A silly exposition of special relativity in the style of academic slapstick. Woo.



Evariste and Ecker have been seated at a table off to the side, bitterly
bickering over one of Evariste's radical theories. Having exhausted upon
the specifics of the theory, Ecker is soundly convinced that Evariste
speaks nothing but gibberish - a trait that he is well-known for at this
particular time. Evariste, determined to make himself understood, makes
one last attempt at persuading Ecker of the truth of his theory, this
time shedding its complexities and exposing it as a simple whole.

Ecker: Pardon me, friend, but I believe your proposal to be absurd!

Evariste: Very well. As everything I should declare henceforth shall
undoubtedly sound as meaningless drivel to your ears, would you not
care to take leisure in relaxing your mind whilst you listen a bit longer?

Ecker: Fine, though, I believe you to have lost it - once and for all!

Evariste: Very well. Anyway. Do you not agree that, in an activity such as
... say, constructing a geometric proof, you will need perhaps to show that
one right line points this way, another that, each respectively inclined at
some angle from its extremity?

Ecker: Of course - a right triangle has one side so inclined to the up- or
-downwards, and the other perpendicular, such that in meeting they shall form
a right angle.

Evariste: Indeed. Would you also agree that, if the paper on which you describe
this "upward" line be inverted in any direction by an angle of precisely 180
degrees, this line would now lead towards the downward?

Ecker: Why, that's common sense! For if you had to prove such a notion, it
could only be done by literally turning the entire foundation upon it's head!

Evariste: That is exactly my point. Shall I continue?

Ecker: If you must.

Evariste: An apple has the property of being red, an orange orange.

Ecker: Fruits, just like your theory!

Evariste: Yes. Anyway, it is only by recorded definition that we know theory to
become knowledge, and only by observation that knowledge agrees with reality,
and only by conversation that agreeance produces confidence in these definitions.

Ecker: You argue philosophy, not physics!

Evariste: Bear with me, dear friend. Now, if a young, innocent lad be isolated
from none but the definitions which declare oranges to be orange, instead marking
them red, and apples red, instead marking them orange, generously leaving their
spherical shapes unchanged--

Ecker: You mock me by comparing apples and oranges, yet I am intrigued.

Evariste: I do not mock you. Where was I?

Ecker: You were speaking of a definition which switched the colors of apples and
oranges, leaving their shapes the same.

Evariste: Ah, yes. Your memory is infalliable. Anyway, suppose in asking his parents
for an apple, he points to an orange. Would not either of them seek to correct the
boy, saying, "Dear boy, we call the red ones apples, and the orange ones oranges!"

Ecker: Usually, that is how any child learns where he or she has erred.

Evariste: And so the child, in learning the practical difference between the two, has
switched his frame of reference.

Ecker: How so?

Evariste: He no longer refers to a misconception in identifying that object in reality
which he seeks to name.

Ecker: I see.

Evariste: Thus his frame of reference for these particular entities is different.

Ecker: True.

Evariste: Returning to our dear friend the geometry proof, do you agree that in
rotating the paper through 180 degrees, we switched from one frame of reference
to another with respect to the direction we drew our vertical line?

Ecker: I do, now.

Evariste: You would not, then, find any fault in the simplification which states
that one event may differ in the perception of two observers whom are oriented
at appreciably opposed views, cognitions, or otherwise, with respect to the
aforementioned event?

Ecker: No, I would not.

Evariste: Very good. And would you also consider, with my system in mind, that an
observer situated upon a body which is in such non-degenerate motion as to deceive
him into believing that all entities from without are actually those in motion, which
seem to translate their position through his fixed line of sight, would just as well
be perceived, from an observer without, to be in motion?

Ecker: Are you implying that all bodies in the universe are in perpetual motion?

Evariste: Indeed.

Ecker: Then what fixes our world betwixt the heavenly firmament?

Evariste: Nothing.