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.

 

 

Local Optimism

             Local Optimism

Voltaire mocked Leibnitz (in the guise of Dr. Pangloss) for proposing that this is the ‘best of all possible worlds’. But Leibnitz, co-inventor of the calculus, knew the difference between local and global maxima. A global maximum is the largest value that a function reaches, for any input; whereas a local maximum is the largest value that a function reaches, in some neighborhood of the locally-maximizing input.

I therefore propose this modification of Panglossian optimism; Local Optimism, which states that this is the best of all sufficiently similar possible worlds. Any stable world locally optimizes; it’s the best of all nearby possibilities.

          Local optimism suggests that there may be many stable worlds, some better than ours. There may also be inherently unstable worlds, that are the worst of all sufficiently similar possible worlds.

          Any continuous path from one stable world to another must begin by getting worse.

          Any continuous path from one stable world to a better one must, in between, pass through the worst world on the path.

          A path from one stable world to a better one that never gets worse must be discontinuous.

          Analogs of local optimism are confirmed - and fundamental - in biology and physics; Darwinian evolution for biology and the Law of Least Action for physics. Local Optimism has sufficient scientific support to appeal to the likes of Leibnitz; yet also sufficient satiric undertones to appeal to the likes of Voltaire.

          For why does the universe minimize action? Is it lazy?