book going to be about?" he look
~ incredulous and responded "the Timecube." More cheering.
~ 
~ He was unable to explain how circus clowns are explained by Timecube.
~ 
~ Delving further into his four corners-four races point, a 
~ student asked
~ how people who aren't in those four races fit in.  Gene explained that
~ they fit inside the Timecube (duh!).  The student said, "Well, I'm
~ bi-racial--" at which point Gene interrupted and said "you're 
~ _WHAT_?!"
~ 
~ Asked if "odd numbers are a false fabrication" Gene said "Yeah."
~ 
~ Does he support the decriminialization of marijuana?  He said that it
~ seems to make some people feel good, and he doesn't mind them using it
~ "as long as they're not in my cube."
~ 
~ Another black man asked about how he could use Timecube to get his
~ groove on, if he could better understand the Timecube if he shaved his
~ hair into a "cubic 'fro", and if Gene supports 4somes.
~ 
~ I forget the question that brought this on, but at one point Gene
~ started talking about lemon nipples.  "A lemon has two 
~ nipples.  If you
~ cut it in half each half has one nipple.  If you turn them, they are
~ facing each other." Around this point I lost the ability to write down
~ notes again.
~ 
~ He told a story of how he met a black woman in the south, and told her
~ that when she died she was going to come back on the opposite 
~ corner of
~ the cube, as a white person.  Then he told her "and when I 
~ die I'm gonna
~ come back as a black person and I'm gonna hate you honkies."
~ 
~ Cube eggs would be better than round eggs, but would be 
~ "pretty rough on
~ the chicken laying" it.
~ 
~ People started drifting away at this point, but I kept my guard,
~ resolving to report the situation as best I could.  However, 
~ I failed to
~ realize that no one can report the Timecube, and I should've had three
~ other people taking notes from the three other corners of the lecture
~ hall.
~ _______________________________________________
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~