The Marauder is a band of mysterious men whose music surprisingly involves the banjo, and whose lives involve a strange mixture of fashion and math. Greg refused to answer Kate McGee's questions regarding the sexiness of the aforementioned instrument, and further declined to comment on any rumours involving a steamy hypothetical romance between his bandmate Konrad and designer Donatella Versace. Mystery abounds.

Greg, you are unbelievably beautiful. Could it be all those accessories you are sporting? What are your thoughts on man-accessories? Men's fashion is unbelievably boring compared to women's. I mean, the range of the fashion decisions a typical man makes (and even the word 'œdecision'? is a stretch here, implying some sort of choice-making process more sophisticated than 'œdoes this shirt smell?'? and 'œI didn't wear this yesterday'?) is unbelievably narrow, and I consider myself to be a pretty typical man in this regard. The only real way to let fashion into your life (short of turning into Rick James, and nobody wants that) is through accessorizing. It's a fact.

Apparently there are some new members in your band. Who are they and what is their purpose in life or otherwise? Do you order them around, or what? We've invited two guys named Brendan and Andrew to play this show with us. I'm not quite sure how it will work out since maybe they will not want to work under the conditions that we create for ourselves. This band, for me, is primarily about panic. We have never played a show which wasn't hastily put together in the final hour. We don't practice. For instance, Konrad's in Milan and won't be back until three days before we play.

This is not improvised music, either, so every time we step on stage I am literally quaking in my rubber boots, because I'm wondering 'œare the wheels going to completely come off? Is this going to crash and burn?'? The only option is to face the terror and to conquer it through a vicious commitment to logic. So I'm not sure if those guys will be willing to work like that. We'll see come July 11th, I guess?!

Is it true that a curved line is actually a straight line, or is it the other way around? Imagine you're a two-dimensional, flat creature living on the surface of a giant balloon. To you, the world seems flat. But if you explore your universe a little, you'll notice some curious things: if you keep going in a straight line for long enough, you might end up back where you started. Parallel lines can meet. Triangles may have angles which sum to greater than 180 degrees. This is because the space you are living in, flat creature, is what's known as a Reimannian manifold. This is a technical term which basically means that the universe looks flat to you but, in reality, it is curved. It also means that the Euclidean laws of geometry with which we're all familiar do not apply.

So let's talk about straight lines. What does it mean to call a line 'œstraight'? when space itself is curved? This is an interesting question, but the usual understanding is that a straight line is the shortest possible path between two points. This kind of curve is called a 'œgeodesic.'? Here's the kicker, then: according to Einstein (and Einstein was pretty smart), the universe within which we live (or 'œspacetime'?) is also a Reimannian manifold, which means that it's curved! Every massive object induces a curvature of spacetime. The metaphor usually used to describe this is that of a stretched rubber sheet with some marbles sitting on it: the marbles, because of their mass, cause a deformation in the surrounding 'œspacetime'? (the sheet).

Newton's first law of motion, inertia, still applies in Einsteinian physics: an object in motion will tend to stay in motion, following a straight or geodesic path through space, unless acted upon by an external force (and Einstein says that gravity is not a force!) Thus, objects (such as a planet orbiting a star) following 'œstraight'? paths through spacetime, may follow curved trajectories due to the underlying curvature of spacetime. Straight lines are curves.