Table of Contents
Introduction vii
1 Games and Puzzles 1
Tic-tac-toe—The Illusion of the Tall Glass—Expansion of a Bridge—The Result Is Always—Problems with Liars—The Missing Dollar—A Geometric Fallacy—Pennies and Nickels—Tricks with Coins—A Bet You Can't Lose—Proving -1 = 1—The Principle of Indifference—Sum of Irrationals—Points on a Line—The Wheel Paradox—The Shadow Puzzle—Diagonals of Squares, Cubes, and Hypercubes—Are There Really Four Dimensions?—Time Travel
2 Famous Problems and Puzzles 25
Trisecting an Angle—Euclid's Parallel Postulate—Fermat's Last Theorem—Statistical Objectivity
3 The Search for Absolutes 43
Absolute Position—Absolute Motion—Absolute Acceleration—The Totality of All Things—The Center of the Universe
4 Cause/Effect, Coincidence, and Predestiny 55
Past Dictates Future—Future Dictates Past—Predestiny and Free Choice—Coincidence—Circular Time
5 It's About Time That... 71
Things Happen in Bunches—The Modern Data Gatherer—Scale Parallels—The Bumpy Ride of Life—True Order and True Randomness
6 Connections to the Other Side 87
ESP and Emotions—Clairvoyance—Horoscopes—Astral Projection—The Spirit World—Dimensional Constraints—More Than Three Dimensions—Where's Our Place?
7 Partial Dimensions, Fractals, and Mathephysics 103
No Truth Value—Particles Without End—Koch Curves, Geometric Dusts, and Other Oddities—The Bug and the Shoreline—Clouds: Tiny, Bigger, Biggest—Cycles in Nature and Life—Partial Dimensions—The Mandelbrot Set—Absolute Truth
Index 125
