The Laboratory

Every day when I pass the Frontier Building on A Street going to and from work, it reminds me of the images of galaxies taken by the Hubble Telescope.



Specifically, I imagine the millions of galaxies stuffed inside of a single glass building, which in turn reminds me of the recurring theory of a Hollow Earth, where certain astronomers, starting with Edmund Halley, wondered if the entire universe existed inside the Earth, rather than outside it.



Imagine Earth as a racquetball, with a hollow interior. The entire universe we see above us — the stars, the moon, the sun and the planets — all exists inside this hollowed out space.

We’re in there, too, because the curved surface of the Earth isn’t the outer curve of this ball, but the inner curve. In this theory, if one could fly, this traveler would be able to fly through the entire universe and land on the other side of the Earth, if that makes sense.

Outside the ball is nothing, I suppose. Or God, maybe.

This all in turn reminds me of the atomic nucleus. And then of The Powers of Ten. And then of "The Laboratory," by the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.

The Laboratory

Did it all
happen in the laboratory?
Beneath one lamp by day
and billions by night?

Are we a trial generation?
Poured from one beaker to another,
shaken in retorts,
observed by something more than an eye,
each one individually
taken by forceps?

Or maybe otherwise:
no interventions.
The transformations occur on their own
in accordance with a plan.
The needle draws
the expected zigzags.

Maybe until now there was nothing interesting in us.
The control monitors are seldom switched on,
except when there's a war, and a rather big one at that,
several flights over the lump of clay called Earth,
or significant movements from point A to point B.

Or perhaps thus:
they only have a taste for episodes.
Look! a little girl on a big screen
is sewing a button to her sleeve.

The monitors begin to shriek,
personnel comes running in.
Oh, what sort of tiny creature
with a little heart beating on the inside!
What graceful dignity
in the way she draws the thread!
Someone calls out in rapture:
Tell the Boss,
and let him come see for himself!

I first read that poem in this book. Weschler connects it to this painting, but the poem reminds me of this movie, released 10 years ago this summer.

Losing Idols

The Voxtrot song “Brother in Conflict” came on today. The last line of the song caught my attention. Ramesh Srivastava sings — screams, really, several times: “I had to lose my idols to find my voice/ lose my idols to find my voice/ lose my idols/ to find my voice.” Appropriate for someone who channeled Morrissey in early songs.

It reminded me of the Bob Dylan song/spoken word piece “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.” Dylan performed this at New York Town Hall on April 12, 1963.

It’s a eulogy, but not for Guthrie, who was still alive at this point. Dylan obvious owed a great deal of his early work to Guthrie. This was Dylan saying goodbye to that influence and moving on to something new.

They’re actually similar, the song and the poem. Both rattle off in lost lists: “And this, And this, And this.” It’s the like “The Exorcist”: “The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you.” It takes a couple of shakes to get peanut butter off a spoon.

“The music is so much different and much more work-intensive than anything we've ever done before,” Srivastava told “the Austin Chronicle” last year. “You can accept the part of yourself that wants to write really accessible pop songs, and you can also accept the part of yourself that wants to write something a little more complex.”

The last seventeen lines of the Dylan poem:

Where do you look for this lamp that’s a burning
Where do you look for this oil well gushing
Where do you look for this candle that’s glowing
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist and turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You find God in the Church of you Choice
You find Woody Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it’s only my opinion
It may be right or wrong
You can find them both at the Grand Canyon at sundown.

Eric Clapton said this about Dylan and the poem: “He’s a poet. Basically he’s a poet. He does not trust his voice. He doesn’t trust his guitar playing. He doesn’t think he's good at anything, except writing—and even then he has self-doubts. Have you heard that thing he wrote about Woody Guthrie? That to me is the sum of his life’s work so far. Whatever happens, that is it. That sums it up.”

Clapton, of course, being the one who inspired people in London to write “Clapton is God” on subway walls.

All of which begs to reference Exodus 20:19-20: “God said to Moses, “So shall you say to the Children of Israel, ‘You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make idols of Me; gods of silver and gods of gold shall you not make for yourselves.” Repeated several times (Exodus, Levitacus, Deuteronomy) of course.

You have to lose your idols to find your voice.

The moon in June, crazy as a loon

Crazy stories from the crazy world of space.

First, a space trash catastrophe in the works as thousands of tiny pieces of debris orbit Earth. When one of these pieces hits something larger — like an abandoned rocket — the collision creates more tiny pieces of debris. If this chain reaction reaches critical mass, space becomes too dangerous for new crafts.

Second, a space trash catastrophe in the works as one astronaut drives 1,000 miles to confront the girlfriend of her astronaut crush: “Nowak — who was a mission specialist on a Discovery launch last summer — was wearing a trench coat and wig and had a knife, BB pistol, and latex gloves in her car, reports show. They also found diapers, which Nowak said she used so she wouldn't have to stop on the 1,000-mile drive. Reports show that after U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman's flight arrived, Nowak followed her to the airport's Blue Lot for long-term parking, tried to get into Shipman's car and then doused her with pepper spray.”

Third, Google Copernicus Center is hiring.

Laugh all you want

NBC does not have a single show with a laugh track in its current line-up.

The laugh track is slowly being replaced by hand held cameras in comedies like “The Office,” a little bit in “30 Rock,” Fox’s now-canceled “Arrested Development,” and the drama “Friday Night Lights.”

This seems like a cultural moment. It’s a shift in the language of television.

The laugh track aids imagination by location. It allows the home audience to pretend to be somewhere else: part of the studio audience, watching actors play characters. The hand held camera effect aids imagination by content. It allows the home audience to pretend to watch real footage in the comfort of their own home.

Where viewers once wanted to be taken to a magical place, they now want to see magical glimpses of the real world, even if they aren’t real.

The next step is “life tracks”: underneath hand held footage would be the sounds of other living rooms. You’d hear people opening cans of soda, whispering about the action, making out, sitting in creaky chairs, gasping at shocking moments. Maybe a phone rings.

Eventually, audiences become sophisticated enough to follow concurrent plot lines: the visual one on screen and the audio one on the life track. The characters in the living room on the life track would have story lines, possibly relating to the shows they watch. Maybe the life tracks would be different from show to show.

The DVD commentary would be maddening: show, topped by life track, topped by commentary, topped by life track commentary. Television fans would be immediately recognizable on the street: they are the ones walking around with one eye off in space, muttering to themselves, trying to unravel that thick knot of information.

Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless

For the past few days I’ve been listening to The Writer’s Almanac — a five-minute, daily broadcast hosted by Garrison Keillor featuring a short bit of literary history and a poem. Because I often have trouble concentrating, I often read along as I listen. And lately, I have noticed some really beautiful lessons pulled from the difference between poetry that is read and poetry that is heard.

For instance, today’s poem is “How to Live” by Charles Harper Webb:

How to Live

“I don’t know how to live.”
–Sharon Olds

Eat lots of steak and salmon and Thai curry and mu shu
pork and fresh green beans and baked potatoes
and fresh strawberries with vanilla ice cream.
Kick-box three days a week. Stay strong and lean.
Go fly-fishing every chance you get, with friends

who’ll teach you secrets of the stream. Play guitar
in a rock band. Read Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Kafka,
Shakespeare, Twain. Collect Uncle Scrooge comics.
See Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, and everything Monty Python made.
Love freely. Treat ex-partners as kindly

as you can. Wish them as well as you’re able.
Snorkel with moray eels and yellow tangs. Watch
spinner dolphins earn their name as your panga slam-
bams over glittering seas. Try not to lie; it sours
the soul. But being a patsy sours it too. If you cause

a car wreck, and aren’t hurt, but someone is, apologize
silently. Learn from your mistake. Walk gratefully
away. Let your insurance handle it. Never drive drunk.
Don’t be a drunk, or any kind of “aholic.” It’s bad
English, and bad news. Don’t berate yourself. If you lose

a game or prize you’ve earned, remember the winners
history forgets. Remember them if you do win. Enjoy
success. Have kids if you want and can afford them,
but don’t make them your reason-to-be. Spare them that
misery. Take them to the beach. Mail order sea

monkeys once in your life. Give someone the full-on
ass-kicking he (or she) has earned. Keep a box turtle
in good heath for twenty years. If you get sick, don’t thrive
on suffering. There’s nothing noble about pain. Die
if you need to, the best way you can. (You define best.)

Go to church if it helps you. Grow tomatoes to put store-
bought in perspective. Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless
you’re tone deaf, own Perlman’s “Meditation from Thais.”
Don’t look for hidden meanings in a cardinal’s song.
Don’t think TV characters talk to you; that’s crazy.

Don’t be too sane. Work hard. Loaf easily. Have good
friends, and be good to them. Be immoderate
in moderation. Spend little time anesthetized. Dive
the Great Barrier Reef. Don’t touch the coral. Watch
for sea snakes. Smile for the camera. Don’t say “Cheese.”


This poem is very authoritative, but avoids being patronizing through charm and wisdom. Hear it without reading it, though, and you miss a harsh written line like that one is the sixth stanza — “on suffering. There’s nothing noble about pain. Die.” — which is actually part of three separate sentences, but reads on the page like one of the aphorisms that make up the poem.

Read alone, that line would be curt and cruel (you can imagine a colon after, “on suffering” and the word “already” stuck at the end), but reintegrated back into poem, the line is a plea for appropriateness: suffering is a symptom, not a reason for living. And that is what the poem is about, anyway, a measured life where one extreme is tempered with the other: Elvis with Bach, eating vanilla ice cream with staying strong and lean. Work hard. Loaf easily.

Or this one, from October 16:

“Before I Was Born” by Linda S. Buckmaster

Before I Was Born

She waits
on the corner of Broad Street and
Oregon Ave., Benny Goodman’s clarinet
slipping out of the radio at Tony’s
each time a customer opens
the door. They go in
and out again, and still
he hasn’t come. Twenty past
seven and now they’ll never
make the show.
Streetlights blink on.
She bends to straighten
the seam of her stocking.
She doesn’t know that this
will be her life.


Line six — “the door. They go in” — reads like stage directions, but also an imagining (when “he” arrives, “they” will go into the show). Line twelve — “She bends to straighten” — uses opposites to mock the action; bending to straighten equals dressing up for no one.

And then the master, William Carlos Williams:

Poem

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot


A poem that would be almost meaningless without line-breaks.

Top of the Heap

Someone is sketching me right now, while I work. He’s either sketching me, or the band behind me. Normally, it would be wise to assume that he’s sketching the band; they are far more interesting. However, two or three times I looked up and he was staring at me, and each time, he flashed a devilish grin and quickly looked away.

And now that I can see a bit of his sketch pad, I can tell I’m right: he finished the top of my forehead and it has my characteristic scowl I get while working, a muscular twitch often confused with deep thinking. Many have called it “the dead stare.”

No creative person wants to be the subject; that means someone else has a broader perspective. That’s why I’m writing about him while he’s drawing me. (I’m hoping that one of the dozens of people around with laptops has not noticed this silly game and one-upped the both of us).

Newspapers are like this, too. When a publication effectively and convincingly writes about media, it somehow transcends the muddle in the middle, and comes off as a journal of great authority.

Joan Didion, in The White Album, writes about this perspective while visiting Nancy Reagan at the California Governor’s Mansion. Several television crews keeps rearranging the former First Lady, asking her to fake nipping a bud for a better shot. Didion considers taking one step back, and writing about the whole process, rather than just Nancy Reagan and her flower bed.

In 1999, Frank Rich wrote a long, lead story for The New York Times Magazine — American Pseudo — going behind-the-scenes of The Talented Mr. Ripley for an article about identity. A few years later, The New Yorker published a long piece on a Hollywood power agent, and casually mentioned how the Rich piece came to be, as well as the terms of the agreement.

(Woe that my books are all in boxes, or surely I would have included fascinating quotations from all these essays).

(While I tried to get these sentences readable, the guy stopped sketching and left).

Overheard at the JCC II

“You didn’t take a steam today.”
(Long pause)
“Eh?”
“I know you didn’t go to the steam room today.”
“You’re a detective, now?”
“You left your gym bag out after your shower. That’s how I know.”
“I have a meeting to get to.”
“What kind of meeting would you have?”

Overheard at the JCC

“Richard! How are you?”
“Good. Good.”
“Listen, Richard, how did those tests go?”
“They went well.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“Well, my doctor said I need to increase my caloric intake. I lost 25 pounds, you know.”
“That’s great. Let’s get lunch.”

The Most Baller Bleep Ever

There is this commercial for Amp’d Mobile where a young man defends his choice of cell phone by saying, “It just has cooler ‘bleep.’” I use the bleep not out of modesty. That’s how it played, and it was surprising. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen on a prime time commercial before. Then, a few days later, I heard it again on a radio commercial, where a girl says, “Oh ‘bleep,’ that’s my jam.”

The bleep started as a genuine response to possible swearing on television and radio, but quickly became something of its own. First, it became a euphemism for other swear words (like the recent movie “What The Bleep Do We Know?”). That is how some people who don’t swear make their point — it ends up sounding wrong, like when sitcoms use “butt” when “ass” is clearly more appropriate.

The Amp’d effect works, though, because it allows the commercial to have it both ways; they can have the character look hip and authentic by swearing, but not actually swear and get the company in trouble. Now, like the Parental Advisory sticker on CDs, or the blank word in pop songs — see Gwen Stefani “It’s my shh.” — the bleep has street cred. It’s self-censoring without having to say “butt” when you mean “ass.”

When South Park started using the bleep, the effect started to lose its value. For a narrative, fictional series — animated no less — to choose a bleep over a script change highlights the word as much as it covers it up. South Park made their intentions even more clear in the episode “It Hits the Fan,” where they lampooned Chicago Hope or NYPD Blue’s use of “shit” in one episode (and the resulting media storm) by using the word 162 times. They also bleep straight characters that say “fag,” but not gay characters. Chappelle’s Show does it too. VHS and DVD sales have allowed South Park to bleep the words on TV and keep them in home sales; which has a result similar to the Amp’d Mobile commercial.

This reminds me of a technique in jazz that also emphasizes through absence. Instead of playing a given note in the melody, the musician will play notes around the note, in the same scale as the note or near that note, but not the actual note.

There is a Bob Dylan song called “Mississippi”” with the line “I was thinking ‘bout the things that Rosie said/ I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed.” I always thought the line was “I was thinkin’ about the things that roses had.” I like my lyrics better — no offense meant — and whenever I hear the song now, I think about petals and thorns (although they never appear in the song).

Jacques Lacan, a French pschyoanalyst, described this as the objet petit a, or “The Little Object,” which is the unattainable object of desire. The trick is that pleasure comes from that objet petit a rather than the actual experience. For instance, he argues, seeing someone in their underwear is more pleasurable than seeing them naked, or the hints of a movie monster are scarier than actually seeing it. Not hearing the “right” note or seeing the “right” word creates a desire for what was never there. Hearing a bleep makes you think about swear words.

The Weight of God

60 Minutes re-ran a feature last night on musical savants. It explored the connection between blindness, mental disability and musical genius.

The main subject, a young boy named Rex, could not button his shirt or walk through his house, but he could listen to any song and play it instantly on the piano. He’s not alone, either. CBS interviewed two other savants with similar conditions.

Immediately, I thought of an Emily Dickinson poem called “The Brain is Wider than the Sky,” which has the last verse:

The brain is just the weight of God
For heft them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

The initial connection was the spiritual one in the first line. Whenever Rex finished playing a piece, he would start shaking his hands violently and craning his neck. It reminded me of the violence of people who claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Often, extremely talented people are burdened by their gifts, just as the prophets were often described as being burdened by prophecy. Rex and the others seemed to actually have gifts in the standard definition. It was as if music was given to them as a reprieve. When they played, the “weight” of God was lifted, and only the presence of God remained.

Later, though, I thought about the audible connection in the last line. This was a feature on people who have supreme difficulty with syllables, but extreme comfort making sounds. The poem sites no difference between the two.

I’m not the first person to think of this connection. A Google search of the first line of the poem — “The brain is wider than the sky” — yields a surprising number of sites relating to neurobiology — at least as many science-oriented sites and literature-oriented, maybe more. Most use the poem to summarize the prospects of the brain’s capabilities.

In the 60 Minutes piece, David Pinto, a piano teacher for Rex and other children like him, said, “As a composer I’ve had dreams where I went though a complete concerto that was impeccable, and it just rolled off, as a dream. Obviously, that means that it’s inside of us. Well, these kids can do that dream. There’s just nothing in between it.”

This reminded me of a study on memory I once read, possibly in "The Holographic Universe." When researchers electrically stimulated parts of a patient’s brain, the patient would start to instantly recall very specific and relatively unmemorable parts of their lives, from scenery down to dialogue. These researchers could keep hitting the exact same part of the brain and access the same memory. There were two points. One: The brain naturally stores information, even if most people don’t understand how to access that archived information. Two: “The whole contains every part.” Our brains store information so that it can be found from any starting place.

Maybe these savants can access the music because they cannot access other information, or maybe they cannot access other information because they can access the music.

The opposite of that is a recent story from the Los Angeles Times about how space artists have been challenged by actual NASA images. When Hubble, Voyager and the like starting sending pictures down to Earth, they were more bizarre that space art.

Rex is an example of the strangeness we know but cannot touch. Space Art is an example of the strangeness beyond how strange we assume the universe should be.

Doobee, Dewbee, Dewberries

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/14621813.htm

On the turntables, drinking a Dr. Pepper...

The dynamic ribbon is what Coke calls the band that crosses their logo, and the contour bottle is what they call their famous ergonomic glass container. The Contour Bottle and the Dynamic Ribbon are both trademarked.

That would also make for the name of a great hip-hop duo.

Suspicious Minds

Reading “Calvin and Hobbes” was the premier activity of my youth, and I was very upset the first I time I saw Calvin as a vulgar truck decal. In the most popular version, he stands looking over one shoulder with an arc of pee hitting a Ford or Chevy logo, depending on whether the truck was a Chevy or a Ford. The problem with these decals was how they changed the character. Calvin became sort of evil, and regular readers of the strip know that his rebellion was countered with sweetness. That’s why it works.

Creations take on new lives, though, even bootlegs. Several months ago, I saw a truck decal where Calvin humbly knelt before a tall cross. He was repenting for peeing on that Ford logo, I suppose. Yesterday, I saw Calvin as the logo for an electrical company. After finding Jesus, he went straight and got a job.

In “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book,” creator Bill Waterson writes that the bootlegging began after he won a battle with his syndicate against licensing: “[W]hen I didn’t license, Calvin and Hobbes merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books, and obscene or drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only thieves and vandals have made money on Calvin and Hobbes merchandise.”

In “Dead Elvis,” Greil Marcus writes about the explosion of Elvis bootlegs and images and recreations that appeared after his death, when legalities become more lenient. At first it was Elvis products, followed by hundreds of tiny tributaries: Elvis/ Jesus hybrids and then Elvis/ Hitler hybrids, for instance.

Marcus writes about the “myth” of Elivs: country boy makes good, but loses himself in the process.

“Such mythologizing predated Elvis’s death, but it’s gathered irresistible force since. A dead person is vulnerable in ways a living person is not, and it’s not simply that you can’t libel the dead. When the subject of a book is living, he or she can always make that book into a lie by acting in a new way. A dead person can be summed up and dismissed.”

The Dreamer

Talking narrative, Joseph is the most fleshed out character in Genesis and, excluding Moses, maybe the whole Torah.

In the past few weeks I’ve had three different interactions with Joseph.

1) My father is a graphic designer, and sees Joseph as a businessman and as an outsider relating to the world. As a freelancer, my father’s work places him both deep within companies and at their margins. He supplies ideas, consultations and overhauled images, but he is always an independent contractor. The power of Joseph for him is the power of being second in command, a returning concept in Jewish history from Maimonides, to Albert Einstein, to Joseph Lieberman.

Read this way, the Joseph story is a very conservative one — that through smarts and personality, anyone can get themselves from the pit to the tower. There is a flip side, though. The consultant is always accepted and treated with skepticism at the same time. Ultimately, Joseph’s success in Egypt creates the foundation for the Jews to become enslaved under a new Pharaoh. In other words, the consultant can often make greater changes than those in power, but the ground is always less stable and the future is harder to see (even with prophetic dreams).

2) Dr. Owen Cosgrove is a minister at the Northside Church of Christ in Waxahachie, and in interviews with him over the past few weeks, he cited Joseph as a favorite character in the Old Testament. He mentioned how Joseph embraced forgiveness and eschewed envy and lust. In expanding his thoughts — my words, not his — I think Cosgrove sees Joseph as a New Testament figure, specifically in avoiding the seven deadly sins: 1) Lust, by turning down Potiphar’s wife, 2) Gluttony, by setting up the storehouses, 3) Avarice, by remaining second in command, 4) Sloth, by getting out of the prison and his work ethic once free, 5) Wrath, by refusing to take revenge on his brothers, 6) Envy, in opposition to his brothers, who envy him, and 7) Pride, well, this one is tough. Joseph shows pride throughout his life. Actually, it’s the first trait we find in him. But before he reveals his identity to his brothers, he weeps so loudly the Egyptians can hear him. Perhaps that moment is so cathartic because he has sloughed the last of his vices: that’s when he credits God with pulling the family apart and darwing them back together.

3) J.J. Keki is a politician and coffee farmer in Uganda, and is also a Jew. He is part of the
Abayudaya, a community of Jews in Eastern Uganda that began in 1918, when a British missionary decided the New Testament did not add truth to the Old Testament. He ripped those pages from his Bible and circumcised his community. At their height, the group numbered 3,000. But Idi Amin gave them the traditional Jewish choice — convert or die — and by the time he was ousted from power in 1979, there were only 300 left. Keki was one. Only 19 at the time, he set out to rebuild the community, which is now 800 strong, and has a school and a synagogue. Over the years, outside Jews learned of the Abayudaya and brought books, Torahs and other Jewish accouterments.

Keki was in Dallas last weekend for an art auction to raise money for a health clinic in Uganda. Speaking with him was enlightening for many reasons, and I hope to return to them in this forum, but the one thing that struck me was Keki’s relationship with Joseph.

One of the largest issues facing the community is how they relate to the world. They have been embraced by some sects within Judaism, and held in skepticism by others — particularly the Israeli government. In 1948, listening to radio broadcasts about the founding of Israel, they went out in the field to wait for airplanes, figuring all Jews would be taken back to the land.

Today, They are making decisions about how to grow into their new knowledge of the Judaism of the West while maintaining their own traditions. For instance, because they had never heard the traditional tunes, their songs are common Jewish lyrics set to African melodies. Do they keep those tunes now, or abandon them?

Keki sees Joseph as a family man in exile. He has written that when other Jews come to Uganda to visit and work, the community feels like Joseph did when his brothers come to Egypt — that moment of weeping for Keki isn’t about sloughing pride, but about finally belonging, about ending isolation. They are outsiders geographically and historically, but insiders in faith. Home is where their people are — be it Dallas or Uganda. Their reuniting isn’t complete — they are still separated from the masses and from the land — but it is completing — because they finally experience belonging. The Abayudaya are the younger brother, just like Joseph. They have to teach themselves about their family, and to learn about their chosen religion in bits and chunks over decades while they create a new version for themselves.

Keki is the first and only Jewish politician in the nation’s history. He works to foster relationships between the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Uganda. Just like Joseph, he is the outsider trying to enact change from much larger groups. Like my father, he understands his role as the consultant, and like Dr. Cosgrove, his righteousness has fueled his success.

Blind To Their Actions

The Dallas Morning News ran an article today about a father and son sparring over political differences. The father is a strong supporter of the Republican Party. His son is seventeen, and has recently become interested in the Democratic Party. In protest, the father decided he would cut off his son’s college tuition unless the boy switches affiliation. In counter-protest, the son created a Web site called www.onemillionreasonswhy.com, where — similar to others — people can buy ads at the rate of one dollar per pixel. He will use that money to pay for school.

The amazing thing about this, and something the writer did not point out, is how the father and son are flipping ideologies. Originally agreeing to pay the tuition was a fiscally liberal thing to do. On a microcosm, the father essentially created a small welfare state. And the son, faced with an empty bank account and the desire to go to college, is turning a Web page gimmick into a business, thus harnessing the free-market to “pull himself up.”

The Democratic and Republican Party spokesmen quoted don’t seem to understand this at all, perhaps because the argument for them is about Democratic and Republican but the actions are about liberal and conservative — and those two group-sets are becoming less and less aligned.

Strange Effects II

I previewed the planning and zoning meeting again this week, the only difference being I put a byline on it. Previously, I thought of the preview simply as a way to publish the agenda, and so I figured it should run without a byline. I realized, though, that once I start putting the agenda into sentences I am interpreting the document, and that interpretation demands a byline for accountability.

At the meeting, two people spoke at the public hearing, neither in the 200 foot range the city is required to notify. Last time I wrote about this, my concern was alerting people who had information that might change the outcome of the vote. This time, the residents were concerned about what exactly this development would be.

That means I didn’t adequately describe or research the development in advance. The questions those residents asked the commission were questions I should have asked several days ago and printed. I have previously discussed the virtues of a wider radius. My wider radius worked better this time than last, but ultimately failed. That I reach more people than the city is irrelevant in the face of content concerns. Or: telling a lot of people not enough information doesn’t help any of them.

This reinforces a growing belief I’m acquiring. Investigative reporting is held as the highest example of how a newspaper can change a community. And while I do think it is important to be keep pressure on those in power, to have them know someone is watching, there is another side of the operation that gets ignored. And that is reporting about the processes of powerful entities: government, business, law, science and technology. These entities have become so complicated that regular people cannot access them without outside help.

One great investigative piece can initiate a cycle of great change, but 100 smaller articles explaining how a municipality works creates an educational foundation for people to stop being tricked in the first place. Or: explanatory writing can open up area of knowledge that can become closed to laymen and help break down the world where experts can only talk to experts.

How to Plant a Money Tree

In my wallet there is a gift certificate from Border’s Bookstore given to me last December from my grandfather, and despite frequent use, I can never seem to spend the last remaining amount.

The reason is interesting.

At $100 it was a sizable gift. I couldn’t spend it all at once, and so every weekend I head over to the store and buy one or two items. When you buy a product at Border’s, your receipt becomes a coupon for the following weekend. The idea, obviously, is to lure customers back.

However, because I have a large gift card, I have to return anyway. By splitting up my purchases over several weekends, my buying power increases. Instead of $100, it has ended up being closer to $125. Border’s is banking on customers both spending and saving more. I am only saving more.

In addition, through various promotions and sales, the cost of my purchases have been reduced. So instead of $125, it’s more like $200.

On the road to California in January, I had a thought about deceleration. If I was driving 75 mph and I was exactly 75 miles from my destination, then it would take one hour to get home. But what if at every mile marker I instantly decelerated exactly one mph, so that at 74 miles away I dropped to 74 mph, and so on? How long would it take me to get home?

A long time.

Calculating in reverse, the last mile alone — where I would be traveling one mph — would take one hour to finish. Getting from mile marker two to mile marker one would take 30 minutes, because I would be drive one mile at two mph. Getting from mile marker three to mile marker two would take twenty minutes, or one-third of a hour. Each preceding mile back to the starting point would be a fraction of a hour. The first mile — going from mile marker 75 to mile marker 74 — would take 1/75 of an hour or 48 seconds.

Fine. I think this is what the “N” does on a fancy calculator.

Then I had another thought. Instead of decelerating only at each mile maker, what would happen if I decelerated constantly, so that I decelerated one mph over the course of each mile?

I would never arrive. At one inch away, I’m moving at one inch per hour. At 1/10,000th of an inch away, I would be moving at 1/10,000th of an inch per hour.

This is the same as the story about a frog crossing a pond. With each hop he covers half the distance remaining. Because space can be infinitely divided, that poor frog never arrives. He just hops less and less until he dies with his long tongue stretched toward the sandy shoreline.

This is similar to Zeno’s Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles.

The tortoise — who is obviously getting big headed after his race with the hare — challenges Achilles to a race. The tortoise gets a 100 foot head start as a handicap. Whenever Achilles has moved 100 feet, the tortoise has also moved forward a little bit. When Achilles covers that distance, the tortoise has moved again. If space is infinite, then we always have to cover half the remaining distance. The paradox, therefore, states “You can’t catch up.”

Aristotle apparently solved this paradox, which sucks. Otherwise I could spend on my gift card forever.

I Gotta Mind Like A Sieve

Lucky numbers, in the math world, are a set of numbers created through a specific weeding process. First, start with an infinite list of numbers starting with 1, and remove all of the even numbers. The lowest number remaining greater than 1 is 3. Therefore, remove every third number. the next lowest number that remains is 7, so remove every seventh number. Continue on like that.

The resulting numbers should go: 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25 and so on.

The process of creating a pattern to eliminate numbers in math is called sieving. The most well-known sieve is for prime numbers. Because prime numbers are only divisible by 1 and themselves, the sieve is a process of going through each number and removing all future multiples.

Looking up information about sieves lead me to a page about colanders.

Apparently, there is an urban legend about cops who would place a colander on the head of a suspect and wire it to a photo copier. The photo copier had a piece of paper on it that said “Lying.” Every time the police would ask a question, they would press the copy button. When the suspect finally confessed, the cops would switch the paper in the machine.

According to the story, this always got thrown out of court.

There is also a story, that I read in a Robertson Davies book, about a culture that tested the virginity of their young women by having them carry water in a sieve. Only virgins, apparently, could do it. The trick was to grease your sieve, and the oil would keep the water from going through the holes.

Finally:

Pirke Avot is a Jewish ethics guide from the fourth century, and the last chapter is a collection of aphorisms. Number 18 is:

“There are four types among those who sit in the presence of the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer, and the sieve. 

‘The sponge,’ who soaks up everything. ‘The funnel,’ who takes in at this end and lets out at the other. ‘The strainer,’ who lets out the wine and retains the dregs. ‘The sieve,’ who removes the coarse meal and collects the fine flour.”

Which doesn’t bode well for this site.

Strange Effects

When a city is planning a public hearing about the status of a property, Texas requires notification for every property owner within 200 feet. A city can add to that measure, if so desired. Waxahachie, for instance, also notifies the family living in the house as well as the property owner, but does not extend the distance. Often, 200 feet incorporates all the interested parties, and often it does not.

Before a zoning meeting this week, I wrote a very short preview outlining the scheduled public hearings. During one, a slightly larger amount of fairly loquacious citizens chose to speak for a rather long time. What they had in common was living in the neighborhood, but outside the 200 feet. Silently bemoaning their chattering, I realized I had done this to myself. Writing the preview informed a new subset of the population and increased the odds that someone — or several people — would have a problem with the project.

No one brought any issue the commissioned hadn’t already considered, and so our only investment was time. Had one of these protesters brought important information to the table, though, it could have theoretically swayed the vote. This time, though, it did not.

Without going door to door and explaining the zoning request to every homeowner, it is impossible to find the one with that information. The state deems 200 feet as an appropriate radius to find that person. Waxahachie adds a layer with their homeowner clause. We add a layer with the newspaper. Each layer increased the traffic, but not necessarily the effectiveness, in this case.

But newspapers are more about the space between stories than the actual stories, and so our cumulative coverage is more important than single article. Still, my fairly momentary decision directly added about a hour to my work day. And I kept about fifteen people from getting home on time.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Ten Pins and the Truth

Susie Minshew is a bowling coach, and she uses bowling to teach life. Part of that teaching is direct: she has gotten her students to lose weight or gain self-confidence through bowling. Part of that is more abstract. When we had our mini-lesson, the first thing she asked me was what I hoped to gain from the practice. She will take whatever answer you give, from “I want to average 250,” to “I want to have a good time.” Then the lesson proceeds from there. Ultimately, you are supposed to lose the obsession toward pins without losing competitiveness. I asked to have a good time, and I did, I also got a few strikes. She is considered one of the greatest coaches in bowling.

Minshew also knows a great deal about the mechanics, physics, biology and philosophy behind bowling, and she writes, which makes her perfect for the Funnel Method. If that sentence seems ridiculous, that’s partly bowling’s own fault. Minshew believes that bowling and golf were equally honorable fifty years ago, but that while golf chose to be elite and expensive, bowling chose to be universal and cheap. Bowling provided house shoes, house balls and bumper lanes. As a result, bowling is often thought of as the working-class semi-sport, and golf brings in billions of dollars in television, advertising and in useless office knick-knacks.

Professional bowlers use different balls the same way golfers use different clubs. There is a plastic spare ball that does not hook on the lane. It offers a more direct shot, whereas the regular ball can be spun to curve in on that front pin. This is only one of many examples. Bowling shoes are fairly complicated as well, and come with removable friction pads. Professional bowlers play seven game sets, throwing 15 pound balls. The point is that bowling could have a very different reputation, and there are now 100 million bowlers worldwide.

The point is also that most of us are largely ignorant of many interesting aspects of bowling. The lane is very expensive and complicated. It is made of two different kinds of wood: hard maple up front where the ball hits, and softer pine in the middle where the ball rolls. The grains in the pine can actually be placed to favor right or left handed bowlers.

The lane is oiled more heavily in the middle than near the pins, because bowlers don’t want the same slide near the end. We are talking about very small measurements. No dent in the floor can be more than, if I remember the number, 1/4000th of an inch off the surface plane. The oil is a thin application, maybe three units of oil. It is often applied more heavily in the middle of the lane to create a hump that the ball will glide around, but there are regulations about the ratio between the middle and the edge of a lane.

By looking at a lane up close, Minshew can tell you the thought process that went into creating the lane. Learning how to make practical decisions based on understanding the environment makes good bowlers, it makes people good at anything, and it is very important to the Funnel Method.