Category: Misc

Nonplussed

Aside from all the racial and cultural epithets that are being hurled with more and more frequency, there is a particular word that I genuinely do not like.  It constantly confuses me; its use makes me stumble and bumble even though I am very familiar with it.  I’ve seen it written and heard it spoken numerous times.  Each time this happens, I furrow my brow and wish the author or speaker had chosen another word.

I vowed a long time ago to never use this word in my own writing.  Why?  I simply do not like it.  Words should not create confusion and ambiguity unless that is the intent of the writer.  And I must say that this word always leaves me dazed; I guess you could say that when I read it or hear it, I am nonplussed.

Author’s Note: Yes, I realize that I promised never to use “that word” in my writing, but I have thought about it and have no choice.  I can’t write about “nonplussed” without typing “nonplussed.”  And for those of you who think that is ironic, don’t get me started.  That is a topic for a distant day.

I have been researching this tricky word, and I have found that I am not alone in my dislike for it.  Let’s be generous and just say that its definition seems to be evolving.  In fact, I think that about half the people who use it believe that it means the opposite of what it actually does.  Like I said, its use leaves me confused.

That said, let’s see if we can get to the “root” of the problem.

Author’s Note:  So, an attempt to get to the “root” of the problem?  Of course, I must mean the Latin roots of the word.  I also dislike writing about Latin.  I mean, those people had a different word for everything.  Sure, some of it is pretty close but…

Non and plus in Latin translates to “no more.”  And the way I see it, it is that negative prefix, the non in nonplussed, that is responsible for all the confusion.  Can you think of another word for confused that has a negative prefix?  A negative prefix implies that the person in question is not confused.  See how confusing this is?  You shouldn’t be wondering why I have banned this word from my vocabulary.  If you are, read on.

Historically,  nonplussed meant confused or bewildered to the point you can not speak.  Simple enough, but, once again, we have the negative prefix problem.  Non implies you are not confused; at least it should, right?

In popular use, nonplussed means unfazed, not bothered, or even unimpressed. See all the “un” prefixes?  It seems to me that the popular usage makes more sense.

The big problem is the “non” prefix.  That negative prefix implies that if a person is nonplussed, they are not “plussed,” which means they are unfazed. As Charlie Brown says, Good Grief.  In popular use, the word means something akin to the opposite of its historical definition.  And yes, I am nonplussed.

I am all for the evolution of language.  It is going to happen no matter what any of us do to stop the changes.  My gripe is that words shouldn’t suddenly mean the opposite of what they historically have meant.  If I could somehow fix this problem, that would be really sick.  I mean, people would view me as a bad dude, right?  They might even call me the goat.  Or maybe they all would be too nonplussed to care. Sigh…

 

 

 

It’s a Beautiful Day for Baseball!

I just heard that the great Joe Tait died.  The news was not unexpected; he was old and had several health problems.  Still…

This I know, Joe’s voice was the theme music of my youth.

It was Joe who would let me know that “The Cavs are going right to left on your radio dial” when I tuned in to listen to my team lose again and again.

It was Joe who made me jump out of my seat when “Cleamons got a rebound!” (one of the greatest moments in Cavs history).  It was Joe who made me feel like I was at the old Richfield Coliseum instead of in my bedroom.  He was the best radio announcer I have ever heard.  And yes, I know that every team in the NBA thinks that their announcer is the best, but Cleveland was right; no one was better than Joe.

Joe Tait was the radio voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  He also did radio and TV for the Cleveland Indians.  I can remember sneaking a radio to school so that I could listen to his opening day call.  Even if it was 30 degrees and snowing, which it often was in April, you can bet that the broadcast began with “It’s a beautiful day for baseball.”

Even at a young age, I knew that Joe Tait had mastered his craft, but it took a high school basketball game for me to truly appreciate his skill.  Joe would travel around Ohio and sit in with the local announcers for select games.  He usually came to my hometown once a year.  One day, I happened to turn on the radio just as a game was starting.  You guessed it, Tait was sitting in.  As the game went on, I was wondering what was happening.  The game sounded like any other.  The local guys were doing all the talking.  No Joe, not a peep.

Halftime arrived, and I could hear Joe’s canned voice doing a commercial for a local pizza joint.  The other two guys analyzed the first half, and then something extraordinary happened.  As the second half started, the local guys turned off their mics, and Joe Tait took over.  I soon realized he had spent the first half learning all the players and their numbers and sizing up each team’s offensive and defensive schemes.  He spent the second half announcing the game just as he would if the Cavs played the Bulls.  A 5’6” point guard became Mark Price and a 6’2” center transformed into Brad Daugherty.  It was unbelievable; Tait flawlessly announced the second half without hesitation, without a single stumble or a fumble.  He was sublime, and I was awed.

It wasn’t until I heard that second-half call that I truly appreciated Joe Tait.  I still think about what he did that night.  Know this: The kids were not wearing their names on the back of their jerseys; there was only a number.  Tait knew every one of them.  That man was smooth.

I read that Joe wanted to be a writer, that he wanted to paint pictures with his printed words on a page.  As an announcer, he did much more than that.  He spent decades making people believe they were at the sporting event instead of sitting in their living room.  I always smiled when told the Cavs were starting the game on the right side of my radio dial and moving to the left.   And no, I never wondered why the opposite wasn’t true.  I merely suspended disbelief, leaned back, and let Joe Tait take me courtside.

How many nights did I fall asleep after Joe said, “Have a GOOD night, everybody!” following another Cleveland loss?  Too many to count.

Not many of us will be able to say that no one ever lived who was better at their job than we were at ours.  This I know:  No one was better than Joe Tait.  He was the best.

Truth Machine

I am a boxing fan.  There is something about two people standing face to face in a ring that is pure and primal.  And yes, sometimes I think the sport should be outlawed.  But then I watch a little UFC, and I realize boxing is tame in comparison.  I find mixed martial arts to be barbaric; I am not a devotee of that type of violence.  When a man or woman is down, where is the sport in jumping on them and pummeling them until you are yanked off by a stripped interpreter of an ill-conceived rulebook?  I think that it says something about human nature that UFC has become far more popular than boxing.

Boxing is known by all its fans as “The Sweet Science.”  Watching two skilled fighters is like seeing a chess match played out with jabs and crosses and bobs and weaves.  While the science aspect of boxing is sweet and underappreciated in today’s climate, it is another aspect of boxing that interests me today.

There is a famous quote about sports not developing character but revealing it.  It is generally attributed to basketball coach John Wooden or sportswriter H.H. Broun.   I always found that sentiment interesting.  I think it is true, that character is revealed and not built, especially when it comes to boxing.  Set any two people in the ring, and you can learn a lot about them in those three-minute rounds.

That quickly brings us to former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier.  His three matches with Muhammed Ali are classics.  Each man tried their best to rip the heart out of the other man’s body.  I just rewatched Ali – Frazier I, on today, the 50^th anniversary of the fight.  And yes, on that day Joe Frazier was something else; he was transcendent and sublime.

Larry Merchant, a boxing commentator on HBO’s telecasts for decades wrote what is perhaps the greatest lede in sports journalism history.  This appeared in the March 9, 1971 edition of The New York Post:

Muhammad Ali fought a truth machine last night, and the truth that emerged was painfully clear. The arrogance and hubris that made Ali a great champion made him a former champion.

You can’t con Joe Frazier for 15 rounds. Joe Frazier comes at you too honestly, too openly. He lets you find out what you have inside you. It is going to take an honest man made of stern stuff to beat him. Ali was not honest enough last night.

Joe Frazier the truth machine. Can you imagine imagery more profound than that?  Larry Merchant just turned 90, and I hope he is still proud of that lede.  Stripped of all pretense, Frazier came at his opponent with no trickery, no hubris; he simply marched forward, baiting his opponent to stop him.  He wasn’t interested in showmanship or style; he was on a mission to break the spirit of the man opposite him in the ring.  Frazier’s opponents learned deeply held secrets about themselves when they stood across from him.  Frazier exposed his opponents to the world.  Had they worked hard enough to withstand him?  Did they have the fortitude to stand face to face with him for 12 or 15 rounds?  Were they willing to take his punishment?

That night Frazier was relentless.  He gave no quarter.  His march was forward, his character revealed.  He was a great fighter, a true champion.  He kept asking Ali how deep his well was.  With every left hook, he was asking Ali to see if he could dig a little deeper.

How many of us get to do battle with a truth machine in our lives?  I wouldn’t think many of us do.  At least not one as on point as Frazier.  Our revelations come in different ways.  It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are titans when we are never asked to prove it.  We can’t know how deep the well goes unless we are asked to reach deep down by our own nemesis, our own version of a truth machine.

Of course, we all do face a Truth Machine.  It is Time, that undefeated fabric of the universe.  The difference is, a person could hope to defeat Frazier, which Ali did the next two times they fought.  None of us can say the same about the ticking clock.

Some pundits argue that neither fighter was quite the same after that fight.  They say that the back and forth, the exchange of punishment, took something fundamental from both men.  I believe that is true; I also believe that on that day, fifty long years ago, Muhammed Ali fought a Truth Machine. Larry Merchant had the insight to know that we all can learn something profound from those 15 epic rounds.  I know I did.

Subtle is as Subtle does, the Strange but True Story of 13 over 27

I have studied lots of different subjects.  The most slippery is easy to identify. It is probability theory.  Problems in this branch of statistics trip up experts (and me) all the time.  There are lots of stories of famous scholars who have gone down in flames when presented with what seem to be straightforward questions about the probability of this or that.  This essay is about one such problem.

Let’s imagine that I met a high school classmate at a reunion.  When I saw him, I said, “Hey, I hear you have a son; I saw something about him in the paper.” He replied that he has two children, and the oldest is indeed a boy.  Now the simple question is:  What is the probability that the other child is also a boy?

Well, what are the possibilities?  He could have a boy (B) and a girl (G) or a boy (B) and a boy (B).  Therefore the probability that both children are boys is 1/2, which is 50%.  Take a look at the following table:

BB
BG
GB
GG

Since we know that the first child is a boy, we can eliminate the GB and GG rows.  That leaves only two possibilities, BB and BG.

That little scenario is easy to figure out.  Of course, it can’t all be that easy, right?  Are you ready?  Do you hear The Twilight Zone music in the background?  What if the guy had told me that he has two children, but he didn’t tell me whether the boy was the oldest or the youngest?  What then are the odds that the other child is a boy?

Author’s Note:  There are points in some of my essays where the reader’s head might explode.  This is just a “heads up.” The following might be one of them.

Let’s go back to our table.

BB
BG
GB
GG

The only possibility that can be eliminated is GG.  Therefore (do you see it?), the probability that both children are boys is one in three, or 33.3%.  Very strange.  Most everyone’s intuition tells them that the probability should be 1/2, that it is a fifty-fifty proposition.  When the question is carefully considered, the correct answer is the counterintuitive one.

Probability is subtle; finding the correct answer always depends on meticulously considering all available information.  That said, I almost hate to continue.  I hope some young student isn’t reading this and immediately decides not to study statistics.  Don’t do that!  When you develop some mastery over the material, probability theory goes from the counterintuitive to the sublime.  It can teach you a lot about how human brains evolved, it can give deep insight into the nature of the mathematical world that we live in…and it can be a lot of fun.

Author’s Note:  I will be posting many more essays on probability.  Consider this one a bit of a warm-up.  Now that the blood is flowing, things are about to get even stranger.  Keep in mind how awful human intuition is when it comes to this branch of statistics, and you will be fine.  Remember, it’s not you; almost all of us have terrible mathematical intuition.

Our story continues…

I ran into another guy I went to school with.  He was always a bit eccentric, and it appears nothing has changed.  I said, “I hear you have two children.”  He immediately replied, “Why yes, I do.  In fact, one is a boy born on a Tuesday.”  With that, he turned and danced across the room and out the door.

You guessed it.  Now we need to find the odds that the other child is a boy.  How subtle can this problem get?  The fact that the boy was born on a Tuesday does change the problem, and it certainly impacts the answer.  Think about that for a moment.  How can it matter at all on what day the boy was born?  Let’s find out…

There are 196 possibilities.  We get 49 due to the older or younger siblings being born on any of the 7 ways of the week.  If you don’t believe me, create a matrix of days of the week with possible births.  Such a table is shown below:

So, if you were to create a matrix with every option, you would end up with:

49BB
49BG
49GB
49GG

Out of the 196 possibilities, we can isolate all of those that have a boy born on a Tuesday.  There are 27 cases we can look at that meet this criterion (13 BB, 7 BG, and 7 GB).  The 13 BB scenarios are shown below.  Therefore the odds of two boys is 13/27.  13/27?  48.1%?  Really?  Yes, really.  Study the table below and it will become clear.  It is important to note the overlap on Tuesday / Tuesday (TUTU); we don’t count it twice, giving us 13 instead of 14.

 

 

The probability bunny hole is a deep one.  The more I study the subject, the more interested I become in the limits of human intuition, especially the mathematical type.  It appears we have very little instinct when it comes to numbers, and I don’t think that should surprise anyone.  I have a hard time figuring out when insight into subtle probability problems would have been beneficial during our evolutionary history.  I don’t see when it ever would have been influential on a genetic level.

Not too bad for an introduction to conditional probability theory.  Fairly tame by comparison.  Trust me, things are about to get weird.  Come along for the ride, it is a bit bumpy (seat belt required), but the destination is worth the trip.

Roy

My ears ring; the technical term is tinnitus.  If I am in total quiet, I can hear whistling coming from my ears.  And yes, it is annoying.  That is why I sleep with a television on.  The TV’s sound drowns out the noise coming from my ears, and all is well with the world.

I have been doing this, sleeping with the television on, for as long as I can remember.  Believe it or not, I have a story (more than one); dozing off and on with the TV blaring in the background can lead to some unexpected scenarios.

Sometime in the early 2000s, I was struggling to get to sleep like I did every night.  Rarely was I on an expedited path; most times, my trip to sleepy land proved problematic.  As I contemplated my existence, looking up at my blurry ceiling, I found myself constantly interrupted by a talking meatball.  My vision isn’t stellar, so it took me days to figure out that, along with the meatball, there was an annoying milkshake and a sentient bag of fries along for the ride.  The show was, of course, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

I will admit that it took me months to understand what was going on.  The only reason I found the show was because it was on Adult Swim.  At that time, Futurama was on that network.  After Fry and Zoidberg did their thing, the Aqua Teens would take over.  Initially, I was totally confused by what I was hearing.  As you might have guessed, the show has become one of my all-time favorites.

In the years since the premiere of ATHF, I have been exposed to several other shows that I am glad crossed my path.  Samurai Jack is fantastic; the last season, which recently aired, is transcendent.  Pure brilliance.  I will stack those last ten episodes against anything else I have ever seen, including The Wire, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad.

So…here we are.  Hearing Meatwad drone on about something stupid (that is usually what he did) got me hooked on Adult Swim television shows.  And, of course, that leads me to Rick and Morty, an Adult Swim show that is worthy of some space in my blog.  More than that, it is one of the best shows I have ever seen.  I know a guy who stumbled upon Rick and Morty.  The first episode he saw was Pickle Rick, one of the best 22 minutes in television history.  You guessed it, he got hooked just as I did when I saw the pilot episode.  From that day forward, it is always a good day when a new Rick and Morty episode is airing.

Now that the lede has been sufficiently buried and the (maybe not so necessary) setup is in place, I can get to Roy, a video game that resides at Blips and Chitz, a Dave and Busters type establishment that exists in Rick and Morty’s reality.

“Roy, a life well lived” is a video game that both Rick and Morty play.  The person playing takes over the life of Roy Parsons and leads him down a path that they choose.  When Morty played the game, Roy got cancer, beat the disease, and then went back to work at the carpet store.  Of course, the character in the video game was acting at Morty’s behest.  This did not sit well with Rick and he let Morty know…

“You beat cancer and went back to work at the carpet store?  Boo. … that’s the difference between you and me, Morty.  I never go back to the carpet store.”

And that is what this essay is about, going back to the carpet store.  Would you take your last chemo treatment and then head back to the carpet store?  I like to think that all of us would say no way; after an ordeal like that, it is time to do all the things on our respective bucket lists.  It is time to take our second chances and do something bold with them.  That is what you would say, right?

Well, imagine for a moment that you received something like a cancer diagnosis.  What if the prognosis was ugly and the treatment was worse.  After such an ordeal, most of us would like to think we wouldn’t go back to the mundane, that we wouldn’t set foot in the carpet store again.  Of course, there are a few problems with this line of thinking.

As one of my friends said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to go back to the carpet store, but I have to eat.” He has a point, doesn’t he?  What if you have a career and a family that depends on you to keep bringing those paychecks home?  What are you going to do then?  We all know what you are going to do; you are going back to the carpet store.  You are going to take a deep breath, straighten your hair, and walk through the front door straight toward the Berber display.

Depressed yet?  I am writing this essay because old Killy McGee (thank you, Homer Simpson) has tried to take me out twice in the last five years.  Came real close the last time; blood clots traveled to my lungs and closed off 90% of my airways.  As a doctor told me, “Well…if those airways are blocked, you simply drop dead.”   Known for understatement, this doctor remains an oracle of sorts; people come from all around…(you get the idea).

The question now becomes a relatively simple one.  Do I go back to my version of the carpet store, or do I sell all my stuff and head for parts unknown?  In my case, those mysterious destinations aren’t going anywhere; I can catch up with them down the road.  For now, I am needed right here.

I do, though, have deep concerns.  I am worried about these novels that are mocking me from the cloud where they are now residing.  They need to be finished; they have to be finished.  I hate to think of the consequences if I am blindsided by something awful before getting them all done.  It is hard for me to think of anything worse.  If I don’t get them completed, in many ways, (the most fundamental ways), my existence will have been a failure.  Strong words, but I believe what I just wrote.

Rick is lucky; he doesn’t have to go back to the carpet store.  That is not how he was written.  His character was created to be one that would never go back to the drudgery of everyday life.  He would never seriously consider it because he can’t; to do so would go against his nature.  For the rest of us, living in the thick muck, there are carpet stores all around.  You can try to avoid them, but you do so at your own risk and to the detriment of those surrounding you.

Maybe one day, future generations will be living in a world where the curious can explore, painters can paint, musicians can master their instruments, and writers can spend their lives writing.  The world that I live in is not that one.  In the world I experience, it appears that the answer to every question, every single one, is money.  That is why virtually no one can be a full-time poet; that job does not generate enough income so that such a person could support themselves.   The same goes for artists of all types.  Passion has to be paid for, and we all know where the money comes from; it comes from the carpet store.

 

Mozart with a Telecaster

Where have all the great composers gone?  That was a question Stephen Jay Gould once asked in one of his essays.  Gould was a Harvard professor who, among many other things, was the greatest essayist on scientific topics the world has ever seen.  Known primarily as an evolutionary biologist, he had his fingers in many varied intellectual pies.  My library is filled with his books.  He still has an honored place on a special shelf in one of my bookcases.  Alongside his books are those of Kurt Vonnegut and the music of the mysterious Athena.  It is an impressive shelf.

Gould, a very knowledgeable classical music fan, had an inclination about modern music that he hoped was wrong.  He wondered why it has been so long since we have had a Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart.  Of course, I am sure I know why and I am confident that, deep down, he also knew the answer.  The geniuses of today are working in popular music.  It is no surprise that Bob Dylan got a Nobel Prize (even though I must admit it did shock me when his name was called).  How long before Jay Zee or another one of the rappers get recognized on such a scale?  It might be sooner than we all think.

Author’s Note: I look forward to the day when Nobel Prizes and Grammy Awards are not taken seriously.  I do think that will happen, but it might take some time.  The day may arrive when an Academy Award or a Pulitzer Prize is viewed with such suspicion that such an award is not something a person would wish to have.

Genius writers and hyper-talented musicians are clearly working in music that is not of the classical variety.  It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  Young people today are more likely to be influenced by a rapper or an EDM artist than by one of the great classical composers.

Author’s Note:  Ask around.  Forget the rappers and the DJs; see if any youngsters you know have a guitar hero.  I don’t know any kids who even have a faint interest in learning the guitar. More on this in a bit…

I have often thought about what Mozart would have accomplished in his short life if he had an electric guitar.  Can you imagine?  What would he have written?  How would he have used the instrument?  I doubt he would have ignored it, taken one listen, and ran back to his fortepiano or violin.  I like to think that a plugged-in Tele would have been a revelation to him, that he would have embraced the instrument and played it until his fingers were raw.

Unfortunately, I have yet to master time travel, nor do I have the ability to bring a person through time into our own.  I am working on it but, so far, I have nothing.  It is a difficult problem.  That said, the best I can do is try to imagine what a reincarnated Mozart might look and sound like.  I have a few thoughts.

Maybe Jimi Hendrix was the reincarnation of Mozart.  I once had a classically trained guitar player tell me how in awe of Hendrix he was. “That guy played lead, rhythm, and the bass line all at once.  On top of that, he would sing.  Astonishing.” That said, I don’t know if Hendrix is the right way to go.  I admit that I am impressed that he took a right-handed guitar and played it upside down.  I am aware that some people think that is part of what gave him his unique sound—that, and the fact that he was most likely the greatest rock and roll guitar player who ever lived.

Might the correct answer be Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day?  I like to think that Mozart would be a punk rocker if he were around today, and I am a big fan of Green Day.  Billie Joe is a rare talent; he has created some fantastic music.  Maria is one of my all-time favorite songs.  The thing is, when you look at his entire body of work, it becomes evident that he is nowhere near normal on any scale.  He is something different, a very talented and special musician.

Would a reincarnated Mozart be Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys?  Turner is my present-day favorite.  I love his band, and I am looking forward to what comes next for him.  Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the group’s last release, was odd.  I have listened to it around 400 times, and I still don’t know if I like it.  Turner is experimenting within the musical landscape, and I imagine Mozart would be doing a lot of that with a Tele and a very loud amp (you know, one that goes to 11).

I hate to say this, but there is one other possibility for why the world has not seen another Mozart.  We tend to equate genius with novelty, whether it be in science or art.  If you think about that for a moment, you will realize that statement is correct.   Popular music, written by pedestrian musicians, can undoubtedly be uninspired and derivative.  Some would argue that all of the modern music being produced today is not to be taken seriously.

I will say this, there is one young artist that I have my eye and ear on.  Her name is Billie Eilish, and I have high hopes for her future.  I am expecting big things from her.  I think she has an excellent chance to be her generation’s Bob Dylan.  I hear a depth to her music that is striking, especially for a person her age.

Now we come to the totally unpleasant point, is it possible that all the novel combinations possible from the piano keyboard or guitar neck have been exhausted?  Have we not seen another Mozart because the musical universe is spent? Isn’t that a terrible thought to entertain?  I hope I am wrong and that the secret chord that Leonard Cohen wrote about in Hallelujah is, in reality, a series of unknown chords that, when revealed by a yet unknown genius, will please all music lovers.  Not only satisfy us, but prove to be a revelation to listeners the world over.  What are the odds of that?  I am not sure, but I will undoubtedly take the other side of that bet.

So, what is the point?  The lede has indeed been buried as I am want to do.  Have we heard a reincarnated Mozart with a Telecaster?  The world lost its mind when Dylan plugged in.  Imagine what would happen if a modern-day Mozart was handed an electric guitar and an amp.  I think all we can do is wait and hope for the improbable.

How about an unexpected end to this essay?  I believe that rock and roll is dead.  If not dead, it is on its last legs.  Kids do not have guitar heroes today.  Taylor Swift is as close as anyone comes.  Acoustic guitars are outselling electrics, and more girls than boys are buying them.  Turn on your car radio to a contemporary station and then call me and tell me how many songs you hear that offer any guitar tracks.  I am telling you, you won’t hear much guitar at all.  Even guitar bands like Arctic Monkeys relegated the instrument to the background in their last studio offering.

It looks like rock and roll is becoming nothing more than a footnote to the history of music.  That means that the time is now for that modern genius, that present-day Mozart, to plug in and reveal herself.  And yes, my guess is it will be a woman, and maybe a very young one.  My hope is that she doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.  It was much easier for Mozart’s genius to be revealed; his game was the only one in town.  In today’s world, a prodigy may be living down the road from you, unheard and unappreciated.  And that, unfortunately, is more probable than possible.

 

The Magic of Harvard University
…a guest post by Buford Lister

Hello, my name is Buford Lister.  I am honored to be writing for you today.  As you may already know, I am the creation of an unknown author.  Ryan-Tyler N. Mason?  That guy doesn’t exist; he is merely a figment of an aging, yet still overactive, imagination.  The real author has buried himself so deep I doubt he even knows who he is.

My task is to tell you about some of my experiences at Harvard University.  That guy (the so-called creator) has written a lot about what happened to me way back when I was a Ph.D. student there.  Just so you know, I still get upset whenever someone mentions The Lister Affair or asks me to sign the book that was written about it.  I am not going to address that mess.  You can look elsewhere if you really need to learn more about that time in my life.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you what a special place Harvard is, what an extraordinary place it is.  I want to tell you about some of the people whose ghosts roam that campus.  I want you to know what an honor it is to have spent time there.

Was I the smartest person at Harvard all those years ago?  Of course, I was.  Pay attention to that one word, I said person.  That implies I am talking about human beings.  I am certain I am a human being, I know a lot about my backstory, the problem for me is that I am sure that many of the people I came in contact with were not strictly human.  They were something else.  What?  I am unsure, but I am certain their DNA was not the same as yours or mine.  Their strands were put together with something different in mind.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about lately is the responsibility alumni of the greatest university in the world have to humanity.  When I was there, it was made clear to me that I was supposed to use my ability to make the world a better place.  After leaving, I was to go out in public and make a mark, one only I could make.  Those damn mathematical types would always hound me, constantly asking me what equation was going to adorn my tombstone.  The implication was clear, if there were no symbols on my grave marker, then my life was a failure.  And that takes me directly to the obituary.

People often talked about the first line of their upcoming obituary.  The other thing they talked about, obituary wise, was if my life, and by implication, theirs, would be worthy of space in The New York Times. The stakes were very high; immortality was the prize.  After all, it was right there for most of us; all we had to do was work harder than everyone else and reach out and grab it.  Whatever you do, do not get distracted by the nonsensical, the irrelevant, or the absurd.  There are lots of ghosts of the immortals roaming that campus.  And no, that is not a contradiction.  Physical death has nothing to do with the kind of immortality I am talking about.

I want everyone to know that I am getting worried about my place in the order of things.  The conventional wisdom is that I had my chance.  Everything was properly lined up.  I simply blew it.  I made a terribly stupid, inexplicable mistake.  And believe me, I have paid for it.  I know what the first line of my obituary will be, and I know it will run in The New York Times.  I also know none of those words will reflect positively on me.  I have become a joke, a cautionary tale, a total failure.

When a person is exiled from Eden (that is what happens when a person graduates from Harvard), you leave with a responsibility.  Go forth, do good.  Make important discoveries; live a good life.  Please, please, make a contribution.  Do not waste what has been given you.  This raises a special question, one I have been considering for decades.

Is it the magic of Harvard that instills this responsibility, or do the students go there because they feel it, deep down, at a central place of their being?  I guess it comes down to your particular view of human nature.  Is Harvard the kind of place that inspires greatness, or at least the idea of exceeding expectations?  In my case, I felt it long before I set foot in Cambridge.  I felt it, down deep.  I expected it.  It never occurred to me that I would betray my promise.  I am, of course, severely disappointed in myself.

I am old, far beyond the prime of any mathematician (many do their best work in their 20s). I have no chance of making a substantial contribution to that world.  No chance.  I guess I had my opportunity, OK, I know I did.  So, what now?  What am I supposed to do now?

I can go ahead and die and live forever as a cosmic joke, a man who didn’t know the difference between 1 and negative 1.  I suppose I can give up and resign myself to a life lived as a nondescript failure.  Would that appeal to you?  I didn’t think so.

The point is that you can count yourself blessed if you do not think about such things.  If you can live, do the best you can, and feel satisfied as you are about to die then you are far ahead of the game as it is played among the others.  Should you count yourself lucky?  Absolutely not.  It is far better to have lived as a spectacular failure than to mildly succeed at an average person’s life’s purpose.  And yes, I know how sad that is, I know you will feel sorry for someone talking such nonsense.  Such is the fate of the overly ambitious.

And this gets us to why I am so upset.  He, that man, gave me all this talent and ability, and then he aged me, took away my cleverness, and has left me to stew.  I can’t make him write more.  I can’t find Athena and make her talk to him, to somehow inspire him to sit at his keyboard.  He is either going to write, or he is not.  If he doesn’t write something great, if he doesn’t somehow find redemption for me in some profound way, then all my efforts are going to be for nothing.  I will fade from history as someone who should be forgotten, as a person, fictional or not, who went out of his way to fail to live up to expectations.  I wish I could make all of you understand how this makes me feel.  My end doesn’t have to be this way.  If only I could conjure up a solution.

Buford Lister
Iroquois County, Ohio

 

 

 

I recently completed another video for The WRB Project.  This one is a little different than the others.  Enjoy…

 

The Magnificent Alan Smithee

Buford Lister has been giving me lots of trouble lately.  He has asked for meetings with me and the man who created me.  He has even approached the implied author, the man that the reader senses when they read my stories.  This is getting exhausting.  As I recall, Dr. Frankenstein had a similar problem with one of his creations.

Look, I have empathy for the guy.  I really do.  The problem is I can’t do anything for him.  I am powerful in his world, but I am not nearly as powerful as he wishes I could be.  He is a bit delusional, and he is more than a little desperate.  He is worried.  His insight is problematic for a fictional character; he has come to the realization that he is mortal. He will die when I do; that is a simple fact.

I am on this topic because I just watched The Professor and the Madman, a movie about making the first comprehensive Oxford English dictionary.  It stars Mel Gibson and Sean Penn.  I enjoyed the film, but as I watched it, I realized why I had heard so much about it when it was in development.  The project was plagued with problems from its onset.  The film went so far off the rails that the director, Farhad Safinia, refused to attach his name to it.  The fact that he also wrote the screenplay speaks to how bad the final product turned out.  I enjoyed the movie, but I do see why Safinia protested.  The particulars aren’t necessary; just know that he was so upset with his loss of control over the film that he backed off and disowned it.  For what it is worth, filmmaking and television production has a long history of disgruntled directors.  Imagine how much must go wrong before choosing to have your name removed from the project.  It seems pretty extreme, doesn’t it?

We now arrive at the tale of the magnificent Alan Smithee.  From 1968 until 2000, if a director wished to wash their hands of a film, they would attribute the director’s credit to the fictional Alan Smithee.  This happened a lot.  Usually, the director had creative control yanked from them during the shooting of the film.  As you might imagine, money often was at the center of the dispute.  One of the problems with The Professor and the Madman was that the director wanted to shoot on Oxford University’s campus. The producers were unwilling to spend the extra money required to do that.

Alan Smithee was retired in 2000.  Officially, we are not supposed to see any more projects attributed to him.  Safinia used the name P.B. Shemran for The Professor and the Madman.  Shemran is listed as the official director of the film.  Smithee, Shemran, same difference.  Both used to voice displeasure about creative control taken away by the money men and women.

We can now return full circle to Buford Lister.  When I got up this morning, I found a 3×5 index card taped to my bathroom mirror.  Obviously, he had found a way into my house and decided to try a new tactic.  He refuses to give up even though, deep down, I think he knows there is no hope.  Desperate people, you know?  He drew a crude tombstone on the card.  This is what was written on it:

Here lies Alan Smithee
Good luck to you

I took a quick glance at it, tore it up, and went back to bed.

 

I Aced Howard Zinn

Over 30 years ago, I took a historiography class at Harvard.  I can still remember the room the course was held in; the water cooler always had lots of tea packets available for whoever wanted one.  I liked the professor; I took multiple courses with him.  I learned a lot during the semester, and I remember working hard for my grade.  As I recall, it was an A-; it is a long story, but at that time, it was nearly impossible to get an outright A in any course.  Suffice it to say that the university president was overly concerned with grade inflation.  He let all the professors know he wasn’t happy with all the As they were giving out.

Historiography, the study of the different ways to approach historical analysis, is a fascinating subject.  During the semester, we specifically studied different ways to approach the history of science.  Among these were social, intellectual, diplomatic, archaeological, psychological, and biographical.  That is a partial list; there are lots of different ways a historian can do their job.  During this time, I became interested in prosopography, the study of a person’s family and social connections.  I thought it would be informative to study famous scientists’ birth order within their families.  I still think it is a study worth doing; if an aspiring historian of science is reading this, have at it, and send me a PDF of the final product.

Perhaps the most famous example of a historian who took an alternate approach to history is Howard Zinn.  Howard’s book, A People’s History of the United States, is one of the most important ever written.  He doesn’t tell history from the same old tired perspective of that of the winners.  He describes it from the perspective of the disadvantaged, the downtrodden, the people who did not benefit from the cultural institutions that don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the plight of the poor.  Don’t you think the history of The United States would be a lot different if written by Native Americans or the ancestors of slaves?  Howard’s book is powerful; to this day, it is taught in many high schools and universities.  Of course, the book became even more famous when Matt Damon’s character mentioned it in Good Will Hunting.

If you are paying attention, you realize that I refer to him as Howard.  That seems a bit familiar, doesn’t it?  Well, I knew him.  I used to play tennis with him.  And, as you might have guessed, I have a story to tell about the tennis player I knew simply as Howard.

Let me begin by asking a simple question, an interesting question, one that does not have a clear answer.  At some point, a man ( probably wouldn’t have been a female) lived that knew everything there was to know.  This person knew of every scholarly work ever written because there weren’t many of them.  He had mastered all available knowledge.  Who was he?  Do we even have known candidates for such a person?

How about Eratosthenes (276-194 BC)?  Maybe he knew all there was to know.  That means that he had knowledge of all published works in the known world, no matter the field of inquiry.  Pretty impressive, no?  Of course, I have no idea if he is our man; he might be, but maybe not.

Author’s Note:  Englishman Thomas Young (1773-1829) is generally considered to be the last human to know all there was to know.  That is unless you know about the 17^th century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), a man reputed to be the last man who knew everything in existence, at least in his known world.  Of course, the further back in time we go, the more likely a candidate is to meet our criterion.  My point is, at some time in history, there existed a person who knew all there was to know.  And yes, it most certainly was a man, women sadly deemed unworthy of education and all.

In the 1980s, it would be absurd to believe that one person could know all there is to know.  I certainly didn’t.  My breadth of knowledge is pretty good.  I have degrees in many different fields, but there is no way a person can know but a fraction of what is available.  And think about this; How much has combined human knowledge exploded since the 1980s?  How much more do we know now compared to what we knew then?  My guess is that the rise is exponential, an informed and most certainly a correct guess.

I am done straining in a futile attempt to make excuses for myself.  Here is my story: I used to have a job at a tennis club.  I was paid to play with anyone who walked through the door.  This included women on the pro tour, outstanding college players, and average hackers who were looking to get some exercise.  The club considered itself exclusive.  All players and employees had to wear all white.  Not only that, everyone was on a first-name basis.  A University President was known as Tom, and a Federal Judge was called George.  No titles were allowed or acknowledged.

People would just show up.  They didn’t need a partner; that is why people like me were on staff.  When a solitary person walked through the door, one of us would grab our racquets and head out to the courts with them.  It was a fun and interesting job.

One person who would often appear was a slightly built man with a pleasant smile and a gentle demeanor, a man I knew as Howard.  He was a kind and generous soul.  It wasn’t until years later that I saw him on TV and realized that he was the great Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States.   Hey, that’s Howard!  What is he doing on TV?  Why is he marching with Martin Luther King?  I sat flabbergasted as I wondered how stupid I had to be not to make the connection when I was standing across from him on the tennis court.  Young and Kircher would have known who he was; I was oblivious. I regret not having put two and two together.  And as my story goes, one day, I made a mistake, a tiny one, that makes me regret my time with him even more.

I feel strange even mentioning Howard’s ability as a tennis player.  Who could possibly care?  Is the fact that he wasn’t very talented with the racquet going to diminish his legacy?  Of course not.  There is nothing more irrelevant than his backhand.  I have to bring it up, though.  It is central to my story.

It was evident that Howard loved tennis.  My guess is he was too busy to bother taking lessons to get any better.  He just enjoyed playing.  I like to think he got a kick playing me.  I worked hard to put the ball in an easy place for him to return it.  I didn’t make him run unnecessarily, and I certainly was rooting for him to win points when we played.

Now the hard part.  I remember the very last time I played tennis with Howard.  Unfortunately, I vividly remember the very last point of the match.  I was serving to the ad side.  I wanted to kick the ball to Howard’s forehand.  I was trying to deliver the ball right to his wheelhouse.  The best-laid plans…

If you know the game of tennis, you know different spins can be put on the ball to make it do various things.  When serving, the margin for error is especially tight.  An inch or so difference on where the ball is struck can result in vastly different behavior once the ball leaves the strings.  I tossed the ball and missed my target by a tiny fraction.  Instead of setting up at Howard’s waist, the ball skidded down the T for a clean ace.  I felt like a jerk as I approached Howard at the net to shake his hand.  I felt like an even bigger jerk when he slipped me $5, thanked me, and said goodbye.

I still think about the last time we played.  Why?  Because of that final point.  The ball didn’t do what I wanted it to do, and I instantly regretted it.  And yes, I felt even worse when I realized, years later, that Howard was Howard Zinn.

I never saw Howard again.  He died in 2010 of a heart attack at age 87.  When I heard about his death, I did some research.  I was happy to find that many of the people writing about his life also mentioned his love of tennis.  I hope that by writing this post, I have somehow squared things with Howard.   My sincere wish is that he didn’t spend his last 30 years telling the story of a jerk tennis player who aced him just so he could tell the world about it.  Wait…what have I done…oh no…Howard, I apologize.