Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind

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.

An Experiment

I have long said that The United States of America is an experiment, that democracy itself is an experiment.  There is no guarantee this is going to last.  There is no guarantee this is going to work.  I often ask myself why we stay together as a nation when everyone hates each other as much as we do.
Buford Lister (personal communication)

 

I remember hearing about The Great Melting Pot when I was in grade school.  We all said our Pledge of Allegiance every morning; then we learned about how different America is because we mix all races and creeds to form one nation.  I have been thinking a lot about that recently.

Is The United States a melting pot?  Ask that to the people in Little Italy, or Chinatown, or a Slavic Village; the kinds of places you find in any big city.  Then stumble through that city’s neighborhoods and let me know how many have a melting pot character.  I doubt you will find many.  I sometimes wonder if the vast majority of people prefer others that look like them and think like them.  Just because I enjoy interacting with people from differing backgrounds doesn’t mean that other people do.

I have come to view the melting pot theory of America as false.  Indeed, it is easier to argue for its veracity on the coasts, but middle America doesn’t seem too interested in such things.  In fact, they seem to embrace the opposite.

What does this say about the experiment that is The United States?  I think the false melting pot idea can tell us a lot.  I also believe that a little history can inform this discussion.

A long time ago, a very long time ago, I was an archaeologist.  Archaeologists have a different perspective on lots of things.  Many (if not most, or all) of the great civilizations we studied reached their apex long before the idea of The United States was conjured up.  As we explored the rubble left behind (because that is all that was left behind), it wasn’t that big a leap to imagine what might happen in the future.  It seems likely that any world power will have its run and then will be surpassed.  When you broaden your time perspective, that is simply the way of the world.

Anyone objecting yet?  Do you agree with that assessment?  We only have to look back a couple of decades to see the collapse of The Soviet Union.  One day they were there, fighting a cold war with the West, and then they were gone, dissolved, a mere figment of a troubled experiment.

Author’s Note: I will never forget what happened one day in a seminar I was taking at Harvard.  The course, on the relationship between technology and utopian ideals, was taught in the History of Science department.  We were meeting when The Soviet Union officially fell.  The professor, a man of deeply held convictions, cried in the classroom as he talked about the collapse.  He was tremendously disappointed; he viewed capitalism with disdain, disliking the advantage those with power had over the others.  His position was well thought out; Harvard University is not the kind of place where people run around shouting slogans without having the substance to back up their claims.  He was an interesting man, and yes, he most certainly was a Marxist.

So, what of our democratic experiment?  As you know, the tone of discourse in the USA today is not polite and intelligent.  From what I can tell, you are either a hawk or a dove, a conservative or a liberal, or a Republican or a Democrat.   We are fighting an Uncivil War with the definition of what it means to be American at the heart of the battle.

People are fundamentally a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent.  I believe that very few people are identifying as generic Americans.  Politicians are indeed guilty of this.  Often, the people on the other side of an issue are viewed as un-American or worse.  Perhaps most disturbing is that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot,  a blubbering idiot, or a fascist.  There is no room for nuance; there is only emotion.  Such are the products of an Uncivil War.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that The United States of America could easily break apart.  I am not sure what binds the educated professional living in a big city on one of the coasts with the uneducated people populating the middle.  Of course, I realize this is a broad generalization, but you know exactly what I mean; look at a Red and Blue map of any recent Presidential election.  I would argue that a lot more separates those that identify as Red from those who consider themselves Blue than unites them.  I don’t see where the idea of America and its phantom melting pot meet.

Suppose we are to dissolve the union in my lifetime. In that case, I think that abortion might be the single topic that pushes individual states over the edge.  Everything is in place; there is a strong chance that Roe will be overturned.  I am reasonably sure the case for the Supreme Court is already in place.  If (or when) that happens, the relationship between the Red and the Blue states will become even more fractured.

Suppose the abortion issue does not literally split us apart. In that case, I think there are several more topics we need to consider.  These have to do with an educated electorate, the inevitable coming of intelligent robots, and growing income inequality.

I have a friend living in California.  He doesn’t make a lot of money, so the California health care system charges him around $20 a month for full coverage.  He is originally from Texas.  I asked him if Texas succeeded from the USA if he would go back home or stay in California.  He didn’t even hesitate; he said he would move back to Texas, too many liberals with their socialist policies in California for his tastes.  I didn’t ask him how much he was willing to pay for health care to “live free.”  I assure you it would be more than $20 a month, almost certainly more than $20 a day for what might be inadequate health insurance.

I know a young woman who does not make much money.  She has a job in the restaurant industry.  She enthusiastically voted for Trump.  Why?  Her primary issue was that she wanted abortion to remain safe and legal.  If you didn’t catch that, let me repeat her position.  She voted for Trump because she wished to keep abortion safe and legal.  When I tried to explain to her that she misunderstood his position, she blew me off as an uninformed bumpkin.  Sigh…

I know a retired man in his 70s.  He also voted for Trump because he is convinced that the Democrats are out to take away everyone’s social security.  According to him, they want to stop his payments, money he needs to survive.  I also heard this story from an older woman when Obama was running.  She insisted that, if elected, Obama was going to take her monthly check.  Once again, sigh…

My point is simple; we need an educated electorate for this country to survive.  Without this, we will keep electing leaders who do not believe in the value of Science and Mathematics.  We will have more leaders who say that pandemics are only liberal conspiracies.  Basic scientific facts are merely opinions, no better or worse than the ignorant view of anyone else.  The dissolution of The United States awaits us at the end of this path (the one peppered with alternative facts)  if we choose to continue to walk down it.  There are forks in the road, but I am pessimistic that we will take any of them.  It is much easier to remain angry and ignorant than to get educated and admit that views held for a lifetime are flat out wrong.

Author’s Note:  I have spent a lot of time around brilliant people and even more time in the company of not so smart people.  The town I grew up in (and now live in) consists of non-college-educated people; college graduates make up less than 5 percent of the population.  My mom was a coal miner’s daughter, and (after some research) it sure looks like my dad wasn’t only the first person in his family to graduate high school; he was the first even to attend.  That means that I have some interesting relatives from the hills.  Yes, both sides of my family are composed of “Sons (and Daughters) of the Soil.”  When one of them was told I was going to study at Harvard, he replied, “What’s that?”  When he learned it was a university, all he could say was, “Dey have a good football team?”  Even though a very small percentage of my aunts and uncles graduated from high school, many of my younger relatives have pulled themselves out of the cycle of ignorance.  Even though the odds were very much against them, they got a college education and are now contributing to society in ways their ancestors could never have imagined.

With my unusual background in mind, I can tell you that one set of people has very little in common with the other.  Of course, it is living as an American that binds them together, right?  Actually, I have never seen any evidence of a common thread between the two somewhat naively created groups.  I know for certain that my professors at Harvard did not see the world in the same way as some of my uncles.  I doubt the sky was even the same color.

So, is there still a chance the experiment can have a positive outcome?  I am pessimistic.  Rationality seems to have gone missing.  Math and Science are viewed with suspicion by a large percentage of the population.  The discourse, such as it is, has devolved into nothing but insults and angry slurs.  I don’t see a clear path out of this mess.  The easiest thing might be to call it a day and let the Red states form a union while the Blue states go their way.

There are a couple of other problems that we need to face.  The robots are coming.  Not a big deal, you say?  Did you ever see the Spongebob episode where Mr. Krabbs fired Spongebob because he realized he would make an extra 5 cents a week if he did the work himself?  Businesses in this country are going to do the same.  They will quickly replace humans not with Mr. Krabbs but with robots.  I don’t think there is much to debate on this issue.  And these robots are going to be extraordinary; I suspect they will replace many professionals.  Machine Learning algorithms are becoming more sophisticated every day.  Even some mathematicians think they might be replaced by computer code.

Perhaps a more immediate problem is the vast differences in income we see in this country.  If our current trajectory continues, we will have a nation of 30,000,000 lords and 270,000,000 serfs.  This situation will cause even more discord.  Will such a split in wealth help or hurt the experiment?  I don’t see how it helps.  I know it seems that the surfs are cheering the lords on, but I don’t see that continuing.  When the top ten percent of the population controls 90 percent of the wealth, such a situation’s sustainability becomes untenable.  Does anyone think that it is a good idea to let this happen?  I hear people talk about it, but no one is doing anything about it.

Sadly, the only thing that unites most of us as Americans is the historical accident of our birth.  In this era of social networking, where any and every crackpot idea is readily on display, the close proximity of our birthplaces will not provide a strong enough tie.  As the gulf between the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, and the religious and the secular grow, so will the probability of our demise.  The idea to keep in mind is that it might very well be for the best.  Is it worth having a country where about 50 percent of the population despises the other half?  That is the fundamental question I am asking, Why should we stay together?  What is it about being American that will end the hate and discord?  What connects and unites us?

Take a close look around you.  Listen to what others are saying.  If your ears are keen and your mind is clear, you just might come to the conclusion that the correct answer is that there is nothing substantial uniting us.  If you must ask if a person is a Republican or a Democrat before you can decide if their behavior is criminal or not, perhaps we are beyond hope.  I don’t feel bad writing that; I think that the preponderance of evidence is in my favor.  Perhaps, one day, when future archaeologists are pawing through our rubble, they will come to the same conclusion.

 

 

 

 

A Writer’s Dilemma

How is your life going?  Do you wake up every morning wondering how many problems you are going to face that day?  Do you worry about how many fires you are going to have to put out?  Do you like living like that?  Do you ever wish life could be something other than one continual set of serial problems?

Many of us live our lives that way, especially now that Covid has decided to mutate on an accelerated schedule.  I hate to say this, but I heard from many knowledgeable people that there is a real chance that wearing masks and social distancing will be with us for a long time.  Some think it may be permanent.

So, what exactly is the dilemma for a writer here?  Most writer’s like to escape into the world they create.  Some like to idealize the world that is conjured up on the page.  People who write about Utopias do this.  They can slide right into the world they made and sit next to their favorite characters at a dinner table.

Of course, there is a problem.  No one wants to read about characters who don’t have any issues, who don’t have any obstacles they need to overcome.  If you are a writer and have a character you really like and admire, you have no choice; you have to have terrible things happen to them.  They can’t be allowed to skip through life without a worry.  How can anyone know what they are made of if their mettle is never tested?

This is how it goes; every main character has to have an arc. The central character has to change from the beginning to the end of the story.  If a character is going to start as a terrible human being on a trajectory toward redemption, many times, the beginning of the story has to be rewritten.  Why?  Often, the character is not lousy enough at the beginning.  The writer needs to adjust the character’s behavior to be more despicable at the beginning of the story: the bigger the arc, the more significant the impact.

There is one more writer’s trick that is necessary.  The main character has to want something.  Kurt Vonnegut (the late, great Kurt Vonnegut) once said that the character has to want as little as a glass of water, but they must want something.  He went on to say that the next step is to have terrible things happen to that person.  Deny them the water, make them work for it.  Make the reader root for that tall, cold glass, knowing they won’t get it until they pay some serious dues.

So, what’s the problem?  It is not easy to write a book with a world that a writer would want to escape to.  I recently told Buford Lister that I couldn’t change his backstory; I couldn’t give him a do-over.  I told him that no one would be interested in his story if everything came free and easy to him.  Who would care to read about his life if he never faced any dire straits?  Who would want to read about a guy born with a silver spoon who gets everything he ever wanted and dies happy?

The point is I can’t escape into the world of Buford Lister and Piper Pandora Pennington to get some relief from the daily grind of this Covid infested world.  The problems I face in the real world are used as inspiration for the nasty things that will happen to the fictional Iroquois County inhabitants.  I don’t get a sense of relief doing this; there is no outlet.  It is not a stress reliever.

Until the last couple of years, I would lace up my shoes and run for an hour or an hour and a half.  That is how this writer dealt with the stress of living in two exhausting worlds.  As I have written before, I can no longer run.  My right hip needs to be replaced.  It is getting worse by the day.  This unfortunate fact has created a lot of problems for me.

I wrote almost all of The Athena Chapters while running.  I thought up almost everything I have ever written while running.  I have a path through a cemetery, so I never had to worry about traffic.  I could listen to music and think about the stories I wanted to tell.  I can’t do that anymore.  The best I can do is jump on my Nordic Trak skier and hope I can make it an hour or so before my hip insists I stop.

Maybe one day, I will write a Utopian tale.  All the inhabitants will be happy and healthy.  No one will work themselves to death, and everyone will have plenty to eat.  Education will be free, and everyone will get as much of it as they want.  No one’s body or mind will ever betray them.  War and poverty will be long distant memories.  Now that I think about it, who would want to read that story?  What if I made it a futuristic dystopian tale of…

Well, you get the idea.

King of the Comma Splice

What is the most crucial factor if a person wishes to become a productive and successful writer?  Discipline? The fortitude to read lots and lots of books?  Education in the way of words?  Plenty of interesting and unusual life experiences? While all those things are important, I think there is another answer to the question.  Look no further than a competent and thoughtful editor.  Writing without an editor is very difficult, I know; I have never had one.  I have always had to edit everything myself.  That is, until recently…

I bought the Grammarly program a year or so ago.  It is fantastic.  It picks up many of the things I might miss while tapping away at the keys.  I will never write without it.  I wish I had it years ago; it would have made my life a lot easier.

Grammarly is a sophisticated program.  It asks for the style of writing you are striving for and then adjusts its comments accordingly.  And without it, I would never have known that I am the undisputed King of the Comma Splice.  After I finish the first draft of anything I am writing, and I tend to write very sloppy first drafts, I stop to read all of Grammarly’s suggestions.  The number one issue is always the comma splice.

A comma splice is a misuse of the comma.  The standard definition is that two independent clauses are improperly joined by a comma.  An independent clause is a group of words that can stand alone as their own sentence.  Here is an example:

Koala bears are not actually bears, they are marsupials.

I took this directly from the Grammarly website.  Of course, as soon as I typed it, my Grammarly program flagged it as a comma splice.  I like this example because I don’t see much wrong with the sentence.  It is the type of sentence I tend to write in first or second drafts.  The issue is that there is a consensus that the comma is not appropriate to use in this situation.  Grammarly always suggests that I replace it with a semicolon or split the sentence in two.

Here is another example from a couple of paragraphs ago:

I wish I had it years ago; it would have made my life a lot easier.

As soon as I typed that sentence, it was flagged.  The message was polite, more polite than my mental response.  Yes, of course, it is a comma splice.  Isn’t every sentence I write a comma splice?  As you can see, I chose a semicolon over splitting the sentence in two.  Nothing more than personal preference, nothing else to see here.  Let’s move along.

So, I have made it pretty clear that I know how to write with comma splices, and I also know how to edit my writing and fix them.  The title of this post says it all.  What you don’t know is that there is a Queen of the Comma Splice, and she writes far more of them than I could hope for.  The thing is, she leaves them in.  She does not take them out or massage her sentences in any meaningful way.  What is the big deal?  Well, millions of young people read her books, and she has tremendous influence over them.  Ostensibly, they are learning how to write while they are reading.  Her name is JK Rowling.  If you have been living on the moon, she wrote the Harry Potter books.

As I was researching the comma splice, I came across a bunch of angry and concerned English teachers. They have strong feelings about Rowling’s writing.  They are very upset at all the comma splices that can be found in her books.  Apparently, they number in the thousands.  I have never read her books, so I can’t speak to what may or may not be in there.  Other people, though, have gone through the texts and counted the comma splices.  I guess she really likes them.  I must admit I find it curious that she uses them.  I find it even more curious that her editor does not insist the sentences be changed.

There are instances where comma splices can be used to significant effect.  You can use such sentences to create specific moods if you are so inclined.  I think the type of mood being implied by a comma splice will get 10 different answers from 10 different writers.  I think most writers would just insert a semicolon and move on to the next paragraph.

In this post, we have learned that I am the King of the Comma Splice. Still, I must bend the knee to the undisputed Queen, the prolific and wealthy creator of Harry Potter and the world he inhabits.  It really is curious, isn’t it?  Maybe one day, she will ask to write a guest post on my blog explaining her position. We all know that is not going to happen, she will never make such an offer.  And yes, that last sentence is a comma splice.  I just can’t help myself.

 

 

Roman, Arabic, and…Cistercian?

 

We’ve all seen Roman Numerals.  For some reason, I was taught those letters at some point in grade school.  The odd thing is, none of my teachers ever taught me to add or subtract in that format.  How about multiplication or division?  If you ever tried it, you know that Roman Numerals do not lend themselves to such tasks.

The number system we use is typically called the Arabic System.  It includes a zero, and we can manipulate the numbers with ease. I’ll bet that it has never occurred to anyone reading this essay to try to do any math with Roman Numerals.  We can all agree that the approach we use is far superior.

During the Middle Ages, the Arabic System competed with Roman Numerals for dominance.  Roman Numerals are fine if you are writing dates or numbering the pages in a preface; other than that, they have little utility.

 

*****

 

Piper Pandora Pennington descended her attic room’s steps and landed outside the bedroom of her six-year-old sister, Susie.  She took a quick peek inside before she determined her next course of action.  She quickly decided that she needed to get to the kitchen for a bottled water and an apple before tackling the strange site in her sister’s room.

One quick trip later, Piper landed back at her sister’s door.

“Permission to enter, please.”

“Pi!.” Susie picked up Melvin, the stuffed octopus, and moved him side to side in a fit of excitement.

“Melvin, should we let Pi in?”

A muffled, poorly disguised voice said, “Sure, that sounds fine.”

At that moment, Dogzilla started a wrestling match with Pi’s left foot.  Before she could stop him, Dogzilla had removed her sock and was doing his best to eat it.

“Hey, stop that.  Dogzilla…No!”

He ignored her and kept at the sock.  He paused when Susie tapped her blackboard with a piece of chalk and announced, “Attention!  Attention!  Class come to order!”

Dogzilla, as if on cue, dropped the sock and sat down on the floor beside Melvin.  Piper found a place on the floor and waited with anticipation.

“Ok, class.  Today we will learn about a numbering system, and it’s not Roman Numerals or the Arabic one.   It is something different, and it is very cool.”

Piper got curious.  She knew nothing about another number system; she had never thought about it.  As she pondered this mystery, it occurred to her that Susie was capable of acting twenty years older than she actually was at times.  Most times, she was simply a six-year-old girl, but this was not one of them.

 

*****

 

During the Middle Ages, there was another, competing number system; a system few have ever heard of.  I just recently learned of its existence; it never came up when I was getting a graduate degree in the history of science at Harvard.  Nor did it turn up in any history of mathematics classes I have taken since I left Cambridge.  I was surprised when I recently came across The Cistercian System.  It is a bit odd and just as useless as Roman Numerals when it comes to manipulating numbers, but it has its charms.

 

*****

 

Susie took her piece of Hagoromo chalk and started drawing on the board.  Piper and Melvin sat at strict attention as Dogzilla sprinted to attack Susie’s foot.

“Ouch!  Dogzilla, stop it.  We can play in a little bit, but first, you need to hear this.”

Piper grabbed the furball and held him as Susie regained her composure.  Susie turned and drew a beautiful figure.

“That class…is 5863.”

Piper turned her head slightly to the left. “Really, little sis? I have never seen that before.”

“Yep, I saw it on a video, and I knew I better tell everyone.”

“Can you write out some more numbers?”

“Sure can Piper-o.”

Susie turned fully around in an attempt to disguise the drawing until it was done.  After a few moments, she turned and struck a pose.

“Ta-dah!”

“What is that one?” said Piper as she narrowed her eyes and concentrated.

“Mmmm…1234.”

“You mean one thousand two hundred and thirty-four?”

“Yep.”

As Piper studied the drawing,  she heard a buzz coming from the black box on Susie’s wall.  Karen, the girl’s stepmother, had hit the call button on the Raspberry Pi controlled intercom and said, “Susie, are you there?”

“Yep!”

“Susie, Mama Rose, and Papa Joey say they need your help with something.  They want you to go over there right now.”

Susie, feigning surprise, hit a dramatic pose, leaned in, pressed the button on the wall, and said, “Yep.”

Susie grabbed Melvin and ran into Piper’s arms. “Gotta go, sister-o.”

Piper kissed the top of her head and sent her on her way.  As she watched Susie and Melvin bound down the stairs, Pi was ambushed by Dogzilla, who was hiding under a dresser.  Piper picked him up and took the furball to her room, where they both were going to research this strange and mysterious Cistercian Number System.

 

*****

 

Who were The Cistercians?  You have probably heard of the Benedictine Monks; they are a well-known order of the Catholic Church.  The Cistercians are an offshoot of the Benedictines.  Basically, they thought that the Benedictines partied too much.  They weren’t quite aesthetic enough, or sufficiently fundamentalist, for the Cistercian’s tastes.  There are very few of them to be found nowadays, but they are not extinct.  Of course, they left behind this interesting and obscure numbering system.  Not a bad legacy.

 

*****

 

Piper placed Dogzilla on the floor.  She took a few chew toys off her desk and tossed them across the room.  She almost smiled as she watched Dogzilla attack the bone and rope.

“Alright, let’s get to work,” she said to no one.

She typed “Cistercian Numbering System” into Google and sat back as the results quickly populated her screen.

“Hmmm, I’ll be.  See that, Dogzilla?  There is such a thing.  Who knew?”

She looked at Dogzilla rolling on the floor with the rope, oblivious to the conversation she was trying to have with him.

“Well, I can see you are not going to be of much help.”

She read all there was to read about the numbering system.  Within about 30 seconds, she had a complete understanding of how it works.  It took her another second to dismiss the system as useless for her needs.  Still, she took a little more time to look at the construction of the numbers.  Really cool.

 

*****

 

The Cistercian System is best learned by studying examples of the numbers.  It is unnecessary to get into the mechanics of how the system works; there is not much to be discovered from that.  For instance, the system will not allow any number larger than 9999.  Like the Roman System, it makes no sense to try to add or subtract Cistercian Numbers.  About the only thing they are suitable for is numbering pages and writing dates.

I decided to write a post about these numbers because I was surprised to learn about them.  I don’t know how they have spent all this time eluding me.  I spent many years studying medieval science and mathematics, and I don’t understand how I missed this number system.  It doesn’t make any sense.

I will end this post with a few more examples of numbers written in Cistercian form.  Why?  Piper Pandora Pennington and her sister, Susie, are right.  These numbers look really cool.

                                    

     4892        5555         8321          6751

 

 

 

A Few of my Favorite Things

I have often written of my love for The Simpsons.  I still faithfully watch the television show, having never missed an episode.  The latest offering, aired just a few days ago, is one of my favorites.  This short post is about why I liked that 22 minutes more than most.

I usually try to avoid trailers of The Simpsons.  I don’t read the little blurbs about what the future episodes are supposed to be about; I like to be surprised.  Last Sunday, though, I was caught off guard when I found out that night’s program was not airing at its regular time of 8:00 PM.  Instead, my sources were telling me it was coming on at 9:00 PM.  Quite unusual.

Armed with this knowledge, I decided to try to find out why Fox fiddled with the time slot.  Was this a special episode?  Was the content a little more adult than usual?  As it turns out, the show was moved so that Fox could premiere a new show at The Simpsons’ normal time.

As I was researching the time change, I came across the description of The Simpsons’ episode being aired at 9:00 instead of 8:00.  When I saw that one of the guest stars was Bob Balaban, I took particular interest.  Balaban is one of the actors who shows up in Wes Anderson’s films.

Anderson tends to use the same cast of actors in his films.  Balaban is one of them.  People such as Jeff Goldbloom and Bill Murray are counted among the others.  I found it noteworthy that Balaban was guest-starring on The Simpsons.  I wondered what that was about.

Not long ago, Family Guy did a parody of Wes Anderson for part of its show.  Peter and the gang moved through an Anderson inspired space, speaking in an Anderson-esque way.  I was hoping that Balaban’s appearance meant that The Simpsons were going to do something similar.  I was not disappointed.

Near the end of the show, Homer and Marge were tasked with finding the childhood home of Jeff Albertson, aka Comic Book Guy.  Jeff had retreated to his family’s estate, leaving behind his wife and comic book shop.  When they arrived, the Wes Anderson parody/homage began.  It was well done.  I was surprised and pleased to see it.

I was most happy to know that the people working on The Simpsons have a high opinion of Anderson’s work.  After all, they never would have made that episode if the producers and writers didn’t find his work worthy.

2020 is over; I know everyone hopes that the new year brings better times for us all.  I have always seen January 1^st as just another day, not a time to turn over a new leaf or to resolve to do this or that.  The 3^rd of June is as good as any other day for such things.  I will say this, the episode of The Simpsons I just saw was better than anything I experienced in 2020.  Perhaps that episode will foreshadow better things for 2021.  If our lives were novels, and I was writing the stories, that might be something I would conjure up…and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

 

The Worst People in the World

I really, really hate those guys.
Buford Lister, personal communication

I have a list of the worst people I have ever known; it is not a written list.  I have it committed to memory; I will never forget who they are.  I don’t dwell on it, but I use it as inspiration for many of the things I write.  A few of those people could not help themselves; they simply didn’t know better.  Some of them were victims of circumstance; others were too self-centered to think of anyone other than themselves.  One of the people was a mean-spirited drunk, and he was always drunk.  Oddly, most of them are (or were) near Youngstown, Ohio.

This isn’t a post about those people; I don’t know what purpose such an essay would serve.  It is enough to see that they show up in one form or another in the stories I write.

This post is about a group of people, a loosely connected consortium, who share a love for one math problem.  These people are known as The Trisectors, and count yourself lucky if you have never met one.  They are often referred to as cranks, crackpots, and naïve ignoramuses.  And those remarks are among the kinder things said about them.

The story begins in 1837.  Pierre Wantzel, a French mathematician, published a complicated proof showing that the trisection of an arbitrary angle with just an unmarked straightedge and a compass is not possible.  No matter how hard you try or how smart you think you are, all attempts are doomed to spectacular failure.  Of course, The Trisectors ignore this nasty little fact.

This trisection problem dates back to ancient Greek mathematics.  You may have even heard about it in school.  Uninformed math teachers often tell their students that no one has ever been smart enough to trisect an arbitrary angle.  Ignorant of Wantzel’s proof, they send some unlucky students down a path of despair.  Not only is it impossible, but it is a tremendous waste of everyone’s time to make any attempt at all.  There is nothing to be gleaned from failed trisections.

Think of it this way, if I were to send you off with the task of finding two even numbers, any two, that when added together give you an odd number, what would you do?  Would you spend decades trying to find the elusive answer?  Perhaps you would realize what a terrific waste of time the question is, and you would quickly move on to something else.

What if I asked you to think really hard about finding a power of 2 that is evenly divisible by 3?  It is not possible; there is no such number.  In very simplified terms, this is why the type of trisection we are talking about is impossible.

Underwood Dudley, a mathematician with a great name, collects as many of these attempts at trisection that he can find.  He has written a book about The Trisectors, including advice about what to do when you run across one.  The book is called Mathematical Cranks, and I hope he is writing part two as I write this post.  The world deserves nothing less.  By the way, the best advice seems to be to run as fast as you can in any direction when confronted by a Trisector.

It has been a while since I have come across a true Trisector.  They are probably laying in wait, polishing up their “proofs,” binding them in leather, preparing for the opportunity to spring them on me.  The next time I meet one, I will tell them that what they are trying to do is impossible.  After they argue for a bit, I will tell them about Wantzel’s proof.  The bottom line is, if they want any chance for their “proof” to be considered, they must first find a mistake in Wantzel’s work.  Try as they might, they won’t find one.

So, we have a mathematical proof that it can’t be done, but that does not stop The Trisectors.  They waste vast amounts of time writing and then rewriting their “proofs.”  It is an embarrassment.  One thing they are fond of doing is sending their indecipherable work to math departments all over the world.  After all, who else could possibly recognize their genius?

I will end this post on a positive note.  I hope everyone smiles when they hear what math departments do with the goofy, impossible “proofs” they receive on a weekly basis.   Let’s say that Fred Gorman sends in a 150 page “proof” of his brilliant trisection to the math department at Reederstock University in Iroquois County.  A couple of days later, Laszlo Crump sends in a “proof” of his brilliant approach to the trisection problem.  Now that the stage is set, consider the following letters that the department secretary sends out a few days later…

Dear Mr. Gorman,

Thank you for your proof.  As our department does not have anyone expert enough to vet your mathematics, we would like to put you in touch with an expert in your field.  Laszlo Crump can be reached at…

Dear Mr. Crump,

Thank you for your proof.  As our department does not have anyone expert enough to vet your mathematics, we would like to put you in touch with an expert in your field.  Fred Gorman can be reached at…

Odds are that both men will report back to the math department that the other guy is crazy and talked nothing but nonsense.  What is certain is that as long as Underwood Dudley is alive, he will be receiving recycled, unintelligible “proofs” from naïve ignoramuses.  The Trisectors and their band of slack-jawed yokels are going to die hard.