Pythagoras was a great mathematician. He first discovered a relationship between musical harmony and mathematics. Dividing a single stretched string into equal parts produces harmonious notes. What a fantastic discovery! The chords which sound pleasing to the western ear correspond to exact divisions of the string by whole numbers.
Then Pythagoras discovered geometry. As if the whole music thing wasn't enough.
Thomas Edison was the same way. He invented the light bulb and phonograph recording. After lunch he came up with motion pictures.
It's generally agreed upon that Pythagoras and Edison were great men. Sure, they were brilliant and the world is a better place because of their efforts. But what about those of us who have a notion to invent and discover? There's nothing left. They hogged all the big stuff.
My friend Alan is certain that he could have invented something great such as the light bulb. Would Edison have been any less great if he invented one less thing? No. Alan leaves the room in a huff when ever Thomas Edison comes up in conversation; he has a real chip on his shoulder over the light bulb.
At one of those innovation and patent trade shows Alan met the guy who invented the spoon-and-fork-combination thing that is popular among picnickers. Alan tried to convince the inventor guy that he could have invented something great like direct current. But instead, Alan persisted, this guy’s potential was wasted on a strange plastic utensil since Edison already invented it himself. The spoon-fork guy just laughed at Alan and got into his limousine.
Alan does have a point, though. When someone invents a great thing or makes a tremendous discovery they should be stopped. Only one great invention per person, that's fair.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Speed
Einstein got his idea for the Theory of Relativity when riding the train one morning to his job at the patent office. On a whim he imagined that the train moved at the speed of light. The trip to his office normally took several minutes to make as it crossed a large city square. But at the speed of light, he realized, it would take less than a second to get to his destination. So if he looked at his watch at the moment he arrived at work, the second hand would not have moved –no time would have passed since he began his journey. Einstein realized that man's concept of time was relative after traveling at speed of light in his imagination. That's also why his hair was permanently messed up.
My friend Alan drives fast. He says that it's simply because he's got so much to do. But speeding is breaking the law and I think it's wrong. I asked him when we were driving to go bowling once why all the time he was tailgating other motorists. He just laughed and asked, "Motorists!? Do you think of yourself as a motorist when you're driving? When I'm driving, I'm still Alan."
By the time he finished what he was saying I forgot what I had asked him. Bowling was fun though.
My friend Alan drives fast. He says that it's simply because he's got so much to do. But speeding is breaking the law and I think it's wrong. I asked him when we were driving to go bowling once why all the time he was tailgating other motorists. He just laughed and asked, "Motorists!? Do you think of yourself as a motorist when you're driving? When I'm driving, I'm still Alan."
By the time he finished what he was saying I forgot what I had asked him. Bowling was fun though.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Death and Dying
Obituaries are sad because a life in summary seems small on paper no matter how great a person might have been alive. Plus, obituaries often include needless information; frequently you will see an obituary that reads something like, "Mrs. Jackson, aged 97, died of liver failure.” Is it necessary to specify the cause of death when a person dies at the age of 97? Unless a 97-year-old dies skateboarding or on board a famous ocean liner that sank, an obituary that reads, “Mrs. Jackson died. She was 97," is plenty.
My friend Alan once was off work for several months due to a workplace injury. After weeks of not working – when the fun of not working wore off -- he began to feel ashamed for drawing workers compensation when he wasn’t hurt badly. He began to wonder how history would treat such a freeloader. He began to think about his obituary.
At first he wrote several versions himself, and sheepishly he showed me one. I asked him exactly when it was that he toured with Cirque de Soleil. He said that he was learning to juggle and planned to audition soon. When I told him that newspapers often check facts before printing articles he got totally angry and grabbed the obituary out of my hand and crumpled it up.
Since he couldn’t come up with an obituary that satisfied him, Alan began to wonder about his funeral. Over a beer one afternoon he asked me whether I would come to his funeral. Even though it was a stupid question I assured him that I would. Alan did not seem satisfied.
The next day, Alan rented an apartment across the street from a busy cemetery. It was his plan to observe as many burials as possible during the month he rented the apartment to give him a good idea of how many people would be a good showing at his own burial. Alan had plenty of time to watch burials since he wasn’t working. He started a journal to keep track of the number of people attending burials, the sorts of caskets used, the amount of flowers.
After only a few days Alan became dissatisfied with watching burials from across the street. He couldn’t hear what was being said about the dead person from that distance. So he got a black suit and put it on every morning and wore it all day so that he’d be prepared to walk across the street and mix into the crowd surrounding the gravesite. Every night for two weeks he’d talk excitedly with me about the lives of the people whose burials he attended. He even showed me how proficient he’d become at crying on command. “Watch this,” he’d say and he’d weep convincingly.
Before the month ended a cemetery worker recognized Alan and confronted him about his constant attendance at burials. Alan told the guy that it was no big deal - he just knew a many people in town, and they all seemed to be dying lately. Because he always speaks loudly, several people attending the burial turned to shush Alan as he defended himself to the cemetery guy. Alan panicked and took off running.
If you’ve ever run through a cemetery you’ll know that it’s not easy to get up to top speed as you navigate the many headstones. It’s like one of those obstacle courses. Well, it wasn’t but a few yards before Alan fell headlong over a smallish monument to someone named Sherman who died in 1967.
Alan jumped right back up from behind the Sherman headstone to discover that everyone at the burial had turned to see the commotion behind them. He said that his first thought was to do the sign of the cross, kiss his thumb and then turn to go with his head bowed, which he did. I guess the cemetery worker was so impressed with Alan’s piety that he just let him walk away.
My friend Alan once was off work for several months due to a workplace injury. After weeks of not working – when the fun of not working wore off -- he began to feel ashamed for drawing workers compensation when he wasn’t hurt badly. He began to wonder how history would treat such a freeloader. He began to think about his obituary.
At first he wrote several versions himself, and sheepishly he showed me one. I asked him exactly when it was that he toured with Cirque de Soleil. He said that he was learning to juggle and planned to audition soon. When I told him that newspapers often check facts before printing articles he got totally angry and grabbed the obituary out of my hand and crumpled it up.
Since he couldn’t come up with an obituary that satisfied him, Alan began to wonder about his funeral. Over a beer one afternoon he asked me whether I would come to his funeral. Even though it was a stupid question I assured him that I would. Alan did not seem satisfied.
The next day, Alan rented an apartment across the street from a busy cemetery. It was his plan to observe as many burials as possible during the month he rented the apartment to give him a good idea of how many people would be a good showing at his own burial. Alan had plenty of time to watch burials since he wasn’t working. He started a journal to keep track of the number of people attending burials, the sorts of caskets used, the amount of flowers.
After only a few days Alan became dissatisfied with watching burials from across the street. He couldn’t hear what was being said about the dead person from that distance. So he got a black suit and put it on every morning and wore it all day so that he’d be prepared to walk across the street and mix into the crowd surrounding the gravesite. Every night for two weeks he’d talk excitedly with me about the lives of the people whose burials he attended. He even showed me how proficient he’d become at crying on command. “Watch this,” he’d say and he’d weep convincingly.
Before the month ended a cemetery worker recognized Alan and confronted him about his constant attendance at burials. Alan told the guy that it was no big deal - he just knew a many people in town, and they all seemed to be dying lately. Because he always speaks loudly, several people attending the burial turned to shush Alan as he defended himself to the cemetery guy. Alan panicked and took off running.
If you’ve ever run through a cemetery you’ll know that it’s not easy to get up to top speed as you navigate the many headstones. It’s like one of those obstacle courses. Well, it wasn’t but a few yards before Alan fell headlong over a smallish monument to someone named Sherman who died in 1967.
Alan jumped right back up from behind the Sherman headstone to discover that everyone at the burial had turned to see the commotion behind them. He said that his first thought was to do the sign of the cross, kiss his thumb and then turn to go with his head bowed, which he did. I guess the cemetery worker was so impressed with Alan’s piety that he just let him walk away.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Up Late
Many species of mammal are nocturnal. They sleep during the day and become active at night. Zoologists say the reason this trait evolved was to achieve an upper hand in hunting. Species such as big cats are endowed with the ability to see in the dark and this gives them an advantage over other species that can not see very well when the sun is down.
My friend Alan is a big huge animal rights activist and feels that this is an injustice. Hundreds of species of small animals can not see in the dark and they are slaughtered every year by crafty panthers.
Alan feels this is unfair and his passion for the plight of these unfortunate animals was so intense that he initiated an animal rights campaign called "Light the Jungle." His organization hoped to install powerful flood lights throughout the jungles in Africa and Asia. As the sun would set each night, the lights automatically would switch on to illuminate the jungle floor. This would level the playing field, he thought, and save millions of small and disadvantaged animals normally gobbled up in the night.
It was tough for Alan to get any support. I made a modest contribution because Alan is my friend. But a group of people calling themselves environmentalists believed that Alan’s plan would do more harm than good. Not just because it would upset the natural order of things, but also because the plan would require lots of electricity and long extension cords. Alan believed this point of view was short-sighted. So what if a few giraffes tripped on the extension cords? At least giraffes don’t sit huddled and shivering every night in mortal terror of being devoured.
Before long Alan gave up his quest. We met for a beer on the night "Light the Jungle" officially folded. Alan was dejected and felt that he had failed his little friends vulnerable in the night. Luckily, all he had to do to close down the operation was to throw out the Light the Jungle letterhead and business cards he had printed.
He was hunched over the bar and shaking his head. To comfort him I played some of his favorite songs on the juke box and before long he perked up and we split an order of chicken wings. Alan just loves chicken wings.
My friend Alan is a big huge animal rights activist and feels that this is an injustice. Hundreds of species of small animals can not see in the dark and they are slaughtered every year by crafty panthers.
Alan feels this is unfair and his passion for the plight of these unfortunate animals was so intense that he initiated an animal rights campaign called "Light the Jungle." His organization hoped to install powerful flood lights throughout the jungles in Africa and Asia. As the sun would set each night, the lights automatically would switch on to illuminate the jungle floor. This would level the playing field, he thought, and save millions of small and disadvantaged animals normally gobbled up in the night.
It was tough for Alan to get any support. I made a modest contribution because Alan is my friend. But a group of people calling themselves environmentalists believed that Alan’s plan would do more harm than good. Not just because it would upset the natural order of things, but also because the plan would require lots of electricity and long extension cords. Alan believed this point of view was short-sighted. So what if a few giraffes tripped on the extension cords? At least giraffes don’t sit huddled and shivering every night in mortal terror of being devoured.
Before long Alan gave up his quest. We met for a beer on the night "Light the Jungle" officially folded. Alan was dejected and felt that he had failed his little friends vulnerable in the night. Luckily, all he had to do to close down the operation was to throw out the Light the Jungle letterhead and business cards he had printed.
He was hunched over the bar and shaking his head. To comfort him I played some of his favorite songs on the juke box and before long he perked up and we split an order of chicken wings. Alan just loves chicken wings.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Protest
Some people I know are very anti-nuke. They have strong opinions about nuclear bombs and believe that all nuclear weapons should be banished from the earth. Humanity's place on this planet changed for the worse after World War II when America exploded the first atomic bombs, they feel.
My friend Alan loves big explosions. Growing up he always was the kid with the firecrackers. And it seemed that he was working constantly in his garage to create explosives. I wondered how his parents didn’t know.
Once Alan made a bomb in a film cannister and we went out at night to blow it up on the field at our school. It had snowed that day and school was cancelled. We thought it would be cool to blow a big crater in the snow. When we got up there and the school custodian was outside shoveling snow we chickened out. But so that it wasn't a total waste we wrote "I hate school" in the snow with our pee and broke a bottle.
These days, whenever we’re together with our anti-nuke friends and the conversation inevitably turns to nuclear bombs, Alan always says that he’d love to see all those big explosions going off at once. He says, "Can't you just see the looks on children's faces? It would be like the best and biggest Fourth of July ever."
This really makes my anti-nukes friends mad. They yell back at Alan that nuclear weapons are dangerous and they can kill us all. And then Alan says that knives are dangerous, too. He'll say, "More people are killed every year by knives than are killed by atomic bombs." Just when my anti-nuke friends are getting really red in the face Alan asks, "How come there isn't an anti-knife movement? Hmm? How come?" When they begin to sputter in anger Alan starts jumping up and down, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, "Stabby! Stabby! No more knives! Stabby! Stabby! No more knives!" It's so hard not to laugh when he does that.
My friend Alan loves big explosions. Growing up he always was the kid with the firecrackers. And it seemed that he was working constantly in his garage to create explosives. I wondered how his parents didn’t know.
Once Alan made a bomb in a film cannister and we went out at night to blow it up on the field at our school. It had snowed that day and school was cancelled. We thought it would be cool to blow a big crater in the snow. When we got up there and the school custodian was outside shoveling snow we chickened out. But so that it wasn't a total waste we wrote "I hate school" in the snow with our pee and broke a bottle.
These days, whenever we’re together with our anti-nuke friends and the conversation inevitably turns to nuclear bombs, Alan always says that he’d love to see all those big explosions going off at once. He says, "Can't you just see the looks on children's faces? It would be like the best and biggest Fourth of July ever."
This really makes my anti-nukes friends mad. They yell back at Alan that nuclear weapons are dangerous and they can kill us all. And then Alan says that knives are dangerous, too. He'll say, "More people are killed every year by knives than are killed by atomic bombs." Just when my anti-nuke friends are getting really red in the face Alan asks, "How come there isn't an anti-knife movement? Hmm? How come?" When they begin to sputter in anger Alan starts jumping up and down, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, "Stabby! Stabby! No more knives! Stabby! Stabby! No more knives!" It's so hard not to laugh when he does that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)