Einstein was supposed to have been working on the grand unification theory during the last 30 years of his life. He was trying to make all of physics fit into one system of equations that would explain, well, Everything Important. Like the relationship between the Strong Force of atomic particles and the weaker forces of electromagnetism and gravity. Such a theory would have done me a fat lot of good anyhow. His equations would not help me predict the probability of an attractive person liking me, or the behavior of any stock, or the weather. So as much as old Uncle Al or Stevie the Wheelchair Wonder Hawkins sweated over the Big Stuff, I just don't see it. These guys fell into the classic trap of rhetoric. As long as you are working to answer the wrong question, it doesn't matter how brilliant you are...you'll get the wrong answer. So we should focus on getting the Right Things to Unify in our Grand Theory before spending endless mental energy on it. I vote we start with something practical, using an example we can all understand. Everyone has a microwave oven in their home, and everyone eats food, and most microwaves are digitally controlled. So let's try to come up with a theory and set of equations that make it possible to not burn dinner. You have heard about the basic unit of data, the "byte." This is composed of two "nibbles" (really), which are four bits each. If we generalize this, we come up with the following series: 1 bit = unit of food 1 scrap = two bits 1 crap = two processed bits 1 nibble = 2 scraps, 4 bits 1 byte = 2 nibbles, 8 bits 1 gulp = 16 bits 1 wolf = 32 bits 1 course = 128 bits 1 meal = 256 bits 1 banquet = 1024 bits 1 party = 8196 bits, 1 kilobyte 1 convention = 1,048,576 bits, 128 kilobytes 1 Carnival cruise = 8,388,608 bits, 1 Megabyte 1 China = 8,589,934,582 bits, 1 Gigabyte 1 Planet = 8,796,093,022,208 bits, 1 Terrabyte So, if you want to feed the whole planet your going to need a very large data warehouse to store all those bits of food. You can also see that the typical microprocessor used in a microwave oven is only able to process data -- and therefore cook food -- 1 wolf at a time. The grand unification theory thus explains why you shouldn't expect to cook large quantities of food in the typical size microwave. Because of the 32-bit processor, one part of dinner may be burned while other parts are still cold. Jennifer (my XYL as they say in Morse code) proved this recently when she set fire to the paper that enclosed dinner and subsequently the plastic parts of the microwave all at the same time. I welcome any additions to the development and extension of this theory. As you can imagine, trying to explain but a small part of the universe, rather than the whole smash, saved me 29.99999999998 years over Uncle Al. Dave