“Stay out of my house!”

           “Stay out of my house!”

 

Many Thursdays ago, a mouse got into my house. I was sitting in my downstairs office, at the work station, when I heard a scuffle and a squeak behind me. I turned around and saw Charlie batting at a small dark-grey puffball. A mouse! I told Charlie, “Kill it! Eat it!” Charlie just sat there, staring at the mouse. He knew to chase it, but not what to do with it once it’s cornered.

          The mouse scurried under the nearby couch. I got up and moved the couch. I found no mouse, just some dust, which I took the opportunity to sweep. I shrugged, I figured that the cats will find the mouse, and I returned to web-surfing. A few minutes later Katniss was at my feet. I looked down, and there was the mouse again. She had cornered it. I told Katniss, “Kill it! Eat it!” She too just sat and stared at the mouse.

          I rolled my eyes and stood up. Katniss bolted. I walked to the next room and got a bug-catcher. A bug-catcher is my own invention; it consists of a small transparent plastic bowl (saved from some packaging) and an 8-by-11 cardboard rectangle. I use it to catch and release bugs; I figured it would work on the mouse. I walked back, and the mouse was still there. I reached for the mouse, clear bowl in hand, but the mouse scurried past me.

          I followed the mouse out the office door to the rest of the basement. I found it and the two cats at the base of the water-heater. They had surrounded it, and were sitting on either side of it, gravely fascinated. My pampered aristocats had no idea what to do!

          I reached down holding the small clear bowl. I placed the bowl over the mouse; then I slid the cardboard under the bowl, and lifted bowl and board, with mouse trapped within. Its tail stuck out of the bowl, but it turned around once and drew its tail in. I showed the bowl with mouse within to Katniss; she sniffed. Then I showed it to Charlie. He too sniffed.

          The mouse squeaked. I stood up and I said to the mouse, “I am trying to save your life.” I walked to the front door, trapped mouse in hand. “You shouldn’t be here,” I scolded the mouse. “Stay out of my house!” In the entrance room, I said, “You know that there are cats here!” I opened the front door, took some steps out, and with a sweep of both arms, I threw the mouse away. I briefly saw the mouse in midair, feet and tail awkwardly splayed. I went back in and closed the door.

          The cats weren’t entirely useless; they did corner the mouse so I could catch it. It was a hard day for that mouse; chased and cornered by cats not once but three times, then scolded by a human and brusquely ejected. I talk to animals, though they don’t know language, because they do know tone of voice, and the mouse could tell that I was being territorial. My house!

 

 

On Liberal Education

On Liberal Education

         

 “Liberal” education means education for a free person; and surely student-loan debt servitude is not freedom. My own education did not involve debt, thank goodness, but U.C. Berkeley had to exploit me somehow, so they underpaid me as a ‘teaching assistant’ - that is, a teacher, for the professors were figureheads.

At the time I thought that my time spent on Metamathematics and Set Theory were the valuable core of my grad-school education, and my hours spent teaching Algebra, Statistics and Calculus were make-work. After graduation I learned that no-one would pay a cent for Metamath, but I could make a living teaching Algebra. So in practice the make-work was education, and the education was make-work.

But though I filled up spiral-bound notebooks with class notes about transfinite cardinals, and though those notebooks fill milk-crates, all now gathering dust in a shed, still my efforts were not in vain; for this dreary labor provoked me to deny the transfinite entirely. Refuting transfinite set theory requires paradox; so I wrote my thesis on paradox logic, and it was accepted.

Paradox logic proved to be, in financial terms, almost as worthless as set theory. I figure that sales on my textbooks on this subject have earned me hundreds of dollars so far. But paradox logic has also proved to be enormously valuable to me, in spiritual terms. The world makes more sense to me with paradox included; there are so many things that are as true as they’re false. Once you see the logic-knots, you can’t unsee them; but neither do they mislead you anymore. To me, detecting paradox is both profitable and consoling.

And liberating. So I too, unwittingly, got the benefit of a liberal education. But please note; not by borrowing for it but by slaving for it; and not by remembering it but by rejecting it!

 

How To Take Over The World

How To Take Over The World

 

I was driving through Chinatown, stuck in a slooow traffic jam. I looked up, and saw a banner slung over the road. It read like this:

(Chinese)(Chinese)(Chinese)(Chinese) 1999 - 2000 (Chinese)(Chinese)(Chinese) 123-456-7890 (Chinese)(Chinese)

I could read none of the text, but I knew the years and I knew the phone number to call. Since then I’ve forgotten the years and the phone number, so the ones I listed above are made up. But I could read those numbers, while I couldn’t read the text.

          And why? Because Hindu-Arabic numbers have taken over the world. They are known in every society on Earth. And that’s good thing. Can you imagine trying to build a car or a computer or a spacecraft or even a flashlight by using Roman numerals? I can’t either; and that is how and why positional arithmetic took over the world.

          Key to the system is a new number, previously ignored: Zero. It means both ‘nothing’ and ‘multiply by ten’. It is the least of the numbers, yet it is vital for making numbers as big as you like.

          Here’s the cream of the jest: we don’t know who invented it! Some nobody from nowhere gives nothingness a name, and poof! We’re a new species! We can do arithmetic! So now we have phones and cars and computers and airplanes! We’ve taken pictures of the far side of the Moon!

          But we don’t know whom to thank for it!

          And that is how to take over the world.

Clash of Vocations

Clash of Vocations

 

Robert West and I were classmates in college. He mentioned that his debate club team will compete soon. I asked him what his team will debate. He answered that they will argue for a certain proposition, and the next day, for the opposite proposition.

I was baffled. But, but, they can’t both be true! He patiently explained that such reversals are in the debate club’s rules. My perplexity turned to alarm. You mean... you’re expected to argue for something that you don’t believe?!

I was shocked. I was scandalized. I felt like a nun who’d witnessed an indecent deed. Robert West was visibly disgusted by my naiveté. He tried to tell me that the whole point of the debate club is to develop rhetorical skill; but I remained obdurate in my puritanism.

Looking back, I now see that our clash of values was due to different vocations. I was training to become a mathematician. My ideal was to Discover the Truth. He was training to become a lawyer. His objective was to Win the Argument. Ultimately my job was to ensure that the bridges don’t fall down; his job was to ensure that, when the bridges do fall down, his clients don’t go to prison.

Decades have passed since then, and they taught me the pragmatic necessity for both vocations; but just then I didn’t understand.

We graduated and went our separate ways. Later we re-encountered, online, in a discussion group with a small group of friends. He and I often disagreed; for instance, on the reality of fictitious social constructs. I was moved to write:

‘Nonexistence has consequences.’

He was moved to reply:

‘ “Nonexistence has consequences”. True, but - ’

- and right there I stopped reading! Triggered, I stood up. I fled from the computer. To calm myself down, I did some household chores. When I regained my composure, I returned to the computer. I sat down. I braced myself, and I read on. He went on to say that social constructs have reality due to community force. I begged to differ.

In a related development, he and I later differed on the relative merits of motivational self-deception vs therapeutic self-honesty.

But one day we did agree on something; namely, that the correct name for our species is not “Homo Sapiens”, meaning “Man the Wise”; for that name is aspirational, not descriptive. We concurred that a scientifically accurate name for our kind is “Homo Semisapiens”, meaning “Man the Half-Wise”. I was pleased that we agreed.

But then I stopped hearing from him. Soon my other online friends told me that he had died.

I was horrified. Did agreeing with me kill him? Or did the approach of death weaken his rhetorical resolve? Perhaps Robert West could have argued for either proposition with equal plausibility. I, myself, will never know.

 

         Appendix:

Recently I’ve learned another name for our species:

          Homo Mendax.

Meaning “Man the Liar”.

          Only Homo Mendax or Homo Semisapiens would look at our history and call us Homo “Sapiens”. Which we are – liar or halfwit – is what I call the “crook-or-fool dilemma”. The solution is that everyone lies to a crook, so they become fools; and fools lie to themselves, so they become crooks. Therefore Mendax and Semisapiens meet in the middle.

          “Discover the Truth” is a Semisapiens ideal; “Win the Argument” is a Mendax objective. So I played Semisapiens when I said “nonexistence has consequences”; and West played Mendax when he said “True, but”; yet nonetheless we are one.

          Plato wrote that the wise must become virtuous, to remain wise. To this I add its reverse: the virtuous must wise up, to remain virtuous.

 

5 poems to your health

5 poems to your health

Here are five  poems I wrote in honor of modern medicine:


A day that fever lays you ill;
a plague of pests too small to see;
a mold compressed into a pill;
'tis death for them but not for thee.


From searing slash of surgery
from dental pang of drilling teeth
from woman's birthing agony
the Numbing Needle grants relief.


May plague and sickness pass you by;
be free of fever and infection;
be long to live and late to die;
for the Bovine Needle provides protection.


The Bovine Needle prevents disease;
expires a fire more dire than war;
your body's on guard, your mind's at ease;
yet the Porcelain Throne saves even more.


The Porcelain Throne! O hole-some seat!
O honest chair approached in haste!
For public health, relief, retreat;
all other thrones, compared, are waste!

Something about Something

           Something about Something

 

          Many years ago, I was chatting with a young nephew, one of twins. I told him a cool fact about pterodactyls, and he gushed, “Oh Uncle Nat, you know everything!”

          “Not really,” I admitted. “But I do know something.”

          The lad demanded, “About what?”

          “I know something about something,” I said. Disgusted, he turned to leave the room; I said as he left, “That’s the most honest answer you’ll ever get, kid!”

 

          Addendum: I know that we were discussing pterodactyls, but I forget the cool pterodactyl fact. And I know that I told it to a nephew, but I entirely forget which nephew, Sam or Andrew. That’s how my so-called mind works; which proves my point.

 

My Resolution Score

My Resolution Score

 

 

On December 31, 2022, I made three New Year’s resolutions:

1. Not to make any New Year’s resolutions;

2. To get to bed before midnight;

3. To break all of my New Year’s resolutions.

I broke resolution #1 when I made it; I broke resolution #2 at midnight; and I broke resolution #3 as much as I did not.

I figure that I kept 1/2 out of 3, which equals 1 out of 6. That’s a relatively good ratio.