you can ignore this page. i posted it so i could refer to it in a forum post here. :-D i can't tell you the products because this was made so long ago-- i didn't keep track of ANYTHING back then! sorry to anyone who recognized their products on this page.

text:

I spent some of last night in front of the computer watching part of "The Elegant Universe"on NOVA. It's a three hour program about String Theory, a thing I've been trying to get my brain around for several years (unsuccessfully.)So, as I often do, I turn to those scientists who dumb down a particularly difficult idea to street level. I actually think I get it...at street level.

But anyway. There I was, drinking wine, screwing up my face in concentration and squinting at the guy on my screen who was trying to explain cause and effect at the quantum (subatomic) level, when I heard this:

Quantum Mechanics says there's a chance that things we'd ordinarily think of as impossible can actually happen. For example, there's a chance that particles can pass right through walls or barriers that seem impenetrable to you or me. (at this point, on my screen, the ice cubes in a drunk guy's drink shoot right through his glass and fly off somewhere. which, of course, struck me as being hysterically funny, so i had to stop for a laugh break....) There's even a chance that I could pass through something solid, like a wall. Now, quantum calculations do show that the probability for this to happen in the everyday world is so small that I could continue walking into the wall for nearly an eternity before having a reasonable chance of succeeding. But here, at the quantum level, things like this happen all the time.


Here's where quantum probability and McKeesport in 1957 come into play. I used to do this thing when I was little. My parents and the neighbors must have thought I was mad. I used to take a little step ladder out into the middle of my (postage-stamp-sized) back yard and climb to the top and jump off. I did this over and over, in the hopes that eventually I would fly. (Or as Douglas Adams would have it: i would throw myself at the ground and miss.) I spent many a sunny summer afternoon climbing that ladder and hoping. So, there was I, at the tender age of 7 years exhibiting an understanding of and an appreciation for the random, chaotic and somewhat magical thinking that is required to understand what's going on in the wee world of subatomic particles.

snort...sure.

But, seriously. It was kind of cool to discover last evening, as I have always suspected, that at the very heart of life and matter all bets are off. Chaos rules and, whether we care to believe it or not, sometimes magic happens.