s c i e n c e b e a t Einstein's Theory Of Babe-ativity By Dave Stinton "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." - Albert Einstein

This chart, a simple illustration of the above statement, is what Einstein called the "Pretty Girl/Hot Stovetop Matrix." These two lines intersect at point A, at approximately one-half of one hour. This means that if you sat on a hot stovetop, while you talked to a pretty girl, for one-half of one hour, it would feel exactly like one-half of one hour. Of course, there are many variables; the actual equation for this graph is quite complex. What is the temperature of the stove? What is your altitude? How pretty is the girl? Does she have a boyfriend? What is the topic of conversation? In general, though, more pretty girl equals shorter relative time, more hot stovetop equals longer relative time. The implications are vast. Theoretically, if one of a pair of identical twin girls traveled around the Universe in a rocket ship while the other stayed home, the travelling girl, upon arriving back on Earth, would be much sexier than her Earthbound sister. And a man holding conference with the assembled female casts of "Friends" and "Melrose Place" could conceivably not even realize he is sitting on a hot stove. This also explains why, during periods of sexual upheaval (like the Sixties), fashionable skirts often shorten so quickly that they appear to take on a bluish color. The findings are eminently useful. Observations such as "a watched pot never boils," "the pot calling the kettle black," and "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers" can easily be explained with the Pretty Girl/Hot Stovetop Matrix. And high-profile scientists from Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking have absorbed Einstein's findings into their theory of a supple, curved Universe.