When I went Galt

             When I went Galt

  

      When I was in graduate school at Berkeley, one of my colleagues was Matthew Weiner. Like me, he had a scraggly beard. Like me, he wore hippy-dippy Birkenstock sandals. And let’s not forget the tie-dye T-shirts and the rainbow suspenders. But unlike me, he signed up for the IDA; the Institute for Defense Analysis. That is, he was a spook-in-training. He told me that the IDA was the most liberal of the spook shops; but I didn’t buy it.

       Maybe I’m blowing his cover by mentioning this. I doubt it, it was all in the open. And in any case, fukkit. And what’s more, fukkim. Freakin’ sell-out!

       One day he approached me. How would I like to give a lecture, about my four-valued paradox logic, at the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory? I said no. He shrugged; it’s my loss.

       But I didn’t think so. Here was my reasoning: if I give that lecture, then what’s the best-case scenario? The bomb-makers get interested, they study my graduate thesis, and then they incorporate my work into a weapon of mass destruction. And for that they hire me, and pay me top dollar too; but there’s a downside.

       For according to the Law of the Excluded Middle, either my brain-child, thus weaponized, gets used... or it does not. You’ll grant that? And if it got used, then I personally would be involved in a deed of apocalyptic horror and evil; and in that case it would have been better if I had never been born.  Whereas if it did not get used, then my thought and labor would moulder in some missile silo, achieving nothing but the negative task of ‘deterrence’; and it would be as if I had never been born.

 

      And so I calculated that Livermore Lab was offering me a no-win deal. Either it would be better that I had never been born, or it would be as if I had never been born. If that’s not a Faustian bargain, then what is? Either an enormous negative return on my investment of time and thought and devotion, or a flat zero return; I figured that there was no way to profit from so Satanic an offer, so I turned it down. There was some shit that I would not eat.

      My wife Sherri says she’s proud of me for that, which is nice, but pride doesn’t pay the bills. What’s worse, I feel unfulfilled. Lorn of destiny. Diamond logic is good stuff, solid work with real uses; really it ought to be in computer chips all over the world, but it is not, because I refused to adapt it to the task of death, destruction, terror and domination. (A.k.a. “defense”.)

       I have been harshly punished for my moralistic pride; it has condemned me to a life without traction. Stagnant income for decades, no influence, obscure, ignored. Take that, Nat! How do you like your ‘integrity’, Mister Nobody? For what profit it a man to save his own soul but lose the world?

       My personal tragedy is trivial, but many others share it. Multiply my underachievement by millions of others in the same position as mine. Result; decades of national stagnation. That’s what happens when enough people go Galt.

       ‘Going Galt’ is perhaps a misnomer; for though my strike was based upon rational self-interest, it was enlightened self-interest; not very Randian. Perhaps you could instead say that I (and many others) ‘walked away from Omelas’.

 ***

       I met Matthew Weiner again, years later. It was during the first Gulf War; you know, the one which didn’t get Saddam Hussein, but did convince bin Laden that the USA is the Great Satan. I was walking through the U.C.Berkeley campus, which I hadn’t visited for years, and suddenly I was face to face with him. We stopped and looked each other over. The junior spook still had a scraggly beard, and a tie-dye T-shirt, and clamdigger shorts, and rainbow suspenders, and Birkenstock sandals. I was clean-shaven, and was wearing a black shirt, black jacket, long black pants, black belt, black socks, and black leather shoes. I looked like an undertaker, for indeed I was consciously in mourning.

 ***

      I sometimes thought about Matthew Weiner towards the end of the Bush Jr. years. I hear that the spooks were furious about Plame, and none too happy about being ordered to fit the facts to the policy. I’ve had sucky bosses too, but none of mine ever insisted that two plus two equals anything other than four.

 

 

Smuggler’s Eye

          Smuggler’s Eye

 

          I write here about a revealing incident. Sherri and I drove Hannah to the airport, to fly back East to visit relatives for eight days. (Uncle Seth, Aunt Kazzie and their children Zeke and Sarah; then Uncle Dan and Aunt Susan.) Sherri dropped me and Hannah off; I went with Hannah; the plan was for me to get a gate pass and accompany her to the plane; then come out and get picked up by Sherri. We did this before, and it sort of worked.

          We got me a gate pass. While walking to the checkpoint, I reacted to security theater with mockery, as usual. Hannah agreed, and noted that once Sherri had to give up some contact lens solution. I said, “Water is officially an explosive.” Hannah laughed and said, “I can’t take you anywhere!” “Absolutely not,” I agreed. Then it hit me. “My swiss army knife!”

          We ran into trouble with that on a previous airport visit. I keep a swiss army knife in my backpack; a useful tool; but airports are paranoid. I tried to go through, but they said they’d confiscate the knife. I pulled back, fuming; Sherri drove by to pick up the knife, I proceeded. Not a process to repeat!

          So what to do? Hannah and I agreed that I had to hide it somewhere. So as she wheeled her pack towards the security gate, I kept an eye out for hiding places. Small volumes, out of sight, beneath or behind. I found a recycling bin, approached it, glanced behind it, dropped the knife there, and proceeded towards the security gate.

          There we removed our shoes like good Moslems. Our luggage got X-rayed and we went through a metal detector. It was one of those booths where you’re supposed to raise your hands in surrender, which is what the word ‘Islam’ means; I raised my hands in a shrug.

          We went to the gate, Hannah left her luggage at the counter for last-minute luggage check-in, and then boarded right away. Surprisingly efficient. I left the gate, went out to the main hall, found the recycling bin, looked behind, there was my knife. I picked it up and went out to get picked up by Sherri, no hassle.

          I see in that knife a symbol. Their stupid rules turned it into a problem; I couldn’t efficiently manage it within their clueless authoritarian system; so to get things done, I had to cheat. I had to smuggle my knife out of the terminal. This proved easy to do, for “the invisible hand is quicker than the all-seeing eye” (as I said in my Underfable, “The Magic of the Marketplace”).

          When the rules are stupid, it’s stupid to follow the rules. That airport taught me how to remove my shoes like a good Moslem, but also how to see like a smuggler.

 

On Earworms

           On Earworms 

        And the Permeability of Identity

 

          When I was young, I heard a TV ad jingle. It caroled, like a nursery rhyme, “How many cookies did Andrew eat? / Andrew ate eight thou-sand! / How do you keep your carpet neat?  / Call ANdrew-eight-eight-thou-sand!”

          And I still have that in my head! Once I even called the number; decades too late, of course! The company fades away, but the jingle lingers on!

 

 

 

On Heinlein’s Checklist

          On Heinlein’s Checklist

 

          Robert Heinlein wrote: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Let’s see now:  I have changed diapers, written sonnets, balanced accounts, built walls, taken orders, given orders, cooperated, acted alone, solved equations, analyzed new problems, programmed computers, and cooked tasty meals.

          I have tried on occasion to comfort the dying, and to fight; but neither efficiently.

          I have never planned an invasion, butchered a hog, conned a ship, designed a building, set a bone, or pitched manure. I have snuck indoors, killed mice, driven an RV, erected tents, reset passwords, and pitched leaf compost, but those don’t count. Nor have I died, gallantly or otherwise; but neither had Heinlein when he wrote this list.

          So I stand at 12 to 2 to 7. The 2 and the 7 I mark down to lack of experience, and the (usually fortunate) lack of need to acquire such experience. So by Heinlein’s count, I stand as mostly human already, and trainable to full humanity if absolutely necessary. 

          A little birdie tells me that most people would do about as well as me. That same birdie tweets that Heinlein, when he wrote this checklist, had already passed 20 of his 21 tests. Therefore I retort to Heinlein:

          A human being should be able to define humanity in self-serving terms. Objectivity is for others.

The Numerology Letdown

             The Numerology Letdown

 

          Numerology has long been a disappointment to mathematicians.  The failed romance of numerology goes back to Pythagoras. He proclaimed that number rules the universe; and in a sense we are all Pythagoreans now. (But reformed Pythagoreans; the square root of two and all that.)

You would think that if number rules the universe, then the numbers themselves should be relevant to everyday life; but no. Yes, harmonious musical chords are based on integer ratios; and yes, the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals  the square of the diagonal;  these Pythagorean insights are valid;  but “five equals marriage” is not. The applications of mathematics deal with the numbers as a class, not as individuals.

Numbers are like Hollywood stars; they have properties and relationships, but no personalities.

 

         The Racist Bone

 

 

            Consider the phrase “I haven’t got a racist bone in my body!” I wonder; what would a racist bone be? After introspection I have decided that the best candidate would be the coccyx; the vestigial tail-bone.

            The coccyx reminds us that our ancient ancestors had tails, and presumably other beastly traits. Among these was probably tribalism, which in us, their descendants, manifests as nationalism, religious fundamentalism, racism and classism.

            So alas, I myself do have a racist bone in my body; or more precisely, a tribalist bone; worse yet, everybody has that same bone; fortunately it’s vestigial.

 

 

            Who First Ate Cheese?

 

 

            Somebody had to be the first to eat cheese. I feel sorry for that someone, but admire that someone’s courage and luck. Surely there had been nothing else to eat, for miles and miles around, and for a long time too. All that was left was this smelly gunk at the bottom of the milk jug. But our heroine ate it, and survived.

 

            Do you think our heroine’s tribe thought cheese to be health food? Not at first, and rightly so; no doubt her tribefolk had all sorts of bad reactions to cheese, starting with lactose intolerance and going on up to obesity and heart disease. But evolution proceeded, and now lactose intolerance is a rarity, and Frenchmen eat cheese yet stay thin.

 

            I wonder about the origin of other healthful foods. Yogurt, for instance. Somebody had to be the first to eat that. Again, it must have been hard times. 

 

            Evolution continues unabated, even within civilization; for now civilization is the environment our genes must adapt to. If milk and cheese are cheap, then lactose intolerance is a genetic defect, and milk becomes health food. If you need readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic merely to survive on these mean streets, then so long dyslexia. If flu, measles and the common cold regularly go pandemic in the cities, then your grandchildren, if any, will have kick-ass immune systems.

 

            I predict that in 10,000 years, Cheetos will be a health food.