Time Cube

Time Cube was a personal web page, founded in 1997 by the self-proclaimed "wisest man on earth", Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray.[3] It was a self-published outlet for Ray's theory of everything, called "Time Cube," which polemically claims that all modern sciences are participating in a worldwide conspiracy to teach lies, by omitting his theory's alleged truth that each day actually consists of four days occurring simultaneously.[4] Alongside these statements, Ray described himself as a "godlike being with superior intelligence who has absolute evidence and proof" for his views. Ray asserted repeatedly and variously that "academia" had not taken Time Cube seriously.[5]

Time Cube
The layout and writing style of the Time Cube website
Type of site
Personal web page and conspiracy blog
Created byOtis Eugene "Gene" Ray
URLtimecube.com until August 2015
Archived at web.archive.org[1]
Alexa rank517,356 (April 2014)[2]
CommercialNo

Otis Eugene Ray died on March 18, 2015 at age 87.[6] Ray's website domain names expired in August 2015,[7] and Time Cube was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016 (January 10–14).[8]

Content

Style

The Time Cube website had no home page.[3] It consisted of a number of web pages that contained a single vertical centre-aligned column of body text in various sizes and colors, resulting in the main pages being extremely long. Finding any particular passage was almost impossible without manually searching.[4]

Within the text of Time Cube, Ray used cryptic language that included insults and non-sequiturs; one example is the often quoted line "Belly-Button Logic Works. When Does Teenager Die? Adults Eat Teenagers Alive, No Record Of Their Death." The text also contains a vague cynical narrative with numerous unique digressions that appears to reflect on his childhood.[3] A large amount of self-invented jargon is used throughout, similar to verbal logorrhea: some words and phrases are used frequently but never defined, likely terms materially referring to the weakness of widely propagated ideas that he detests throughout the text, that are usually capitalised even when used as adjectives. In one paragraph, he claimed that because his own wisdom "so antiquates known knowledge," a psychiatrist examining his behavior diagnosed him with schizophrenia.[9]

Articles have proclaimed that it is futile to analyze the text rationally, interpret meaningful proofs from the text, or test any claims.[3][10]

Time Cube concept
Diagram illustrating an aspect of the Time Cube theory which Ray describes as "LIFE ENCOMPASSES A 4–16 CUBE PRINCIPLE"

Ray's personal model of reality, called "Time Cube," states that all of modern physics and education is wrong,[4] and argues that, among many other things, Greenwich Time is a global conspiracy. He uses various graphs (along with pictures of himself) that purport to show how each day is really four separate days—SUN-UP, MID-DAY, SUN-DOWN, and MID-NIGHT (formerly morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and evening)—occurring simultaneously.[3][5]

The following quotation from the website illustrates the recurring theme:

When the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 – major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth – known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24-hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.

Although most of the concepts presented remain somewhat consistent throughout the various texts it is unclear what line of reasoning could have led to any of the conclusions that are presented, the underlying theory from which the ideas were sprung remaining arcane and indecipherable to any rational analysis.

Ray offered $1,000[11] or $10,000[5] to anyone who could prove his views wrong. Mike Hartwell of The Maine Campus wrote that any attempt to claim the prize would require convincing Ray that his theory was invalid. The proof would need to be framed in terms of his own model, thus deviating from any form of modern science. "Even if you could pull that off," Hartwell said, "Ray is probably broke."[3]

Reception

Ray spoke about Time Cube at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 2002 as part of a student-organized extra-curricular event during the independent activities period.[12] He repeated his $10,000 offer for professors to disprove his notions at the event; none attempted it.[5] John C. Dvorak wrote in PC Magazine that "Metasites that track crackpot sites often say this is the number one nutty site."[4] He also characterized the site's content as "endless blather."[4] Asked by Martin Sargent in 2003 how it felt to be an Internet celebrity, Ray stated that it was not a position he wanted, but something he felt he had to do as "no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube."[10] Ray also spoke about Time Cube at the Georgia Institute of Technology in April 2005, in a speech in which he attacked the instruction offered by academics.[13] In May 2018, a video recording of the GT lecture[14] was made available on the video sharing site YouTube. It is still available as of November 26, 2019.

A 2004 editorial in The Maine Campus student newspaper remarked upon what it called the site's "subtle little racist ideologies" which culminate in Ray describing racial integration as "destroying all of the races."[3]

In 2005, Brett Hanover made Above God (also the name of one of Ray's websites which criticized the idea that God exists),[15] a short documentary film about Ray and Time Cube,[16] which won awards for Best Documentary at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and the Atlanta Underground Film Festival.[17][18]

Suicide of Richard Janczarski

Richard Janczarski, also known online as "Cubehead", was a self-professed disciple of Ray who styled himself the "second-wisest human."[19] From 2004, Janczarski created the Time Cube fansite Cubic Awareness Online, and an accompanying forum. In 2007, he traveled from his native Australia to Florida to meet Ray. The pair had several disagreements after going their separate ways.[20] Ray denounced Janczarski on his website after the latter's visit. Seemingly as a reaction to this criticism, Janczarski committed suicide on February 12, 2008 at age 21.[21][22][23][24]

Cultural impact

Christopher Bowes has stated he was inspired to write the song "To the End of the World" with the pirate metal band Alestorm after learning of the Timecube.[25] The song makes multiple references to the cube, and a supposed coverup of "the true nature of time", and was included their 2017 album No Grave But the Sea.

gollark: Idea: Make an esolang based around ideas for esolangs.
gollark: https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview
gollark: If this worked as expected, in theory you could do```pythonraise quibble("abcd")```but alas, no.
gollark: But which runs much faster.
gollark: ```pythonfrom requests_futures.sessions import FuturesSessionimport concurrent.futures as futuresimport randomtry: import cPickle as pickleexcept ImportError: import pickletry: words_to_synonyms = pickle.load(open(".wtscache")) synonyms_to_words = pickle.load(open(".stwcache"))except: words_to_synonyms = {} synonyms_to_words = {}def add_to_key(d, k, v): d[k] = d.get(k, set()).union(set(v))def add_synonyms(syns, word): for syn in syns: add_to_key(synonyms_to_words, syn, [word]) add_to_key(words_to_synonyms, word, syns)def concat(list_of_lists): return sum(list_of_lists, [])def add_words(words): s = FuturesSession(max_workers=100) future_to_word = {s.get("https://api.datamuse.com/words", params={"ml": word}): word for word in words} future_to_word.update({s.get("https://api.datamuse.com/words", params={"ml": word, "v": "enwiki"}): word for word in words}) for future in futures.as_completed(future_to_word): word = future_to_word[future] try: data = future.result().json() except Exception as exc: print(f"{exc} fetching {word}") else: add_synonyms([w["word"] for w in data], word)def getattr_hook(obj, key): results = list(synonyms_to_words.get(key, set()).union(words_to_synonyms.get(key, set()))) if len(results) > 0: return obj.__getattribute__(random.choice(results)) else: raise AttributeError(f"Attribute {key} not found.")def wrap(obj): add_words(dir(obj)) obj.__getattr__ = lambda key: getattr_hook(obj, key)wrap(__builtins__)print(words_to_synonyms["Exception"])```New version which tends to reduce weirder output.

References
  1. "Internet Archive: Wayback Machine".
  2. "Timecube.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
  3. Hartwell, Mark (September 24, 2004). "Timecube.com: Where reality as we know it is a lie". The Maine Campus. Archived from the original on April 30, 2011. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  4. Dvorak, John C. (December 22, 2003). "Don't Call Them Crackpots". PC Magazine. Retrieved August 20, 2018.
  5. Duffy, Kate (September 19, 2002). "Truth Is Cubic?". The Phoenix. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania: Swarthmore College. Archived from the original on December 20, 2002. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  6. "Otis Eugene Ray (1927–2015) – Find A Grave Memorial".
  7. Robertson, Adi (September 2, 2015). "Time Cube Is Gone". The Verge. Archived from the original on September 12, 2015. Retrieved February 15, 2016.
  8. "Internet Archive Wayback Machine". archive.org. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
  9. https://web.archive.org/web/20080709075217/http://www.timecube.com/, "My wisdom so antiquates known knowledge, that a psychiatrist examining my behavior, eccentric by his academic single corner knowledge, knows no course other than to judge me schizoprenic."
  10. Unscrewed with Martin Sargent. Season 1. Episode 15. June 18, 2003. TechTV. Sargent: Gene, how do you feel about being an Internet celebrity? I mean, you're huge on the web. Ray: Well, it's not a position I wanted, it's something I had to do. I'm not a writer or speaker, but no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube.
  11. "Timecube.com Picture". Archived from the original on August 18, 2015. Retrieved September 14, 2014.CS1 maint: unfit url (link)
  12. "IAP 2002 Activity: Time Cube Lecture / Debate". Retrieved April 5, 2007.
  13. "Oddball Time Cube theorist piques interest, elicits mixed response", by Joshua Cuneo, The Technique. Georgia Institute of Technology. April 22, 2005. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  14. "Time Cube Lecture at Georgia Tech – April 2005", Badical Industries. Recorded April 2005.
  15. abovegod.com
  16. Above God, Brett Hanover official site. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  17. "Act One among the big winners at Indie Memphis", by Chris Herrington, October 28, 2005, Memphis Flyer. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  18. "Memphians Premiere New Film at Nashville Film Festival", Michael Finger, April 18, 2008, Memphis Flyer. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  19. "Dr Gene Ray Time Cube Experience". Richard Janczarski.
  20. Janczarski, Richard (2007). "The Bronze Age of Radio" (Interview). Interviewed by Charles Berman. New York City: WHRW.
  21. Fredrik Knudsen (November 30, 2017), Time Cube | Down the Rabbit Hole, retrieved December 8, 2017
  22. "Grave Site of Richard Janczarski (1986–2008)". BillionGraves.
  23. Lawton, Craig (February 1, 2008). "Suicide at Glenferrie station?". Craig Lawton's Blog. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  24. Interview with Richard Janczarski – Time Cube, Gene Ray, Cubic Awareness Online, retrieved May 8, 2020
  25. . metalinsider https://www.metalinsider.net/interviews/interview-gloryhammers-christopher-bowes-alestorm-on-new-album-legends-from-beyond-the-galactic-terrorvortex. Missing or empty |title= (help)
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