Bookspoke's New Design!

Well, it's been a rough week, but it looks like we're almost ready to unveil our brand new design at Bookspoke! Brian is putting the finishing touches on our new ajax header, and new addition Joe has been doing a great job implementing our redesign. Soon, we'll be able to tell you all about The Hub, our brand new blog with a book focus. Looking forward to seeing you at Bookspoke!

String Theory Is flawed, I have the solution

For those of you who choose not to keep up with the latest comings and goings in math and physics, here's a quick review of what string theory (or brane theory, or M theory, or whatever it's called today) says: the entire world is made up of tiny, oscillating strings. The way these strings move determines what kind of matter they end up contributing to. This is a pretty big step from how people thought matter was made when I was in high school, which is that everything was made from point particles. By having vibrating strings everywhere, string theorists are saying that the entire universe is one giant symphony -- think of it as each string is like the string on a guitar, capable of playing only one note. Of course, there's lots of complicated math in there, but there's no need to go into that right now (or ever, I hope).

String theory requires that we live in a 10-, 11- or 26- dimensional world, depending on who you ask, but the main point for these theorists remains the same -- all of the dimensions outside of the three/four that are apparent to us (up-down, left-right, out-and-back, and time) have to be rolled up into a very tiny space (technically, they are looped into themselves), because otherwise we'd already know about the other dimensions. This is a little esoteric, so it's helpful to think of an example here. The one that all of the physics books use is that we should imagine that we are all two-dimensional people, living on a page (or a blog). If we were living in this two-dimensional world, the idea of a third dimension -- something above the page -- would be impossible for us to comprehend. Likewise for us and the extra 6+ dimensions that scientists say are out there.

I certainly can swallow the idea that there are extra dimensions out there, but I don't believe -- not for one second -- that we can't experience these other dimensions. It's not that I'm offended by the idea that there are things beyond my comprehension; the corner deli's meat products are often beyond my comprehension. It's that I think the scientists are ignoring all of the possibilities for what could constitute a dimension. I don't think, for example, that a dimension has to be strictly spatial. A dimension could be something that is omnipresent -- colors, say -- and a few of the dimensions out there could be part of what we call the color spectrum. Or musical scales. There's hundreds of possibilities out there. We simply have to rethink what we call a dimension.

(This is a character study for Gabe Numm, the protagonist of my third novel, kept. I've yet to publish any parts of that novel yet, but if you want to read how some of my character studies get incorporated into my work, visit www.jonbrodsky.com).

I'm so hot

You know that it’s a mistake, but you do it anyway. You feel yourself trying to stop yourself, but you know that you lack the willpower. For the eighth time in the last ten minutes, you check your watch, confirming yet another fact of which you were already aware. It’s eleven o’clock at night, it’s still Friday, and you won’t be able to get out of here tonight. Despondent with memories of rearranging the sticky notes on your beige cubicle wall, you open iTunes and wind up the only song that gets you through times like these. You tell yourself that, if you crank right now, right this second, you might get out of the office before Saturday morning.

As you start to revise the presentation that you have to give to your peers on Monday morning so that it includes all of your boss’ comments, you remind yourself that, despite his insistence that the word ‘myself’ should be used whenever impossible, he is eminently qualified for his Vice Presidency. You sigh as you read the first page, where he has decided to change your first bullet, “Introduction to Viral Marketing,” to, “Convergence in the Internet eSpace: An Overview of Important Tactics.” Two years ago, had you read this change, you might have banged your head against the desk. Not anymore. You’re a smart one, and you learned from giving yourself a concussion.

You decide that you can’t take this anymore. Of course, you’ve decided this several times in the past few years, but that doesn’t mean all that much right now. You’ve had it. It’s time to find a new job, or at least find to sneak out of the office for the night without getting caught. You know that your boss will want to see a revision of this presentation by ten on Saturday morning, which gives you exactly eleven hours to turn it around.

“This shouldn’t take that long,” you say to yourself before you turn to page six, where your boss has insisted that you compile your company’s sales records for the last fifteen years next to a graph of the S&P 500’s growth rate. He insists that this will show that your company has grown faster than America’s largest companies over the period. Unfortunately, you don’t have access to this data. You’re not even sure who would have access to this data, besides Betty, the bookkeeper from Hell, and you’re not about to call her this late at night.

“Fuck this,” you shout. “This is my presentation, and I don’t have to listen to what he says. I’m leaving for the night! This thing is fine as-is!”

Do you:

- Storm out of the office, looking for a bar?

- Get up, go to the bathroom and give yourself a chance to cool down?

- Write an email to your boss, explaining your point of view as reasonably as possible?

- Try to find Betty the Bookkeeper’s home number and pray that she doesn’t turn into a werewolf at night?

(This is the first page of a 150+ page Choose Your Own Adventure story that I've been working on for my website, www.jonbrodsky.com)