A Reuters article today announces that sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, have been confirmed in Arkansas. The article is discouraging enthusiasts from running off to Arkansas in hope of seeing one, let alone a mating pair. The ivory-billed likes heavy leaf cover: in mosquito and snake country.
However when I saw a magnificent female in 1989 (and reported my sighting to Audubon), she was perched on a stump right next to my pop-up trailer in clear weather with all my screens open. I had a clear, prolonged view of her. I was able to check and recheck the features of her species against my Peterson's Guide.
It's too bad I didn't also have a camera to poke for or today's "facts" could have been confirmed a decade and a half ago.
Science requires confirmation. Very sensible: except that it eliminates, or at least delays, some truths.
My Pendulous Pathology story tells of my sighting.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Evo/Devo-lution
Any society will protect itself from evo/devo-lution via a crust of magicians, priests, teachers, experts past whom few new ideas (and especially no incriminating evidence!) can penetrate. This rule is a special case of homeostasis.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Magic
The magician who can prove that God loves us will always fare better than the rationalist who would demonstrate the flaws in the proof.
I'll Take Manhattan ...
I'll take Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten ...
Island too.
Those who bought Manhattan Island (for $24 no less! from Indians no less!) may now sell the Brooklyn Bridge: for millions; and billions; and trillions.
Island too.
Those who bought Manhattan Island (for $24 no less! from Indians no less!) may now sell the Brooklyn Bridge: for millions; and billions; and trillions.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
pk the Painter
Notice a paucity of pk posts recently?
It's because I've been painting. Oh, no; not as in art (my art is here!); as in painting the house. It was the landlord who finally convinced me that it needed painting. (Hell, the last paint job was only thirty years old.) But once I noticed that it needed painting (you mean there really is a world(!) that we live in?), I started noticing more and more: which prompted me to try to explain Mandelbrot math and chaos physics to my landlord (who fled – after a minimum of polite listening).
Mandelbrot asked the generic question How long is a coastline? His answer is that It depends entirely on the length of the ruler you're measuring with. If you walk the coast of Maine you'll take a different number of baby steps from giant steps. The telescope does not see the same universe as does the microscope. I've painted the house. Now I'll go back over it with an artists brush. I doubt that I'll then don a jewelers glass, but I'll be tempted.
Of course I already knew this principle: from when I'd occasionally wash the mildew from the aluminum siding. First I'd see one patch that needed a little stress and discouragement. That clean, I'll notice another. By the time I'd be done, the last patch, the one originally least noticed, would look to me the worst in the whole history.
Once we notice that Hitler himself had a Jewish taint, and needed cleansing, where will we stop?
But that's not all. A decade ago I got a nice email from my late seventeenth-century English teacher's widow. At the beginning of April I heard from her again. Then two weeks went into developing a nice cross-continental friendship. She mentioned an old friend of hers who painted. So another week went into initiating an exploratory friendship there.
But of course lots and lots of little things still got done at all pk domains. A bunch more of Shakespeare's sonnets, for example, got posted (more than 2/3 as of 2005/04 27).
2011 07 26 I've thinking about Mandelbrot and coastlines recently, while playing the form of solitaire I call 49. The cards, all but three, are dealt out in 7 files. Twelve, all in the first three files, are face down. Cards promote, Ace up, as in other solitairs; but cards reorganize in the files by succession within suit, not by succession of opposite color. Only the deuce of spades can promote onto the ace of spades, only the jack of spades can move under the queen of spades: and brings any extra tail with it.
I see the array as a coastline. I see the probabilities of there being a card to move next in relation to the jaggedness of "coastline" of the random arrangement of the 49 cards: which changes propabilities with each move.
It's because I've been painting. Oh, no; not as in art (my art is here!); as in painting the house. It was the landlord who finally convinced me that it needed painting. (Hell, the last paint job was only thirty years old.) But once I noticed that it needed painting (you mean there really is a world(!) that we live in?), I started noticing more and more: which prompted me to try to explain Mandelbrot math and chaos physics to my landlord (who fled – after a minimum of polite listening).
Mandelbrot asked the generic question How long is a coastline? His answer is that It depends entirely on the length of the ruler you're measuring with. If you walk the coast of Maine you'll take a different number of baby steps from giant steps. The telescope does not see the same universe as does the microscope. I've painted the house. Now I'll go back over it with an artists brush. I doubt that I'll then don a jewelers glass, but I'll be tempted.
Of course I already knew this principle: from when I'd occasionally wash the mildew from the aluminum siding. First I'd see one patch that needed a little stress and discouragement. That clean, I'll notice another. By the time I'd be done, the last patch, the one originally least noticed, would look to me the worst in the whole history.
Once we notice that Hitler himself had a Jewish taint, and needed cleansing, where will we stop?
But that's not all. A decade ago I got a nice email from my late seventeenth-century English teacher's widow. At the beginning of April I heard from her again. Then two weeks went into developing a nice cross-continental friendship. She mentioned an old friend of hers who painted. So another week went into initiating an exploratory friendship there.
But of course lots and lots of little things still got done at all pk domains. A bunch more of Shakespeare's sonnets, for example, got posted (more than 2/3 as of 2005/04 27).
2011 07 26 I've thinking about Mandelbrot and coastlines recently, while playing the form of solitaire I call 49. The cards, all but three, are dealt out in 7 files. Twelve, all in the first three files, are face down. Cards promote, Ace up, as in other solitairs; but cards reorganize in the files by succession within suit, not by succession of opposite color. Only the deuce of spades can promote onto the ace of spades, only the jack of spades can move under the queen of spades: and brings any extra tail with it.
I see the array as a coastline. I see the probabilities of there being a card to move next in relation to the jaggedness of "coastline" of the random arrangement of the 49 cards: which changes propabilities with each move.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Catholic Priestess?
It's noon, but I haven't quite come into focus yet. I was just dumbly chewing some English muffin while the news, in the wake of the death of a pope, again brought up the subject of Christianity and the female to the infinitely credulous, never-heard-it-before public. That's like asking if a Jew could ever be elected president in the US.
The story included a sound-byte of some spokesman saying that Christ didn't choose his mother as an apostle: didn't choose any woman.
Some religions have a coed pantheon, but not Judaism: and not Christianity. Much of reality, of life, of the truth is cut out, expelled, repressed. And the cutters and repressors remain proudly immune to learning. For example, they still talk interchangeably about "Christ" and "Jesus", as though they were synonyms, interchangeable. That is, they look at rugged problems of fact and interpretation, faith and experience, as though they were flat, simple, solved ... Like lawyers they assure that irrelevancies are infinitely worried over, while real basic questions are not admitted: very much the way questions of whether or not Americans should be murdering Vietnamese wholesale was blocked by niceties of whether we should reduce our acceleration of the slaughter by 1% or by 2% ... after the next election or after the next election after the next one ...
But: I remember when the question of a Jew in the White House was no more risible than the question of a Catholic in the White House: and then by God the American people elected JFK! So nothing – no distinction, no wisdom, no prejudice, no blindness – is necessarily immortal. Learning can take place (and so can forgetting): once in an eon ... or myriad times in a second: though long gaps of no learning seem to be the average.
Once upon a time we assumed that light was instantaneous, its velocity infinite. Now we think differently. Once upon a time we thought that things like light, like seeing, were continuous: then we decided that more and more things are both finite and particulate. Light came in photons, then even gravity came and went as a quantum.
It strikes me that evolution, when it comes at all, comes in quanta: and that applies to evolution in religion, in philosophy, in epistemology ... as well as in DNA. The God who tries (and fails) to kill Moses [Exodus 4:24] bears little resemblance to the God who speaks as the chief baron among barons [Genesis 1:24 etc.] or the God who decides that he himself will be the sacrificial lamb ... The United States that killed Indians while taking their land, their democracy ... is visibly different from the United States that beats its breast about Social Security ... (however strong the resemblance between the United States that killed Indians and the United States that burned the books of Wilhelm Reich).
Do I waste my time pointing out the existential distinction between Jesus and Christ? I'd have to be able to look at us in this millennium and then in another (and then in another) to have a clue.
I know a male God. I know him fairly well. I also know a god (more than "one") that doesn't seem to be limited by the stock responses of gender. I also know a Church, a church that's defiantly male. I don't want that Church to reform, to grow, to learn, to evolve. I want that Church to put everyone on the same Procrustean Bed. I want to watch that Church sink beneath the waves.
By the way: does anyone know a good priest who doesn't hate the Church? (Does anyone know a good American who doesn't hate the United States? isn't embarrassed by it?)
I'll take women a great deal more seriously when more of them are embarrassed to be female: as I am embarrassed to be male.
The 25th: Would the Church have burned fewer heretics and witches had women been priests all along? more? about the same?
I don't know that women would make "better" popes or presidents than men: I see few females as alpha. (Would we be better off with betas?) But this occurs to me:
Men may have made our institutions, but don't women fit them better? Females are the more social gender: across any number of species. Women are less riled by rules.
The rules are man-made, but the breakers of the rules are more likely to be male.
No?
2011 07 25 Oo, a few things I said above, long gaps of no learning seem to be the average, are soo Darwinian!
But one thing I have to add I didn't know when I posted the above: I didn't know till I read Bart Ehrman's studies of the New Testament that Christians altered the gospels over the centuries to serve certain agendas. They made mistakes, naturally enough, but they also faked text for politics.
First, gospel evidence isn't reliable, but we have gospel proof that the role of women in early Christianity was important, and further that that evidence was interfered with! The history continues at the PKnatz blog.
The story included a sound-byte of some spokesman saying that Christ didn't choose his mother as an apostle: didn't choose any woman.
Some religions have a coed pantheon, but not Judaism: and not Christianity. Much of reality, of life, of the truth is cut out, expelled, repressed. And the cutters and repressors remain proudly immune to learning. For example, they still talk interchangeably about "Christ" and "Jesus", as though they were synonyms, interchangeable. That is, they look at rugged problems of fact and interpretation, faith and experience, as though they were flat, simple, solved ... Like lawyers they assure that irrelevancies are infinitely worried over, while real basic questions are not admitted: very much the way questions of whether or not Americans should be murdering Vietnamese wholesale was blocked by niceties of whether we should reduce our acceleration of the slaughter by 1% or by 2% ... after the next election or after the next election after the next one ...
But: I remember when the question of a Jew in the White House was no more risible than the question of a Catholic in the White House: and then by God the American people elected JFK! So nothing – no distinction, no wisdom, no prejudice, no blindness – is necessarily immortal. Learning can take place (and so can forgetting): once in an eon ... or myriad times in a second: though long gaps of no learning seem to be the average.
Once upon a time we assumed that light was instantaneous, its velocity infinite. Now we think differently. Once upon a time we thought that things like light, like seeing, were continuous: then we decided that more and more things are both finite and particulate. Light came in photons, then even gravity came and went as a quantum.
It strikes me that evolution, when it comes at all, comes in quanta: and that applies to evolution in religion, in philosophy, in epistemology ... as well as in DNA. The God who tries (and fails) to kill Moses [Exodus 4:24] bears little resemblance to the God who speaks as the chief baron among barons [Genesis 1:24 etc.] or the God who decides that he himself will be the sacrificial lamb ... The United States that killed Indians while taking their land, their democracy ... is visibly different from the United States that beats its breast about Social Security ... (however strong the resemblance between the United States that killed Indians and the United States that burned the books of Wilhelm Reich).
Do I waste my time pointing out the existential distinction between Jesus and Christ? I'd have to be able to look at us in this millennium and then in another (and then in another) to have a clue.
I know a male God. I know him fairly well. I also know a god (more than "one") that doesn't seem to be limited by the stock responses of gender. I also know a Church, a church that's defiantly male. I don't want that Church to reform, to grow, to learn, to evolve. I want that Church to put everyone on the same Procrustean Bed. I want to watch that Church sink beneath the waves.
By the way: does anyone know a good priest who doesn't hate the Church? (Does anyone know a good American who doesn't hate the United States? isn't embarrassed by it?)
I'll take women a great deal more seriously when more of them are embarrassed to be female: as I am embarrassed to be male.
The 25th: Would the Church have burned fewer heretics and witches had women been priests all along? more? about the same?
I don't know that women would make "better" popes or presidents than men: I see few females as alpha. (Would we be better off with betas?) But this occurs to me:
Men may have made our institutions, but don't women fit them better? Females are the more social gender: across any number of species. Women are less riled by rules.
The rules are man-made, but the breakers of the rules are more likely to be male.
No?
2011 07 25 Oo, a few things I said above, long gaps of no learning seem to be the average, are soo Darwinian!
But one thing I have to add I didn't know when I posted the above: I didn't know till I read Bart Ehrman's studies of the New Testament that Christians altered the gospels over the centuries to serve certain agendas. They made mistakes, naturally enough, but they also faked text for politics.
First, gospel evidence isn't reliable, but we have gospel proof that the role of women in early Christianity was important, and further that that evidence was interfered with! The history continues at the PKnatz blog.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Elegant Math, Mystery Universe
Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe. math whiz physics teacher at Columbia. Excellent book on string theory. I've been reading it for years, without quite yet finishing it. Greene did a documentary version which I've watched on TV more than once, and I just carefully watched the two DVD set. Obviously, I think it's good: and as laymen go, I read a lot of this stuff. Knatz.com has long commented on the excellence of Michio Kaku's book on the same subject: Hyperspace.
pk is forever proclaiming his innumeracy. Maybe it's me, maybe it was my schooling, but anything that looks like arithmetic freezes me like a Jew with a tatoo on his arm seeing a Nazi uniform. Algebra doesn't intimidate me; but neither do I know how to read the symbols beyond x and y and perhaps a power or two. Show me the symbols for calculus and I go as blank as I do for arithmetic. So I'm the last person to comment on the details of string theory, or any other physics. Nevertheless I love the ideas. I especially love the extended Kaluza-Klein space: the eleven dimensions. That's right up science-fiction-macroinformation-pk's alley.
This reader of science syntheses proclaims Greene's book – and documentary – to be the clearest presentation I've seen of the problems with unification theory: that is, the rift between Einstein's physics of gravity and the quantum world of electro-magnetism, the Strong force and the Weak force. If string theory, now M theory, can unite them, that's quite an accomplishment.
But I see some problems. Hence this bit of scribble. Indeed, pk in his innumeracy, together with pk's general skepticism (together with pk's will to believe), may have a perspective you're not likely to find among the physicists.
First I repeat a point Brian Greene couldn't have been clearer on: there is yet (as of the dates of The Elegant Universe) no experimental evidence to support string theory. String theory has yet made no predictions borne out in the lab or in the universe at large that we know of. Eddington tested Einsteinian Relativity. The testers decided that their results were positive. Physicists all over have tested quantum mechanics and find that no theory has ever tested more reliably. String theory hasn't failed any specific tests: string theory hasn't yet found a testable test. If a string is a million billion times smaller than an atom, how are we supposed to "see" one?
As one or two physicists interviewed in the documentary kept iterating, especially skeptical Sheldon Glashow of Boston University, if you can't test it, if there are no testable predictions, it's not science, it's not physics; it's philosophy.
I'm reminded of medieval Scholasticism. Guys like Edward Witten might have gotten along very well with guys like Saint Thomas Aquinas. Meanwhile, the math is said to be so beautiful – I'll have to take their word for it – string theory can't be ... wrong.
At one point Greene's NOVA documentary shows two guys calculating away on a blackboard. Finally they get some quantity in common: "256." I am reminded of a joke my mother's boss told her: guy hires a secretary, some young gal, gives her a calculation, tells her to check it twelve times if she has to. She goes off with her pad, comes back. "Did you check your results?" "Yes, I added the column twelve different times." "Good. What did you get." "Twelve different answers." (If pk, like the rest of us, hadn't been declawed by civilized morality, I'd have fed my mother's boss (that bastard's) liver to him.) The two string theorists finally get an answer in common. How many times before that had they gotten answers not in common? (Were any of the new secretary's twelve answers correct?) How does agreement prove anything? It doesn't to pk.
But of course once a physicist submits something for publication, others check it before publication. Then lots of others check it again. The rest of us are supposed to believe that they know what they're doing.
It's a real problem though in science. Once upon a time human calculators checked all human calculations. The human calculators had some agreement on their accuracy ratio. But today's science, weather prediction for example, depends entirely on calculations that humans can't do, let alone check. We have to trust our digital computers not to be allied in fooling us. Thus, science has changed.
And it may have to change further: to accept philosophy.
Tricky business. Slippery ground.
But what ground has ever not been slippery?
But I have one more related gripe to mention. Brian Greene keeps talking about "the beginning of time"; "time's first tick"; "time's last tick" ... String theorists, like relativity people (Stephen Hawking, for example), like the quantum people, talk about time as though time were finite. They can do their math backwards and forwards. Many a scientist with audio-visual equipment is fond of showing film running backwards. Since movies, we can do that: so we do it. But we only observe things, apart from movies, running "forwards." Ilya Prigogine posits time to be infinite. Ilya Prigogine deals with time running only forwards. Makes sense to me. Why don't the others listen?
I've never so much as heard them defend their assumption.
As I've said previously: science needs a good spring cleaning.
pk is forever proclaiming his innumeracy. Maybe it's me, maybe it was my schooling, but anything that looks like arithmetic freezes me like a Jew with a tatoo on his arm seeing a Nazi uniform. Algebra doesn't intimidate me; but neither do I know how to read the symbols beyond x and y and perhaps a power or two. Show me the symbols for calculus and I go as blank as I do for arithmetic. So I'm the last person to comment on the details of string theory, or any other physics. Nevertheless I love the ideas. I especially love the extended Kaluza-Klein space: the eleven dimensions. That's right up science-fiction-macroinformation-pk's alley.
This reader of science syntheses proclaims Greene's book – and documentary – to be the clearest presentation I've seen of the problems with unification theory: that is, the rift between Einstein's physics of gravity and the quantum world of electro-magnetism, the Strong force and the Weak force. If string theory, now M theory, can unite them, that's quite an accomplishment.
But I see some problems. Hence this bit of scribble. Indeed, pk in his innumeracy, together with pk's general skepticism (together with pk's will to believe), may have a perspective you're not likely to find among the physicists.
First I repeat a point Brian Greene couldn't have been clearer on: there is yet (as of the dates of The Elegant Universe) no experimental evidence to support string theory. String theory has yet made no predictions borne out in the lab or in the universe at large that we know of. Eddington tested Einsteinian Relativity. The testers decided that their results were positive. Physicists all over have tested quantum mechanics and find that no theory has ever tested more reliably. String theory hasn't failed any specific tests: string theory hasn't yet found a testable test. If a string is a million billion times smaller than an atom, how are we supposed to "see" one?
As one or two physicists interviewed in the documentary kept iterating, especially skeptical Sheldon Glashow of Boston University, if you can't test it, if there are no testable predictions, it's not science, it's not physics; it's philosophy.
I'm reminded of medieval Scholasticism. Guys like Edward Witten might have gotten along very well with guys like Saint Thomas Aquinas. Meanwhile, the math is said to be so beautiful – I'll have to take their word for it – string theory can't be ... wrong.
At one point Greene's NOVA documentary shows two guys calculating away on a blackboard. Finally they get some quantity in common: "256." I am reminded of a joke my mother's boss told her: guy hires a secretary, some young gal, gives her a calculation, tells her to check it twelve times if she has to. She goes off with her pad, comes back. "Did you check your results?" "Yes, I added the column twelve different times." "Good. What did you get." "Twelve different answers." (If pk, like the rest of us, hadn't been declawed by civilized morality, I'd have fed my mother's boss (that bastard's) liver to him.) The two string theorists finally get an answer in common. How many times before that had they gotten answers not in common? (Were any of the new secretary's twelve answers correct?) How does agreement prove anything? It doesn't to pk.
But of course once a physicist submits something for publication, others check it before publication. Then lots of others check it again. The rest of us are supposed to believe that they know what they're doing.
It's a real problem though in science. Once upon a time human calculators checked all human calculations. The human calculators had some agreement on their accuracy ratio. But today's science, weather prediction for example, depends entirely on calculations that humans can't do, let alone check. We have to trust our digital computers not to be allied in fooling us. Thus, science has changed.
And it may have to change further: to accept philosophy.
Tricky business. Slippery ground.
But what ground has ever not been slippery?
But I have one more related gripe to mention. Brian Greene keeps talking about "the beginning of time"; "time's first tick"; "time's last tick" ... String theorists, like relativity people (Stephen Hawking, for example), like the quantum people, talk about time as though time were finite. They can do their math backwards and forwards. Many a scientist with audio-visual equipment is fond of showing film running backwards. Since movies, we can do that: so we do it. But we only observe things, apart from movies, running "forwards." Ilya Prigogine posits time to be infinite. Ilya Prigogine deals with time running only forwards. Makes sense to me. Why don't the others listen?
I've never so much as heard them defend their assumption.
As I've said previously: science needs a good spring cleaning.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
School Sports
CBS, groooming us for the 2005 Final Four, was just discussing NCAA rule changes with regard to college athletics, basketball the relevant focus. That calls forth some pk thoughts that run deep, so deep that there's always flow near the surface.
I n 1956 I joined the crew team. The coach was more interested in me as a coxswain for the heavyweights than as a light weight oarsman. If I rowed, I'd get nothing; if I agreed to be coxswain, I'd get access to the training table: steak while everybody else in the cafeteria got chipped beef. I'd wanted to row, coach wanted me holding the tiller. He was anxious, he was the boss, his bribe convinced me.
I try not to second guess myself in life, but if I wanted to start, that decision would make as good a starting place as any. I could have worked on upper body strength while honing balance, rhythm ... As is I got training table: at which I starved myself. I hovered around 132, and at race time I'd do situps in the furnace room until I was 122. The oarsmen saw me running on the track. The oarsmen would see me emerge from the furnace room, skinny as a chicken bone. The oarsmen knew I too was working hard, I wasn't just dead weight for them to carry. My practice was good for morale. But I should have rowed.
In winter the crew teams would practice in the indoor tanks, set well-below ground in the Columbia gym. My locker was situated by a railing that looked down on the basketball court, the court's ceiling skipping a floor upward. As I changed the basketball team would be working out. Chet Forte was the star. I saw him score more than forty a game on more than one occasion. Indeed, little Chet Forte, 5' 9" or so, was the leading scorer in the country that year: ahead of Wilt Chamberlin!
When practice was done and I'd change back to mufti, Chet would often still be on the court, practicing alone. I enjoyed watching Chet Forte practice alone, myself being the only audience I saw, presumably unseen by him, my locker being up in the rafters, more than I enjoyed any actual games. Chet would practice, and make, again and again, swish more often than not, the most amazing shots. He'd shoot "free throws" from half court. He'd shoot at whacky angles. For example, picture a school gym. There are the two baskets at either end of the court for games, but there were also two additional baskets per side: for half-court games during ordinary gym classes. Chet would stand under one side basket and shoot to the basket furthest away on the other side. I imagine that practice must accustom a player pretty thoroughly to the rectangle of basketball. Chet practiced long distance oblique angles too. I'll mention one additional whacky shot: Chet would stand at half court, measure the basket in front of him, and shoot backwards over his head to the basket a half-court behind him. Swish.
I was pleased that a guy at my school made national news on a regular basis. Claude Bentham was the football quarterback, a star himself; but I sure don't remember him ever being national news.
Then one day a roommate came in with the New York Times. Chet Forte was off the team, suspended. His average had fallen below the dean's guideline: and that was it. Until he performed better in class, he was in civvies. The Times writer went on about how this and that great ivy league player couldn't stop Forte: "it took a little man from the dean's office ..."
A national championship couldn't have made me more proud to be attending Columbia. Sure we had hypocrisy; but a minimum of it: less than many a person could imagine.
Ah, but a dozen years later I was bumping my head against NYU. A dozen years later I was getting fired in violation of my contract by the college which had just talked me into teaching there for an additional year. The reason given was cockamamie: the real reason can only be speculated on: but more than half the department was fired in one fell purge: the half that had made itself visible in protest to US behavior in Vietnam.
So: by that time I no longer believed in school at any level. I had never believed in public school. I had believed in Columbia: sort of. But by 1969, 1970 I no longer believed in NYU, Colby, or Columbia: or Oxford or Cambridge. I no longer believed in government. I no longer believed in the NY Times. (There again, I had never believed in the NY Times.)
What any society should have is a free marketplace: for anything to be marketed: including skill acquisition. Get rid of the administration. Get rid of degrees. Get rid of grades. Let any scholar who wishes to teach advertise his offerings in the free market. If no one buys him, tough. If people are too blind to hire Einstein, or Kitredge, or Bateson, that's tough on the stupid people: on the whole society, as well as tough on Einstein, Kitredge, and Bateson. But again: that's tough. It's not public business.
So CBS multi-billion dollar contract with the colleges returns millions and millions of dollars to the colleges: for general scholarships, student aid ... Wrong, bad, get rid of it. It's not public business.
If a college can attract tuition paying students – without degrees, without grades – and if that college has a basketball program, I don't care whether that college flunks its players or gives them all Rolls Royces. It's not my business. It's not public business. Let the college do whatever it wants. The college can teach Superman comics; basket weaving can be its prestige discipline. I don't care. It's no one's business but those paying tuition and those selling the college.
I n 1956 I joined the crew team. The coach was more interested in me as a coxswain for the heavyweights than as a light weight oarsman. If I rowed, I'd get nothing; if I agreed to be coxswain, I'd get access to the training table: steak while everybody else in the cafeteria got chipped beef. I'd wanted to row, coach wanted me holding the tiller. He was anxious, he was the boss, his bribe convinced me.
I try not to second guess myself in life, but if I wanted to start, that decision would make as good a starting place as any. I could have worked on upper body strength while honing balance, rhythm ... As is I got training table: at which I starved myself. I hovered around 132, and at race time I'd do situps in the furnace room until I was 122. The oarsmen saw me running on the track. The oarsmen would see me emerge from the furnace room, skinny as a chicken bone. The oarsmen knew I too was working hard, I wasn't just dead weight for them to carry. My practice was good for morale. But I should have rowed.
In winter the crew teams would practice in the indoor tanks, set well-below ground in the Columbia gym. My locker was situated by a railing that looked down on the basketball court, the court's ceiling skipping a floor upward. As I changed the basketball team would be working out. Chet Forte was the star. I saw him score more than forty a game on more than one occasion. Indeed, little Chet Forte, 5' 9" or so, was the leading scorer in the country that year: ahead of Wilt Chamberlin!
When practice was done and I'd change back to mufti, Chet would often still be on the court, practicing alone. I enjoyed watching Chet Forte practice alone, myself being the only audience I saw, presumably unseen by him, my locker being up in the rafters, more than I enjoyed any actual games. Chet would practice, and make, again and again, swish more often than not, the most amazing shots. He'd shoot "free throws" from half court. He'd shoot at whacky angles. For example, picture a school gym. There are the two baskets at either end of the court for games, but there were also two additional baskets per side: for half-court games during ordinary gym classes. Chet would stand under one side basket and shoot to the basket furthest away on the other side. I imagine that practice must accustom a player pretty thoroughly to the rectangle of basketball. Chet practiced long distance oblique angles too. I'll mention one additional whacky shot: Chet would stand at half court, measure the basket in front of him, and shoot backwards over his head to the basket a half-court behind him. Swish.
I was pleased that a guy at my school made national news on a regular basis. Claude Bentham was the football quarterback, a star himself; but I sure don't remember him ever being national news.
Then one day a roommate came in with the New York Times. Chet Forte was off the team, suspended. His average had fallen below the dean's guideline: and that was it. Until he performed better in class, he was in civvies. The Times writer went on about how this and that great ivy league player couldn't stop Forte: "it took a little man from the dean's office ..."
A national championship couldn't have made me more proud to be attending Columbia. Sure we had hypocrisy; but a minimum of it: less than many a person could imagine.
Ah, but a dozen years later I was bumping my head against NYU. A dozen years later I was getting fired in violation of my contract by the college which had just talked me into teaching there for an additional year. The reason given was cockamamie: the real reason can only be speculated on: but more than half the department was fired in one fell purge: the half that had made itself visible in protest to US behavior in Vietnam.
So: by that time I no longer believed in school at any level. I had never believed in public school. I had believed in Columbia: sort of. But by 1969, 1970 I no longer believed in NYU, Colby, or Columbia: or Oxford or Cambridge. I no longer believed in government. I no longer believed in the NY Times. (There again, I had never believed in the NY Times.)
What any society should have is a free marketplace: for anything to be marketed: including skill acquisition. Get rid of the administration. Get rid of degrees. Get rid of grades. Let any scholar who wishes to teach advertise his offerings in the free market. If no one buys him, tough. If people are too blind to hire Einstein, or Kitredge, or Bateson, that's tough on the stupid people: on the whole society, as well as tough on Einstein, Kitredge, and Bateson. But again: that's tough. It's not public business.
So CBS multi-billion dollar contract with the colleges returns millions and millions of dollars to the colleges: for general scholarships, student aid ... Wrong, bad, get rid of it. It's not public business.
If a college can attract tuition paying students – without degrees, without grades – and if that college has a basketball program, I don't care whether that college flunks its players or gives them all Rolls Royces. It's not my business. It's not public business. Let the college do whatever it wants. The college can teach Superman comics; basket weaving can be its prestige discipline. I don't care. It's no one's business but those paying tuition and those selling the college.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)